Nina Teicholz is an investigative journalist and author of "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet" https://ninateicholz.com
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hello, friends, Friday night LAS Vegas Nevada, that is
holy. That's tomorrow, boy that happened quick this week is flown by. It was just Christmas.
Friday night I'll be at the Mirage in LAS Vegas Nevada, with the great and powerful Ian Edwards, then Sunday, night Ian and I will be at the Wiltern Theater in LOS Angeles, for to show seven hundred and thirty and ten p dot m. I think the temp
I basically sold out, but there are some tickets available for the seven hundred and thirty joerogan dot net.
Forward, slash tour for those tickets and many more got a lot. A lot of comedy dates coming up you who I mean that sounded aggressive
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by square cash square. Cash is the
simplest way to pay people back friends, family co
anyone really
sending receiving money is totally free and fast and most payments can be deposited directly to your bank account and just a few seconds when the future folks. This is how it works in the square cash app. You link your
debit or credit card, select an amount to send and then type in
and phone number or email address to complete a payment. They'll get a notification that they've just
of money and that's it. There's no gimmicks just cold hard,
digital cash. It's that simple folks download the free square cash app for
Ios or Android
now it says now, it's very aggressive. You listen to it,
cast. You really have time to do. It now write it down and do it at your convenience. But
It is an excellent way to send people the chat, a square cash
and again it's available for Ios or Android, we're also
brought to you by texture quality?
matters. Ladies and gentlemen, do you know this? Listen? Were you looking for dependable political reporting, high quality storytelling?
or the latest on cultural and entertainment patterns
magazines, deliver it all with high quality, writing and beautiful
photography, and now you can
all your magazines in one place with texture. The texture app gives
unlimited access to over two hundred.
Premium magazines. Texture has
leading titles like time, the Atlantic, the New Yorker Vet
fair and wired, and right now you can try texture for free. It's.
Better than print magazines, weave together, great writing. Beautiful photography, tell stories better,
Expand your knowledge and simply entertain national geographic. Takes you further away. The Atlantic gets the heart of the issue
people helps you relax on bulshit wired in vogue. Let you see the future
the quality of magazines should be available anytime without needing
carry them around or have them clutter up your home. Well, there's a better way and the better way is texture
texture, app delivers, unlimited access to two hundred, prima
M magazines and again right now, you can try it for free free, yes, third, the crack dealers, man, they're gonna, get you can give you that can eat for free, gives
text baby. Just imagine having your favorite magazines and their back issues anytime anywhere. To start your tech
Your free trial go to texture, dot com, Slash Rogan. If you choose to continue podcast listener
we'll get texture for just nine dollars and ninety nine cents a month. That's so sweet for two,
Fuckin' magazines and that's over thirty,
an author listed price, so go to texture, dot, com
Slash Rogan to start your free trial. Today, that's textured t e x t: U r e dot com forward, Slash Brogan, textured, dot com for central yeah
and I said my guest today is Nina. Anti shoals- need
that is, a science journalist and she's the author of the incredible, the big fat, surprise,
It's an amazing book, she's, an advocate for nutritional policy based on rigorous science, and I very much enjoyed talking to her so
if you're into these health, based
fast. We get a lot of information that really rings true to you, give it up for Nina titles.
The Joe Rogan experience
Nina. How are you hi welcome here? Thank you for doing this good to be here so a big fat surprise, with a big fence prize that better meet antes. Do not cause heart disease. That saturated fat doesn't cause heart disease. That fat doesn't make you fat, yeah, low fat diet doesn't make you healthy. That's my book. Yes, very controversial, pull this sucker up real close to paint their right. There, yeah, okay, beautiful, very controversial in this day and age. It was even more controversial when the book came out which isn't at two thousand for
team, but you know we seen at an almost complete sea change on this subject, not at the expert level, but you know there's a real, a ground swell in a change of thinking. I think it, I think, in part really triggered by my book
uh, which really laid out all the arguments. For
come to believe that saturated fat is bad for health. Why? We believe animal fats are bad. Why do you believe? Why do we believe that cause heart disease and really tell that whole story of how we started down this path, believing that fat and cholesterol cause heart disease? Make you sick cause cancer? Make you fat and it's a wild store,
It's just an incredible story, the politics of personalities. It really is a story more about politics than about science
feel vindicated. When the New York Times article came out where it showed that the sugar industry had bribed the scientist,
to lie about data and falsified data, that showed that saturated fat was the cause of heart,
instead of sugar that was fairly recently right. It was after your book that was an you know. That's a
all part of the story I mean. I have documents in my book: there's there's, maybe a hundred different. You know documents you can find where companies are trying to sway the interest. Is there trying to pay? I
scientists, basically, there's so much money going into nutrition science. We really it's amazing. How
so people know about how much nutrition science is funded by the food industry, and that was one small example where
every scientist had received money from the sugar industry and what the this
call contended is that that's what pushed them to blame fat and not sugar for heart disease, actually don't believe that that's what happened in that particular case for those Harvard scientists in 1950s, because I've studied them
extensively. For my book I read like well, it took me nine years and I read like ten thousand scientific papers, so I knew the work of those Harvard scientists. I knew everything they had written. One of 'em is named Mark Hegsted, who was very influential and the reality for him, and his in his colleagues was that they truly one hundred percent believe that fat and saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease and they had believed it. They had believed it for more than a decade before the sugar industry came along with that proposition. For them they really believed those early scientists
were true. They were not corrupt, they are, they were actually not corrupted by industry. They were true believers and one of the things that my book explores. Is this?
phenomenon. That happens. Happen then happened today where scientists they come to fall in love with their belief,
you know they fall in love with their own hypothesis, so humans, it's a problem with you,
exactly right. So this is what we all do. We all follow
with an idea. We believe something, and we only see things that confirm it, and we kind of ignore everything that contradicts it well in science. What scientists are supposed to do what they are taught to do is to not behave in a human way, they're taught to rigorously
trust their beliefs, they are taught to try to find every way to shoot down their own hypothesis. That's the job of being a scientist, that's why they seem so cold and
passion it or should to us mere humans. But in the case of nutrition science that didn't happen, they fell in love with their idea. It was like a favored child. They all they did was try to find evidence to support it. They cherry pick the evidence again and again and they completely ignored or actively even suppressed any information that contradicted their ideas. So this scientist Mark Hickstead at Harvard he in his favorite colleague, Ancel Keys, who is from the University of Minnesota. They would actually bully and kind of stomp on
nine test, who came up with contradictory information. They would actually suppress stuff, they were they were, and this is still going on today, which is what makes it such an interesting story. I mean today it's
the same phenomenon in nutrition signed. This is the when interest in science started and it's it's the legacy that continues today, which is that I any papers to the contrary. You know hard to get them published hard to get them in to discuss too hard to get them presented. Expert meetings,
and it's it's been driven by people who are really married to their hypothesis about what a healthy diet is, so you feel like
What happened was the sugar industry came along and they found these people that already had beliefs that a lined up with what they were trying to sell right so
maybe they weren't, even so or so. Corrupt, like
they said all the scientists know more than us just pay them to get.
Research out. You know you can't blame industries for trying to protect their products
every industry Diane, but yeah I mean it's just what industry does and you know if there there was another story out recently about how sugar industry didn't pursue. Research
They had done that seem to show that sugar cause cancer. Well, I mean, if you're the sugar industry like what is your obligation to keep going. I mean I
not saying that you know there are no angels. The word which we should expect corporations to be angels. What what you do expect is for your scientists to behave in a principled way right right,
so we should expect yeah, I mean when it gets to a certain, but what I think, if you look at the cigarettes, for instance in the tobacco industry, like the the
There's large market for something we know kills people I mean you don't have
lie about it. You can have a warning on the label and it still makes billions of dollars a year. Tell everybody hey,
definitely give you. Cancer keep smoking it and I'll go ok and they'll buy it. They'll keep buying it. So it's it's not really
that. You need to lie about things, you really don't. I mean
oh, are more than willing, as long as it hits the right buttons and switches.
The brain and their receptors they're more than willing to put their health in danger for some.
Temporary mouth, pleasure, yeah and this kind of goes to the subject,
is debated in the food world, which is you know? How much should the government be telling people what to eat right right? So there are people who say
They believe sugars like tobacco. If you eat it, you will. Probably
a lot of sugar you are
much more likely to get diabetes and heart disease. I mean, I think, that if you had a lot of refined, carbohydrates or maybe even if you eat just too many carbohydrates period, you're more likely to get diabetes and heart disease and become
so you know should but people like it
they do like him and then there's also people that are on a plant based diet like uh. My friend Eddie, who you just met, was right before you who's a vegan. Now he's been a vegan, we say a couple years three years and he said he's way too many carbohydrates and he's admitting it and
not not exactly knowing how to fix his is cravings in his urges. You know if you are on
lately plant based diet, it's really hard to just go all fats and and and get the proper amount of unsaturated and saturated fats in your diet
mean so. People aren't vegan diets for many reasons, and that's their own personal choice.
Reality is that the a large body of rigor
research. By that I mean randomized, controlled clinical trials and thousands of people showing that a diet higher in fat and lower in carbohydrates leads to better outcomes in terms of diabetes, obesity, heart disease. This is the biggies right
and so low in carbohydrates is a way to reverse out of those diseases if you're on a vegan diet, it's just very hard to do that and a low carb way. You know what do you eat is your your source of protein and fat there's just there's. There are some plant fats,
I have a lot of coconut oil and the condo had a lot of avocado, but you know it just becomes hard like what do you? What do you put on your plate for dinner every night you know like if you eat meat you have these meet,
I mean that used to be just at the center of the the dinner plate, but it's it's hard on a vegan diet. Other thing that's very hard to be indicted. Staying you be really careful about nutritional supplements and because you cannot get a get all the nutrients that you need, naturally, from the foods that you're eating and and also some of those nutrients are not, as by a digestible mean you're by dozens or them as easily like iron from spinach is not as observable as iron, for
meet, so so it's hard it's hard to stay healthy on that diet, yeah. That is the big misconception right. When you look at the total amount of iron ore, protein or anything in a plant based diet does the bioavailability of that there is evil. It's less and people don't understand that so when people do
hold up charts that show hey. You can get a cup of broccoli and that has the same amount of protein as a cheeseburger. Oh, no it doesn't it really doesn't it might on paper,
but in terms of how your body absorbs it, it's not equal. No or you know another example of carrot supposed to give you vitamin a right carries, don't get they give you a precursor to vitamin a called
nodes. Can it convert and divide them in a knot that efficiently most people can't convert that efficiently, so they're not getting the kind of vitamin a they need and what is vitamin a come from what food sources you know
stuff, my head, a good source of vitamin a source yeah, it's animal! You could, let's see, I think you get pork vitamin a sorry. I should know that, but I, but, but you can
get all the vitamins and minerals and nutrients that you need from animal foods. Ann you'd have to we'd have to eat like this entire studio.
Full of spanish to get them out of iron that you need, and you can get that amount of iron in and, as you know, in a few ounces of meat so and that one of the I'm sorry can
now. The other thing is that, in order to get protein like, if you can get your you get your protein from beans say you have to have to get a complete protein. That's your beans and rice, but in order to get you know, let's say a hundred grams of protein. You need to eat like a thousand calories of beans and rice versus, say a couple hundred calories in me. Okay, so don't hold me to those numbers, but I'm just telling you eat a lot more calories Bryant to get that same amount of protein yeah, so for a day's worth of protein you're saying, obviously, when one hundred grams of protein, a single serving preferred yeah he's worth of protein right, you're, probably get
I eat an exorbitant amount of beans and rice right, yeah or broccoli or whatever the hell else are trying to eat. What is it like? Iron is a big one right. I know I have a few friends that are vegan or have been vegan, and that was an issue with them was was iron yeah I mean I was a vegetarian for over twenty
five years, and I was always anemic an item and
iron pills and that didn't work, and you just you know, Heme iron, which is the favorite kind for absorption, is only available and from animal sources and principally read me white meat is relic like chicken as a relatively poor in nutrients porn iron. To so you know the most nutrient dense food on the planet is liver, which nobody is used to eating anymore and we
I think it's disgusting, but it get to, but you but know grandparents generation they had they had top.
Liver whatever and onions onions and that's very nutrient dense. We stop
eating it, because it's high in cholesterol, so too, is the consequences of having
What we did was as my book is about, but it's you know
started starting in nineteen sixty one. We, basically, the American Heart Association was the first organization to say: don't eat, saturated fat and cholesterol to avoid a heart attack, and that was based on at the time really weak evidence uh something called an observation: Ull Study, Control Association, but not causation,
and I'm you know they were just enormous unintended consequences at the time. So actually this Harvard scientists, markets heck said this was you know he was one of people behind this and he said we we imagine the benefits will be great and we cannot imagine what the you know. What the, if they're at their kid, that there could be any negative consequences, something like that, and this is kind of fun to
the tragedy of any kind of policy, especially when it comes in trying to buy an organization like the powerful organization like the American Heart Association or say our government. They do what they think they make kind of make a best guess, and I can't imagine what, with the unintended consequences be, what would be the unintended consequences of say, limiting foods with cholesterol in them
well not eating liver, not getting, are not getting all it, not not not eliminating one of most nutrient dense foods on the planet from our diets, and so many other things again. No egg white omelet how many a quite
Have you seen yeah, I'm not in those, but the real common night was soon as I found out that there's a lot of nutrition in the yolk and that's like one of the healthiest parts, the egg. I was so confused as like. What is that? What's the egg
right thing, then: why is everybody going with egg whites because they in the episode the Yoke is where the cholesterol is? So that's why we stopped stopped eating a give oaks and that's the a yoke is also where all the nutrients are
including things like Lou, teen, N F, which is four I healthy brain development, I mean there's all kinds of things and things that are Coleen also for brain, develop
and that you can really not easy to find you can't find them easily in plant foods or at all, and they are crucial to human development. So you know
We eliminate these foods. You know it's ironic like the cholesterol. Is the cholesterol is essential to every cell. In your body we make cholesterol, we eat cholesterol, it's part of what you know is, and it's a building block for all of our hormones, and you know, coupled with cholesterol,
are all the nutrients needed to sustain life, so we eliminate all those foods. I know this
that you're saying what you're saying, but most people when they hear that I like well, no cholesterol is bad
it gives you a heart attack. My dad is on cholesterol, drugs he's on statins to keep
Pastorale out of his body. Yeah
well. You know it's been like sixty years of all of us. You know all of us believe
saying that fat and cholesterol bad for us right, believing cholesterol is bad. You know when I started this my whole this
any for me, it was you know, as I said, Vegetarian been vegetarian for decades, had need a piece of red meat, hadn't eaten with butter for decades, like barely eaten
You do it for ideological reasons or health reasons. I wanted to be thin
like all girls,
I like it started when I was like a late teenager and of course, I became fat like
I much thinner now as a ghetto middle aged woman and
Honestly then I was, I was all through my young adult years. I was like twenty five pounds, overweight, but I just carbs,
as I ate a high carb diet. You can okay, as a vegetarian you're like okay, don't eat them, don't get you go to the the message in the dining hall in College. I don't eat the meat, don't eat the cheese Denny. This thing have a solid and
you're starving! So then you're like okay, get the bag of MM's and that's what people do
You know they're, starving, you're, starving on that diet. What is c sheeting? What is c sheeting foods are protein and fat. I mean that's actually mention in scientific experiments where they, they put stacks, said the one experiment, a put it stacks of like pork, chops in front of people, and they just said he. You know
stop being done and and and people just could not over eat on that food, you you fill up on fat and protein and they discover that those macronutrients are uniquely satiate ing where
carbohydrates? You know over on cookies, crackers trips, pasta
so easy. I whole box of cereal. I mean you know in my vegetarian days I could. I could eat a box of cereal, no problem I'll eat, a big bowl of pasta on the days that I do cheat and even though
stuffed I'll still keep eating.
I'd see. There's more left is more left no one's going to eat. That I mean that I just put
in my bowl and just keep eating what just your body craves it in some weird way well or alternatively, like another physiological explanation- is that your body keeps eating because it still hasn't got.
And what it needs. It hasn't gotten that that the nutrients that it actually needs for to to to build the cells
you know: you're, not giving it what it needs until you eat the right foods. Is it possible
both things are going on that your body hasn't
and what it's needs, what it needs. So there's that crave
but then there's also this thank
the intoxicating carbohydrates,
I'm going on or as you're eating it in your just like your sugar levels are getting jacked and you just want to keep going. So what you're talking about
think is a little bit more like the glucose roller coaster that happens, and that is part of carb addiction and then
that is, is you eat carbs, really any kind of carbs? Because so I'm talking about bread, pasta, you know
healthy whole grain, bread, pudding little air quotes around healthy.
And and and and Eminem is and Snickers bars, whatever's whatever you want any of those foods when you eat them. They're, converted in your blood into glucose, cake,
glucose is a simple sugar in your. It goes around your blood and and and it's like a quick fuel
your body, uses that up and then when it's gone, you want another hit, and so that's the side. That's the roller coaster. So, like you have cereal and OJ for Breakfast OJ,
another just simple sugar and then by mid morning, you're starving right
whereas I think maybe your listeners think you've talked about in your program before, but if you become what's called a fat burner, which is somebody who your primary fuel is not glucose, it's fat with the fat in your body that you store in your body and also the fact that you eat right. So you think about like a hybrid,
car you can have two fuel sources as a human being, you can either live on glucose or fat. If you got a healthy metabolism, you can switch back and forth between them right. So I'm I'm a I've trained, my body to be a fat burner right. So I can live off of fat.
I can be the electric car, but when I eat you know when I eat carbs, then I can switch over to glucose, but I'm healthy enough to switch back but unhealthy,
people who are unhealthy and it would just been living on carbs for really long time, mainly glucose, they can only they can only get their fuel from glucose and if they don't have glucose, they just bonk. That's why I, like you, have long distance runners.
Who are going to constantly sucking down those. What are those called those like glucose packs and things they can't switch over to fat to burn their own fat.
Even this is amazing thing, like even an obese person. Imagine Iraq a like a three hundred. What woman? What are those the that all that fat on me? That is fuel that is like? That is like the miracle.
Of of humans to be able to just that's like having gone all
strapped all over my body right. I should be able to access that fuel. That's my fuel source yeah. Why do we have fat? Instead, fuel stores becomes a burden, it's becomes blocked and I can't access it because I don't know my body doesn't know how to burn my fat.
And that's what happens when you live too long, living off of with glucose as your only fuel source. You cannot switch over and burn your own fat, it
like living on top of a well and not having a bucket to get herself.
Drink of water, and then you, you know, and then you you just you you die of thirst,
I mean that's a crazy way to look at that. You granola bars, dropped over your body, but I think that's a good analogy. That's why you have
that's all all animal
as you know, are mammals have fat, because you know what do you
When you're it's at night, you can you don't you're not eating all night long. You have to have fat on your body right. No, that's you get to live out of something and that's how humans and that's why you know humans became really good at at storing fat because it meant we could do other things were not
like group, gonna chimpanzees, who have to eat all day long right or like these people who are fruitarians, carians and and like proud of living, offer free
I have to eat all day long to to have it like that, so they have to do all day, but we we nutrient, dense foods like we'd, meet that humans evolved to eat meat. So that's nutrient dense, so we don't have to eat all day long.
So we have time in our hands. We have time in our hands. Do podcasts build the TAJ Mahal do other stuff 'cause. We don't have to eat all the time and we can live off of our fat if we are eating well, well, the idea that you're
that all that that burdens you so where you're. If this got or you have this fat all of your body and depresses, you that literally the change the point of view, the perspective to look at that as fuel, you literally have-
tool. Hang off your body, you just
to figure out a way to get your body to access that and will literally eat it away. Did you ever see
Robb. Wolf was talking to us about
There was a study where they took a man who is severely obese and they had him fast
nothing but water and some sort of vitamins for
three hundred plus days and he
end up losing not just all the fat, but the crazy thing was his
skin, receded as well, and he didn't have the loose skin that
normally is associated with rapid weight loss, so when you get, someone is incredibly obese, make sure
down to a normal size person, one of the things they have to deal.
With routinely as these giant flops of ski
because your body used to being so big,
but apparently, at least in this one case, this guy, as he had gone through this enormous metal,
controlled fasting.
Skin shrank as well like his body, eight, the fat and in in Iraq
guys that in his body, was shrinking everything sort of shrank up in proportion,
thing is amazing, and I wonder if that could be replicated or if he was just very uniquely had
the genetics or, with the circumstances,
were you know some people skin varies right. That's why some people get stretch marks if they just get a little bit of weight and other people don't yeah. I
no. I mean. I think that this is one of the theories behind internet. I mean dramatic fasting like that is
Just for anybody. Thinking about it is, you know, that's
initially dangerous yet another, so it has to be medically supervised, but you know people there's intermittent fasting that people do with a fast for you know for like I do I never read before noon so and and and and people do it for a little bit longer periods of time is sort of induces a state. What it does is it kick starts this ability for your body to to get into fat burning mode,
and to stay in fat burning mode, and so you know what you want to do. Is you want to? If you have excess fat on your body, you want
You want to live off of that fat, so it'll disappear. You want instead of taking in food, is your fuel source. You want to live off your fat until you, you you, you know until it is
gone or in never that is gone, that you're happy so and that's what fat burners. Do
and the way to do that is to keep carbs low. Because carbohydrate the moment you have glucose in your blood system, your body prefers glucose. It's a quick head of fuel right. Your body will always prefer glucose, and once you have glucose circulating in your blood, it's like it's like going up. If it's like being at a teller's window in a bank, it's like everything shuts down. You cannot get to your fat cells. Forget it's like we're close,
now get can get your fat as long as you've got good, because that's what you're living office. So the line was about to do that because it prefers glucose blue causes your preferential fuel source. Just is, I don't know
it because it was rare, you know you can casually would come
as honey or it was it's. It was just it's a it's a quick, efficient source of fuel, and so your body came to for fear to prefer
But once you're, so you want to stay away from glucose in order to access your fat. That's just the reality, and so fasting is
really doing that you can do it for a little while you can do it. You know, just if you just fast in the morning, so your body is basically fast at all night long. You fast through the morning
and then you have to use your your fat burning all that time. Yeah
most. People are not aware of that. You know it's.
This is a relatively new situation. I practice it. I do intermittent fasting. I do have a fourteen hour window at night, where I don't eat
and I think the more people do that the more they understand that, like your body, will burn off way more fat. If you just live like that, if you just force yourself to only inside of a ten hour window yeah so and the key to that is you can't
eating a lot, you can't get a high carb diet and then fast. If you're used to eating a lot of carbs, your body will still preferentially need those need that glucose and you'll still be on that roller coaster. Glucose cycles, it's it's! I don't know, I think it's pretty hard to do fasting when you're in a high carb diet and you're right. This is all pretty. This is all new science. So, just to you know, if you want a little bit of perspective on this really all this science,
third ed in the early two thousands and it started so so. The long history is so nineteen sixty one and how to sociais
Intel's all of America stop eating fat and cholesterol, so you don't die of a heart attack right. That was heart. Disease had risen from pretty
out of nowhere in the early nineteen hundreds become the leading leading killer in America. President Eisenhower himself out of the oval office for ten days with a heart attack, and it's just a huge public health emergency, and this Ancel keys this professor at University Minnesota. He came up with this idea that it he and Mark Hex did the one from Harvard said it was. It was saturated, fat and cholesterol that cause heart disease, and so that's that's. When that whole
hypothesis was born and it became enshrined as Paula see. The federal government gets on board in nineteen eighty and that's the beginning of our dietary guidelines. So now the whole country is
not only avoiding saturated fat and cholesterol, but also at this point, all of fat suspects. So big, it's like just cut back on all fat, and that was a different reason. That's because fat is is just as denser. It has more calories per gram at about nine calories per gram versus protein and and and fat which have I'm sorry, yes in carbohydrate, which have about four five calories per gram. So it was just thought: prudent looked one way to keep. People then is just
to keep their calories down, and we can do this just by reducing fat, because fat is has more calorie, dense. So now we're on the low fat diet, an were avoiding saturated fat and cholesterol, and the government is enormously powerful, and so, as I think you know- and so it's
Just that all Americans are given this diet right. All doctor everybody, every every health professional on the frontline every dietitian
free medical doctor. Every nutritionist is pushing this low fat diet, but all cattle across the country are bred to be leaner. The whole food supply changes right foods, all sorts of low fat foods appear in the supermarkets. Everything goes low,
and people dramatically change the way they eat. I mean just,
some numbers, like wheat, thirty four percent less beef than we did in nineteen. Seventy, we about twenty five percent: less red meat overall, wheat, seven, nine percent, less home milk- we eat. You know we that I think about nineteen percent less
animal fats all together, eggs are done. I mean everything all animal foods came down and we dramatically increased grains. We eat thirty percent, more carbohydrates, carbohydrates, overall, forty percent, more grains, almost ninety percent, more vegetable oils, these, of course, if you're, not eating saturated fats, reading, polyunsaturated vegetable oils, so
We had this huge change in the way. Americans, eight and one thousand nine hundred and eighty is also so that's the beginning of the dietary guidelines for all Americans itself. At the beginning of the obesity epidemic, you see obesity rates of obese
kind as it's very slowly gradually going up until nineteen eighty and then they start to just take a sharp turn upwards and they have, you know, barely an barely stopped. So in the early two thousands what happened well, journalist named Gary Taubes wrote this front page New York Times magazine article saying you know what
What if it's all been a big fat lie and basically kind of revived the idea, the Atkins Diet and says you know the Atkins High FAT, low, carb he'd, been he had promoted
side effects from the early nineteen seventies on, but he had really been vilified. Everybody thought he was a quack and at that point there really was no science to support him. I mean he would say what
look I've healed all these people and look at all my medical files go through my drawers look at my office and everybody say you know it doesn't matter what we do. There are no clinical trials, there's no science behind your diet, um, but Gary Taubes K
With this article and then he came out with a book in two thousand and seven and a lot of people read his work, I mean even though he was vilified and attacked, and he
but he was brave and a lot of scientist read his work and a lot of scientist who thought you know something is going wrong in America. You know our obesity is up type. Two diabetes is up. None of the explanations that we have are working the low fat diets, not working for it to just
let's continue to rise, um and so scientists, typically not in the field of nutrition, because in the field nutrition, it's considered heresy still to research. The low carb diet still uh, but scientists from different disciplines started to do controlled clinical trials on car reduction. Carbohydrate reduction, the opposite of low fat diet, the opposite of what the
it was telling people to eat, and so there started to develop this body of clinical trial research and they're. Now nearly a hundred randomized controlled clinical trials on this low carb diet.
And they all kinds of different populations, and they really consistently show that it not only help people lose weight-
and that was always known even the days of Robert. You know of Atkins Right, but people is that yeah I get my waist line, but you know pay for with the heart attack down the line, kill my heart because of the cholesterol, but it turns out that the diet is also the best way to control your blood glucose for diabetes. It's it helps people's action experiment out now showing that it reverses diabetes. I mean completely eliminates that supposedly in terrible disease and that it improves most of the risk factors for heart disease. There's a lot of debate over you know which risk factors best predictor likelihood of getting a heart attack, but you know for the ones that I think are the most reliable, including your triglycerides, your hdl over your triglyceride ratio, which we don't have to get into that, but for the for the most reliable hit, a heart disease risk factors that best predict heart attacks.
The low carb diet also the best improved those risk factors. So what was it that made this so taboo in the food industry or in the food research so like? If a health research
pictures today wanted to research, low, carb diet and you're, saying that it's taboo what's causing that with all this body of evidence, he you this
all these clinical trials is,
obviously not just Kerry, tops with so many people have talked about this non dogs. Do you know them a lot of research on and it's it's? It's very public lot of people talk about this so
with all that data, where is the resistance coming from well? You know so if the low carb diet it works and is a healthier diet, that means the government, the government's diet, the low fat diet is making people sick and fat right. So the entire establishment.
I say I'm not talking it's, not just the government, but every university with all their professors who have been endorsing this diet and their entire careers. All of the pharmaceutical companies that,
and on lowering your cholesterol, I mean there's a huge, a huge set of interests that are invested for any number of reasons for keeping this establishment diet, for you know for not backing off this. This diet that they have prescribed to the american people for fifty years. You know it's just a huge set of interests. It's it's all. The
things that benefit from the diet. You know vegetable oil companies, all the companies that produce all the grains. I mean eighty percent of things on supermarket. Shelves are basically made out of vegetable oils and grains
a some formulation, another insult,
so you know all those companies all the
Versity Zan Entire Nutrition Department have been published.
For thirty years about the benefits of this diet, the federal government and all the met. The medical professional
nations who been prescribing this diet to their patients and their their Publix American Heart Association. I mean it's just
you're we're in a situation where we just made a gigantic mistake.
Our recent very very
controversial and
not just controversial, but very flawed piece by
American Heart Association, where they were talking about the dangers of
coconut oils and saturated fats and all this researchers that
I've been studying this stuff over the last decade. I like. What are you talking about like? Where is this coming from? Well yeah, I mean right now:
on the nutritional world. You have people like me who are challenging mister
quote, and you have this sort of the the conventional with the defenders of the conventional wisdom, you know doubling down to defend their position,
what was the position American American hard, merican hydrosis. Remember the American Heart Association launched this whole thing in nineteen, sixty one right there in the original authors. So just last year they came out with the presidential advisory unsaturated fats.
Where they said. Please ignore all those confusing you know: internet crazies, I mean basically referring to people like me and Gary Taubes. You know about saturated fats. We just want to set the record,
great unsaturated, fats and here's our latest affirmation.
Of our our belief that saturated fats cause heart disease. So I want to get
get into the weeds and all, but you know they had the way that the American Heart Association,
all these years has sustained their position that saturated fats cause heart disease is they have relied purely on this week, kind of evidence called epidemiology right.
And and and the government knew that that was not strong enough evidence to explain what that means: yeah, okay, so an ebony
allergy. Are these big studies where they observe people they observe like 10s, of thousands of people for really long period of time, and they asked them
they just give these people a food frequency questionnaire, and they ask you, okay, how many pair,
Did you eat over the last six months and how many prunes did you eat and how much of this did you eat and how much of that and then you're supposed to write this all down like as if any of us can remember what we ate yesterday and you're supposed to make accurate assessments about what you eat and, unlike they asked two hundred and fifty the most famous one? Is that of Harvard asked two hundred and fifty questions about what,
over the past six months now when they try to go and verify to see if those go, food frequency questionnaires are accurate date date they come up. They basically is very poor accuracy by their own measures, but still they use that data, and then
they tie. They follow these people over ten twenty thirty years and they figure out who is a heart attack who dies who gets cancer, and then they try to make
these correlations. You know the people who died tended to eat more meat, so they'll say it's meat that caused you. They can really,
Let's say, there's a correlation there, but it's not causation. You can never establish causation, which is to say that meat cost
Zte that death may come, is also that they're eating a lot of things with that me right, so vital, find carbohydrates. Well yeah, I mean the cruel eats red meat other than
paleo people. Now I mean who's been eating red meat for the last fifty years. The people who ignore everything their doctor tells them right,
so not only the eating more red meat, but they're eating a lot of other junk. They're, probably you know they're probably a date- and this is actually mentioned,
They don't exercise as much. They they tend to
I eat as well. They don't visit their doctors, they don't take their pills. I mean they're, not what we would call comply, airs rate they're people who just do not listen to the advice they're given and any no,
number of those things may have caused the heart attack. So we don't know if it's the meat, we don't know if it's the
complying, we don't know if it's the lack of exercise. We do know it's the fact that they, you know they drink too much beer or whatever. We just don't know so those kinds of studies, these epidemiological studies are really just. They only established
Sociation and the what they were designed to suggest hypotheses that could then actually be tested and it kind of science called a clinical trial where you actually, you know you divide a group up into two parts and you get like a drug trial, give half people, people, drug drug, half people, people placebo, and only that kind of experiment, which is called a controlled experiment
actually establish cause and effect. So the way you want it, if you really want to know meat causes cancer, you got to do a clinical trial. Give half people make them
just red meat all day. Long and the other half can be on the vegan diet and see who gets cancer, see which group gets cancer. Then your testing you're doing actual test um. So the government just back to this idea of that you know unsaturated fat
an then I'll get back to that presidential advisory. The government
so they did do a whole bunch of really big, expensive, randomized, controlled clinical trials on saturated fat and cholesterol. They did this on 10s of thousands of people,
And they they tested to see if giving the people wait, saturated fat and cholesterol, more of that would die faster or get a heart attack faster, and none of those clinical trials could actually show that the people who ate more saturated fat and cholesterol died at any higher rates of heart disease. Music. It's your phone ring your phone going off with music yeah, I'm sorry! I was trying to figure
I thought, maybe the Sonos is kicking off in the background that was your phone and your musical ringer, it's a good. It was just slightly distracting so keep gone. Please tell me to reset okay guys sure,
so the government actually did a bunch of randomized controlled clinical trials on 10s of thousands of people testing to see if saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease, they actually took groups of people. They do this in mental hospitals where they totally controlled the people. Eight
and half the people they gave. You know me better cheese, regular high, saturated fat and cholesterol, diet, half the people- they said you know gave them so I feel cheese
and margarine instead of better- and you know- and so I filled me- and in those randomized- this rigorous experiments on tens of thousands of people, they could not
show that the people eating the meat, the butter and cheese died. Faster of of of from heart disease died, died, higher rates from heart disease
in fact they showed in one of the most famous experiments. Call the Minnesota Coronary service survey on on
nine thousand men and women over four and a half years.
They found the more the men lowered their cholesterol, the more likely they were to die of a heart attack.
What happened to all those experiments. They were not that particular experiment:
published for sixteen years other experiments I found sat
in NIH National Institute of Health basement never published ignored
not included in in in literature.
Reviews of not included just ignored or suppressed. It's like out of a crime, novel crazy
and so what was the American Heart Association, doing ignoring all those
clinical trials
Heart association is basically just up almost protecting their incorrect statements of the past. That's what they're doing six rate, and so it this latest presidential advisory was their attempt. As my book it listed all these clinical trials and Gary
booked did earlier too, but people have now been talking about them, a lot more in saying like how can you ignore that we did all we spent the government spent a billion dollars more than a billion dollars testing this hypothesis and could not could not show it to be true.
Why did you ignore these experiments for all these years, so uhm? So the so
presidential advisory was an effort to reckon with those long ignored clinical trials that have been funded by the government.
I did it in a way that I think was just totally disingenuous and I
response to it, where I kind of rebutted it
in in medscape announcer at peace in the La Times about it, and he knew where we're at this. This point, where that these these these esteem, public Health Institute,
Russians are defending their longstanding, yet erroneous positions about healthy diet and then there's like people like me on the outside saying
and it's not just me- you know, there's now a whole course of scientists around the world who are saying the same thing as saying these recommendations,
Stefan Evans, our guidelines are guidelines are not evidence based. We need to our national guidelines are not based on good evidence.
So this is growing chorus around the world and
I'm one of the voices, I'm probably one of the more prominent voices now, but you know we just we just have national guidance, that's just not based on good evidence,
Here's that and then there's a lot of people that get really confused by ideologically based documentaries and things that are trying to push people like what the health and things along those lines they're trying to make some real.
Unsubstantiated correlations between meat consumption and diabetes and a bunch of other like really weird ones that have
heard before, but here repeated by people like wait where the fox did you hear that and they'll tell
without doubt this one documentary but hell yeah,
yeah. I read a rebuttal to that to which I'm happy to post. If you want on there, it was short but and so case. That's a perfect example like what was one of them was, you know eating
a eating, an egg or two a day is like smoking. Five cigarettes run like crazy stuff right such a sorrow. All of that is based on that really weak epidemiological evidence. None of it has been either it's not been tested in clinical trials or the clinical trials do not support those statements. I went through every single scientific claim in that movie
I did. I did I was in Greece on holiday and everybody's like. Why aren't you at the beach tonight 'cause? I have to go through every single scientific claim of what the health and show that it's based on this really weak, unsubstantiated evidence.
And but you know these, I think that one of the
reasons that they made. That film was that you know we live. We live in.
Confusing times for science right, you make film, you pull it somebody's heart heart strings, you know it's very that's film is like it's very
scary. You feel like. Oh, my god,
poison in the milk and now there's poison in my preg pregnant belly and it's
my child, I mean it's really effective as a piece of movie, but isn't
not just irresponsible but dangerous? Well, I think so I mean, but I think that what you have is people pushing this diet for ideological reasons. As you said,
there there and that the people behind that film are. You know two very, very well known and animal welfare activists who just don't want animals killed and
he had those of their motivations, and there are other people who are and have they state they have practices or kind of empires like dean. Ornish has a whole empire based on his plant, based diet right, there's, just there's hold business commercial empires that are based on this diet, so even as a whole,
combination of reasons now, there's a part of the environmental movement really believes that cows cause global warming. So there's like this whole confluence of interests, but if you just look at the health claims,
There are no randomized controlled clinical trials, there's no rigorous evidence to show that that diet is safe or or or can fight, disease and they've. Actually, you know a few of these vegan diet. Doctors actually done
Nickel trials and the results were they put people on a vegan diet, okay, so, and they were overseen by the vegan diet. Doctor himself says: John Mcdougall did one of these he's he's here in California, so I mean the most biased possible person of
seeing this experiment right. He wants his diet to look good, but even then he could get those those studies
not show that that the vegans were healthier at the end of the year of eating that diet. So maybe it's a healthy diet, but it cannot be shown to be true, and so it's fine to eat it, for whatever reason that you want to, but but health there's no evidence to show that that diet will be.
A good option for health yeah. That is a very hard pill for a lot of people to swallow. That, for good reasons, don't want animals to suffer rape.
So they want to live a life where they have a small footprint as possible and don't harm things. One of things that disturb,
people to know, and this when I describe the process of collecting green in a combine and how vultures will circle over fields right after the combine rolls over
because those indiscriminate gigantic machines that might be a football field wide or just chewing up everything in front of am including ground, nesting, birds and squirrels and rodents, and
occasionally deer, Fons and anything else that gets caught up in the middle of it
yeah I mean the reality. Is there is no life for any creature. Without the death of another creature, I mean there's, there's life involves death of some kind or another I mean, and at you know, mono cropping agriculture is devastating,
ready to all kinds of life. It's also incredibly unnatural, so natural see thousands of acres that are just soybeans like that is
does very, very weird. It's not doesn't
exist anywhere in the world other than places where people have forced that into the environment yay.
And I think that there's also you know a deep discomfort with the fact that you know for many people, any San TAN person that being human has you that we were we evolved, eating meat right were were were not before's and so in, and we can't really survive.
That way in fact, in the early experiments that they did on omnivore animals, they did them on all kinds of
number animals in the 1920s and 30s and they tried to see if they could get an omnivore animal to survive purely on plants, green seeds,
and they they found it incredibly difficult to keep those. You know whether rats are pigs alive, an even
it could keep them alive. They live shorter lives and their offspring live shorter lives. So you know we we have, I think you know,
ethical beings, and so we have a discomfort with killing other animals as well. We should, but you know, that is why I think humans evolved all kinds of ways of dealing with with the need to to kill animals, basically just to right the all the rituals, the asking of forgiveness, the
and of course, when it was your own animals, we all raised our own people raised, lived on farms and raise their own animals. There are ways you know that it was much more sort of part of the holistic experience of
farmer living on the land and now we're also differ. We live in cities where thousands of
hours away from from where animals are raised, we don't really understand anything about it. It seems in humane and cruel. He won, I think, an ethical solution for
this is probably going to be this sort of laboratory created meat. That is seems to be a flourishing industry right now, they're trying to get off the ground with this stuff and it's very expensive at the moment.
They foresee that in the next several years, it'll be economically feasible for people to buy meat from an animal.
Never really existed as a living thing. You know if they can do that, and it has all the
same nutrients that you that you know real animals. Do. That would be a miracle right yeah. It would be it's going to be very interesting, but then
there's also the issue of what happens if we completely stop eating cows and chickens and pigs, and what
happens to all those animals who manage is that who stops them from over breeding
who who controls our population? How do we do that? We've put ourselves into a corner here,
we've put ourselves into a corner. If we choose to never eat these animals again, how do
sustained their populations and what
financial. What
financial reward? Do people get
sustaining them it
they're not going to profit from them whatsoever. They going have to spend exorbitant amount of money or let them roam free, which people. If people don't realize that's happened in parts of the world.
Bulls revert to a very strange form. Wild
owls do in Australia? They call them scrub. Bowls mean
I live in the scrubs and that the
bulls are incredibly aggressive, enormous, weird, looking cow things that they now hunt and they have
problem with them in certain parts of Australia, because they'll break into these confined areas where they have domestic cattle and screw up the gene.
These cattle with these is wild cattle strains. These bowls are incredibly aggressive and they just roaming loose and an is that we're going to do
can have wild cows everywhere, like okay, so what
It was a wild cow populations, get out of control, we're going to bring in lions like what are we doing
I don't know. You know there's you know this is something I'm not an expert in, but I know people you know, there's a whole school of thought. You really need large animals,
and you know they're part of that they're part of an ecosystem to have a healthy ecosystem on earth. You need animals, as part of you, know, they're. They returned manure to the earth and that's part of the cycle of life and that you know can't plants can't survive without him and you need animals actually to as as part of a healthy, healthy environment. So you know that's something that I'm an expert in about it, but I think it is you know I I guess I would say like the kind of really simplistic, it's just simplistic thinking to say that we should get rid of all animals or in
get rid of all domesticated animal rights. I mean, I just think: that's that's a it's a kind of simplistic vision that I think a lot of now dealing with simplistic visions right we're dealing with an incredibly complicated situation. We've
find ourselves in the 21st century you didn't ask for it. I didn't ask for it. This is just the place where we were born and raised. So then we look
around the landscape and we go okay. What what do I have to do for this meet vehicle? What do I have to do to keep this thing?
optimized and then what do I have to do for my mind that I don't feel terrible
how about eating some horrifying factory farmed food, where I have to watch some
the video on how this thing was created and realize, I'm a monster. You know- and I think that is the motivation for a lot of people to go towards veganism, and I think it's a good motivation. I think they're they're there,
their motivations are noble in just if that's what they are.
But somewhere along the way you get roped into an ideology, and you get boxed into these very rigid ways of thinking.
And out of those rigid ways of thinking you get a document or like what the hell area. Well, you know I would also. I also think thank
in the same way that we're divided nation. Politically, we are a divided nation in terms of the way we think in urban cities centers an you know where I've always
my whole life but and out in the areas of the
three, you know that the red States where they they take a they have cattle and
you know, the dairy farms are, and you know this is like we did. We actually have no idea for the most part. What goes on
am- and you know we just see like the horrifying video shot by some under cover person or eight it's in one of the things that was sort of surprising and and and like a really beautiful experience. For me, after my book came out, was that I was invited to speak all over the country, and you know I'm your classic flyover per
I grew up in Berkeley CA and then I mean then I lived in various places in the world, but then I settled in New York City, so
you know, I'm like urban, progressive liberals, they come in,
other than I'm giving speeches in
Hum and Texas, and you know.
Illinois I mean really it was. It was really a shock to me, but it was truly eye opening, like
man, all the people who you know all these people in the cowboy hats. For, like I,
You know I would have been one of the ones protesting, throwing
let these guys here in my previous life and now I'm standing in front of eight hundred of them talking about saturated fat. You know the findings in my book. That's what I mean. Here's! What I found an you know, I can't say that I did any kind of
in depth reporting, but but really the kind of conversation
is that they're having about how to best take care of their animals? How to
inhumanely how to you know how to how to raise fewer cattle.
And produce more, and I mean they like. They were really just not the demons that I thought they were, and I don't
tend to really like know what goes on in animal agriculture across the country, but I just want to say, like it made me realize how, in the same way that we have this polarized
conversation going on now in the country, um politically the same thing. This is one issue
be aware that plays out. We have such a such a lack of understanding and comfort.
L conversation understanding between those on the coast and the people were actually raising the food in the middle of the country.
So it's very convenient and I do it to a lot of people demonize people that live in places that they don't frequent and it's really fun to poke fun at the middle of the country and call him a bunch of dummies and the other reason why Trump got elected.
I and it's okay. To do that. You know I've noticed in. Like you, my my
colleagues, my you know, liberal journalists, I mean there's like the way the kind of digs that they will take at rural white people is a you know. We if that was a good.
If there was something about a person of color or a woman, I mean sure that person would be kicked out
It's just amazing the level of sort of the accepted kind of stereotyping that goes on.
In the media towards these people, who you know again
That would be me, except that I just had this experience. Mom people
love to like you pick
and then they do use any means necessary to attack the other side. I mean you see this in an unreal and not an unrelated way with the way they make fun of Trump's hands like Europe. You're mocking this man's body, like he didn't, do anything
to have smaller, bigger hands. Talk about his hair talk about his ego. Talk about
preposterous way. He behaves but you're talking about his hands like this.
You just to saying the gloves are off and you can do anything you want, and you can just be a cruel person in that body. Shame this guy, for something has absolutely no control over his plenty of things. He's done wrong, yeah that you can make fun of
But what about all the other people that are reading about his tiny little hands and they look down at their own tiny little hands, may have to feel like shit,
You know I mean that's a weird thing that people do.
It's very end. You see that to tie it off again
you really see that in the vegan community there are,
lot of vegans who are really kind people and then
a lot of things always say that they're only reason why are Vegans 'cause Scientology didn't find him. First, these mutherfuckers would have joined the Taliban if they took the wrong flight, they just they found a group and they
Went with it and now they are all in, and you see that with
a lot of different ideologies but with vegans, especially online
they're sold vicious and they they're. The attacks are so ruthless and they gang up. They get together and it's like part of the fun of being on this gang. Is it
making people that disagree, and I know you've been the victim of this yeah. I mean, I think that uhm you know I have. I am sympathetic in the sense
that people are so worried about their health and
there's so much conflicting information out there and they don't know how to make sense of it and then there's a kind of and we eat. You know you have to eat two or three times a day. So this thing is staring you in the in the face. You cannot avoid it right and then you find something that you think is healthy and good and pure and rate, and you want and it and it becomes an end to be. Vegan requires a lot of work rate you have to. I know, because when I was a vegetarian as they constantly chopping and dicing and roasting instantly, it's like a lot of
it's a lot harder. I realized when I start eating meat. You could just put a piece of meat on the stove, and that was it. I've become a very lazy cook uhm, but in any case it is
people would come very passionate about their choices and especially a choice that involves consuming food, which is so personal and intimate, and then it's very hard to you know to to acknowledge that that may not have been a good choice,
for you or for your kids and- and so you know, I think it's, but it's a
become a kind of idea. I mean one of the things that I think is happening is that you know we live in post ideological times right I mean you joke about Scientology, but we live in times where people are no longer Ann
members of not as
people are members of our our religious right in any kind of traditional way, and food is one thing that people become religious about. They just do it. It's like if it's a type of thing gets a
movement and the food movement. I mean if you follow like Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, and they encourage you to think about it as a movement like as something
can join be a part of being a community and without exactly how the vegans look at it. It provides everything that you know really didn't. Religions did provide for people, but for the vegans what they
do have on their side, is that they feel that their lifestyle is not promoting animal cruelty and that gives them the justification for attacking something like you right because right. Well, you know I try to just stick to I mean I tried. I really stick to the science on what makes people
Alfie, so you know if, if, if you want to be a vegan, but if that diet comes with, you know for most people if it comes with diabetes and obesity or ill health or the or the failure to thrive at their children or whatever I mean that's their choice, but you you can't we can't say is that that diet has any evidence to show
so that it provides good health. Well, I think one thing that a vegan diet does is: it gets people off of this
standard american diet and the.
And american diet of just a bunch of bullshit
french fries and french fries can be vegan right, but the
the processed food and things with a ton of preservatives. You start eating a bunch of vegetables. I mean you're, going to probably feel a lot better. We started eating actual real foods, you know yeah. Anybody who gets off of refined, carbohydrates and sugar feels better. So that is definitely a step in the right direction. I mean
We all agree on that process. Food preservatives just eating nonsense and garbage and candy, and just that kind of stuff, if you
and be conscious and proactive about the the healthy food you choose and just try to get as much healthy nutrients as you can you're going to feel better. But the question is: what's the best way to optimize your house,
yeah. I'm just going back to those animal experiments that were telling me about in the 1920s and 30s. You know what leads to long, your long life in the long life and health of your children right. That's the way we used to think about survival of health, fitness
animal was how long we do survive and how long your your offspring survive right and and that that was the ultimate measure of that's always been the ultimate measure evolutionarily. So you know if, if, if a vegan diet were to support that, that would that would be the optimal diet, but that that was
just not what science showed. So you know I mean there's also a whole kind of evolutionary issue here, which is you have to. You have to bring an evolutionary science to understand how did humans evolve. I mean we're going to cut up ironic position where
there's so many enlightened, progressive thinkers.
You are almost like. You know, just deny who are like
denying our evolutionary history right. They almost like creationists
I mean
visionary history. If you read, if you read the science, is about of all thing with me: that's just our reality, so we can't you know you can't
really deny that and say you know we did not spring out of you know. I decided the
or you know whatever we we evolved, we evolved because we ate meat
many evolutionary theorists who believe we evolved only because we ate meat yeah, the doubling of the
brain size, which one of the biggest mysteries in the fossil record over a period of two million years of human brain doubled,
and one of the primary ideas is at cooking meat and rate figure out a way to hunt these animals made us, stimulate our brains and there's a couple other more outlandish theories, one of involving psych Psilocybin mushrooms, it's pretty interesting, but it's called the
stoned ape theory, if you want to look it up, but the idea that we are before's
and you hear this tossed around a lot and you'll illiteracy like vegan memes, that our teeth versus primates teeth or a a rather a carnivores teeth and showing that we have teeth to grind up stuff. But don't these are teeth that have involved for people that,
cook food grade in this is where it's disingenuous, like know that, first of all, we do have the teeth of an omnivore and
Second of all, we have the tease of an omnivore that has been cooking food right. We don't need the same kind of teeth. We just need to tear apart raw meat like we did. Two hundred
thousand years ago. Whatever it was, you know
It's interesting. One of the things that I explore in my book is the way that meat has been value.
Through human history, and it was valued as the food of warriors
am and that you know like the masai warriors, who were studied by a biochemist at at at the university of and a role in the late nineteen seventies call them aside warriors in Kenya, and they he found that day, eight, nothing but meat and blood and milk and and that was the warrior class, and that was
was considered that made men strong, the women were allowed.
Diverse diet, but the men who had to be strong and had to hunt they had this just purely meat in blood.
Diet and, and
another interesting story about how that same tribe was compared to they actually had
a vegetarian tribe nearby, an that when they were both called when both these tribes were
all that for the Boer WAR and English tested their strength to see whom they could hire to fight for them
and the vegetarian men from this one
That was that this neighboring tried they. They had no strength. They you know they tested them to see how that that that device, you use your hand to clench, see how strong they were. They found them completely unfit and unable to do work and they weren't strong. They didn't have the same kind of muscle, mass
early, so they couldn't use the men from that tribe and
There's you know, there's just a rich hill
street in literature about how meat was really the food that made you strong and meet with the food that was craved always crave that at that humans craved above all else,
been vegan, powerlifters and a bunch of different people that have figured out how to do it correctly. Today, though, I mean, I think that there may have, but I don't you know they must have take a lot of supplements and other kinds of soy, proteins or other. You know other things there's you have to be, I mean there there are. There are replacements, I guess, in the modern food supply, but
and historically based on real foods available to humans for millennia. It was me that was what was used to be strong,
yeah and the dirty secret in the vegan bodybuilder community is steroids, and,
steroids were allow you to get away with a lot of stuff and obviously that's a dirty secret and all the
building communities, but the
begin once they want to just pretend everything. Look. What a plant based diet! Look at my amazing body, sort of yeah. You definitely yeah, I mean yeah, but that other stuff yeah you know I mean this- is something that gets extremely
Nord, where it's way more open and out
the non Vegan Bodybuilding community yeah, because I'm
into the body. I know you are. You are brought it up. I know what you're saying. I'm actually think what have you had all this research and all this analyzing this and you know the publishing your book and the way it's been received, how
This is the way you think about the way people approach, not just diet but
all sort of conflicts in life. That's a big question. I mean um, there
full of major ways this profoundly. This whole research changed my thinking one, and so one was really that I changed my thinking about it changed my political views quite a bit. I think you, your libertarian, at least that's what I was reading about you. I was always met group in Burke.
A was a real liberal Democrat and still am on most issues. But here I found
An issue where the government had started this program of telling Americans how to eat and just made this huge giant mistake? And this
spent hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on this program that you know we have quite a bit
since now I think to just make a pretty good case that the government made America started the obesity and diabetes epidemics and continue and don't back down from their recommendations, even though they continue to do this, and so you know
This is the one government program that I have researched in great depth. I haven't really looked into too many else,
anything else in the kind of incredible level of detail that I have this one, and it made me much more, a cautious about supporting big government program
I'm not because I don't believe in government. I do I mean I, I I believe that humans need to govern themselves wisely and it shouldn't just be. You know which, which shouldn't have government but potential to make mistakes the power of government to that once it once it adopts a hypothesis or an idea of some kind and then the incredible institutional entrenchment that happens when you adopt a certain view right and then it's so hard to reverse out of that particular chosen line of thinking it becomes almost impossible. You know this institutions are not built for that they're, not
we built for science. You know science is supposed to be, as I said earlier, self doubting self questioning of new observations. So you change your course. That's what science is supposed to be like you, you test things and they don't work out. Then you move on to another idea, but an institution is, is it's? It's almost like institutional sciences, click an oxime,
run, because an institution is meant to not flip flop on their Publix, not to change their views, not to loot,
to allow people to lose faith in them? So it's it's! It's it's! It's the wrong kind of body to do science
So it's made me much more much more cautious about how much I want our government to do,
because if I've just turned over this one little leaf and found this huge disastrous program, you know I just
wonder if I turned over any other leaf. What else would I find? I think you'd find similar incompetence, probably yeah, so
so it's changed my political thinking quite a bit, and then I think it's also
I see the way that the scientific debate is played out and I and you know I know the science so intimately now, and you know I know I read every sing
gold nutrition experiment. That has really been done since the MID fifties, and you know when I see the way the debate plays out in public. You know I see that a American Her
association, presidential advisory, which ice just see is uh. You know it's not honest science or our last day,
guidelines Expert committee in their report saying you know we should, should we plant based diet and based, you know, I can see how bad that sciences, and so you know I see that that I can see now so much better, the the the
at am pr firms spin messages in the way those messages are echoed all over. In the way, you know it's just the way, it's what's happening in our politics, it's it's happening in our science and and so I think it makes me
somewhat despair about our ability to have good science rise to the top, because you know when you have institutions like Harvard and Tufts an all of our top institutions are so deeply
vested in this wrong hypothesis- yeah- I don't even know I don't know where people should turn to to. You- know how. How do we start our cells out of this mess and
so yeah nutrition science is in bad shape, and I and it it's changed. My it's changed my faith in expert advice. Maybe that's the bottom line. I I really don't trust expert advice, because I see the way it is manipulated by a financial interests and and professional interests and intellectual
conflicts of interest, and so even little tiny things like anything. A warning label on a bottle, like you know, careful of this plastic or this, or that
like. I don't believe anything. Unless I go back to the original science and read it all myself, which I can never do, I just don't trust anything anymore. That's not a good!
place today. It isn't. I need to spend time in your isolation, tank boy and with that. If people want to find out more your book, a big fat surprise what else so my book is called the big fat surprise,
it's available on Amazon I have, and my main website is- is Nina titles dot com which is you'll, never be able to spell. But if you look at the big fat surprise, you'll get
unit racials an I also started. A group called the nutrition coalition, which is nutrition coach
Ten dot. U S! That is a group that is backed by scientists, Ph Dis, M Dis, the odd journalists like me- and we are basically
the work of that group is to try to ensure that our nutrition policy is evidence based right trying to
to a that suppressed science, get those
these out of the NH basement, that kind of thing just to ensure that whatever the government is going to tell Americans what to eat, it needs to be evidence based
so we're doing work in Washington, an you.
Can read about. I mean it's not just on fat and carbohydrates, that I've got I've, got it wrong on salt. You know the advice to exercise aerobic exercise for forty five
Mr, our everyday, none of that is based on good science, so we just want the the goal of this group is to work towards the evidence based policy,
in nutrition. If we can wrap this up, please talk
a bit more about salt 'cause. That's when it comes up all the time with people. They want to tell me that salt bad for you, MIKE God,
That's all. It is essential. Nutrient you'll die without it. So the short story, insult is that they did a bunch of clinical trials only on hypertensive subjects, so anyway, already sick that were already sick. So, if you're a normal person, if your child, if you're
uh you none of this applies to. You should never have been generalized to a larger population. They were called the dash studies. None of
Studies were longer than two months, which is super short for clinical trial and what they showed was that for people who have already had hypertension and ate a lot of salt, the for those people, reducing their salt improved their their.
Cardiovascular, risk factors: they didn't follow any of these people long enough to figure out who actually had heart attack or died. They are very, very short term small experiments. They never tested more than two thousand people on them. This whole dash diet. This reduced sodium diet,
that advice should be generalized to anybody else and
We have now been for
large studies where they
they're epidemiological studies, so that they're, not that's only associations, but the important thing about it is that there's they contradict this salt advice. They show that really
You go too low people who consume too little salt. Those people have higher rates higher rates of cardiovascular death so that there seems to be a sweet spot for consuming salt of sorts of the sort of a J shaped curve so like that, and if you moderate consumption of salt for the general population is is, is sort of the sweet spot for for
for good health and cardiovascular health. So, and so you know, the government's advice is lower is better for all Americans and that's just not based on any good any rigorous science at all boom boom. So our group is working to try to change that. You know it just has to change
without people like you, people like me would be completely lost. So thank you so much for all your research. Thank you for your book. Thank you. For your time here on the podcast, I appreciate it and people please go out, buy her book. Is there anything
recommend people check into they can they can donate to the nutrition coalition if they want the dietary guidelines to change?
just put a little plug for that, because the reason they have to change they control school, lunches, military rations, food in hospitals, food and utterly homes. Everything your doctor tells you.
Christians tell you they're like that's where it all comes from, so that's it thanks
Thank you thanks for having me by everybody. Thank you ready
tune into the podcast,
yeah thanks for everything you fuckers thanks, thank
our sponsors thank you to text
an amazing app that gives you access to over two hundred premium magazines and you can try.
That should for free at texture, dot com?
Ford, Slash Rogan, why they, letting you try for free, because.
Going to get hooked. It is the best way to consume magazines and again over two hundred of them, and you can have on your ipad or whatever you know, get it
whatever you look at on digitally digital, the future, you Fox so start your free
your trial, go to texture, dot, com, Slash Rogan, and if you choose
to continue. Podcast listeners will get text
for just nine dollars and ninety nine cents a month. That's over thirty percent off their list
price, and it is an amazing deal for two hundred magazines a month come folks, two hundred premium magazines,
Thank you also to square cash
go to the square
cash app download it.
On Ios or Android now, and you could send people cash, the simplest way to pay people back square cash
the Ios or the Android operating systems for your phones, mother, Fockers,
Alright! Thank you. Everybody for Tunein
You guys and gals
and non binary folks, and we will be back next week with the great and powerful Jeff Novitzky aka, the Golden Snitch
that took down Lance Armstrong. Don't don't listen! You know, I love
and he now works for the UFC and he's in charge of making sure these these people don't do things are not suppose,
do, but he's also a very intelligent guy and he is a real expert when it comes to performance and-
drugs and also he's a big part of the New UFC Performance Institute, which I'm going to try very
to go and check out this weekend when I'm in Vegas,
uh see with this high tech state
er facility is all about. Then my pal Remi Warren will be here on Thursday and
I'm going to try to get my man Jimmy Smith in uh. I can't tell you:
what I know, but I know
some, you don't know
I don't know it soon. He just left Bellator, but we got good news coming
So that's that's it for now. Thank you. Everybody appreciate you much love by.
Transcript generated on 2019-11-15.