Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #112: Who Is Shaping Your Perception Of Food: History of the Dietary Guidelines That Still Affect ALL of Us Today

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Episode #112: Who Is Shaping Your Perception Of Food: History of the Dietary Guidelines That Still Affect ALL of Us Today · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: An example of that would be the calories, right?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do we even come up with a calorie content?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that stemmed from a bomb calorimeter, which is an actual machine.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they would put the food in this bomb calorimeter, like a piece of broccoli, and they would burn it.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they would calculate calories based on the amount of heat that was given off.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then, you know, and then there's assumptions that are made in that equation as well.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a machine that's that's burned something into ash, gave off a certain amount of heat, and then we um take that unit of energy and we make assumptions based on like fiber content and things like that, to come up with some caloric number for that piece of broccoli.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's many problems in that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: One is that we are not machines.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: We don't burn our food in our body to ash.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels Podcast with uh yours truly, Joel Salatin, the farmer, and our favorite researcher, Dr.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're on a bit of a history kick, it seems like.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've just done kind of the history of how we got where we are with chemical agriculture.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to look at the history of the dietary guidelines.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, those of you who came to the Beyond Label Summit may remember that Cena um talked about their the the guidelines impact today on um on food decisions, not only personally but corporately and and and industrially, uh institutionally, on food decisions.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so she uh we're just she's just gonna touch on that very, very briefly, but she didn't go into the history of the guidelines.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that we um we were very um gracious to the uh founders of the chemical agriculture revolution when it started in the early 1800s, um uh thinking that they were sincere and sincerely minded, really trying to find solutions.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that is not quite as much the case here with the dietary guidelines.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um so I'm just uh giving you a little bit of heads up where we're headed.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the history of the guidelines, where how we got to where we are with them, is gonna be the topic of today's bod podcast.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Love this history.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's important to understand history because history is prologue.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't get our history right, we don't understand where we are in time.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Cena, uh, bring us up to where we need to start with the dietary guidelines.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'd love to, Joel.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna see hopefully a pattern that's emerging in our food supply, in our nutritional world, and the medical system.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And today's topic of dietary guidelines fits perfectly into that pattern.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we have these dietary guidelines, and these tell all Americans what to eat and drink, quote, to meet nutrient needs, promote health, and help prevent chronic disease.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the USDA statement of why all Americans should follow these dietary guidelines.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be all Americans over the age of two.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Recently, they have expanded the grasp, and now it's all Americans, including infants.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is the most influential document in the history of diet and disease.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: It does dictate all federal food and health policies.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be school breakfast, school lunch programs, SNAP program, what's fed to the military, what's fed to the elderly, what you're gonna get if you're in the hospital.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: It birthed the food guide pyramid, which turned into my plate.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it contributed to the low-fat craze.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure we all remember the low-fat craves, right?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever eaten a low-fat food like a low-fat muffin or a cookie or a low-fat yogurt?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or, Joel, have you eaten one?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: A low-fat food?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I would be shocked if you have intentionally.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So many of us, including myself, did white, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: We trusted that the low fat was healthier and we complied.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Another example of if these dietary guidelines affected you are um is do you feel bad, or did you ever feel bad when you chose a cheeseburger over fish or chicken?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you ever think you needed to remove the skin of the chicken before you ate it?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you've ever thought that saturated fat caused heart disease, or that red meat would increase your cholesterol.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: All of these beliefs stem from these government dietary guidelines.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And now, foodies and food activists like ourselves, we actually like to think that we're not affected by these guidelines anymore.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I would gather that we are to a certain extent.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, um all processed foods contain a government-approved label.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and on that label is the nutrition facts panel.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure all of us could probably tell you items that are listed on this nutrition facts panel, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Joel, what's on the panel?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh calorie, protein, um, fat.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Calories, protein, saturated fat, trans fats, total fats, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, different types of carbs like fiber.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then there is on the bottom this some micronutrients are listed there: vitamin D, calcium, iron, potassium, vitamin E, and niacin, right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: These we know this label.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: This label is ingrained in most all of us, and it's it's actually taught in school.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: These are the components listed on this label, these are the components of food that most of us focus on, even now, like even foodies and activists.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So has somebody ever counted calories or chosen a food based on calories?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: That comes from this label, which is from the dietary guidelines.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever counted fat grams or looked at the amount of saturated fat?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you've moved beyond the calories in the fat, but this label affects you in other ways.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: So has anybody ever gone on a diet?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's most of our modern diets are actually focused on the macronutrients, the amount of protein, fat, and carbs that you should eat.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's the low-fat diet, Atkins diet, zone diet, specific carbohydrate diet, keto diet, friticin diet, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: I can go on and on like all day.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: But why are they focused on the macronutrient contents?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's this label, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why aren't they focused on other things like the phytonutrient content or the content of structured water, right?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's not actually on this label.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: We focus on what is on this label.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, we focus on what we've been brainwashed to focus on by the dietary guidelines.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've been trained to think that the nutrients on this label are the most important components of food.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so we intently focus on those even when we're choosing our own foods on a day-to-day basis.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: This guideline is designed to teach you how to think and view food.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it is actually based on reductionist thinking, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: We break down the foods into these tiny components, and then we choose our food based on this limited perception.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: But if you just ask yourself a few questions, you'll realize that we're kind of enslaved by this label.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't always bring you down the path to health.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, are the nutrients that are labeled on this food, are these all the nutrients in a food?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, no.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Are these categories the most important components of food?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, is the amount of protein more important than the level of phytonutrients, right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can argue that it's not.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Joel, did you want to jump in first?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I did.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So all this, all this um whatever, compartmentalization of food in in our in our minds, in our minds, it sees uh it sees us or it sees food as a bunch of components, a bunch of segregated uh uh uh pieces, like like assembling an automobile.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you need a you you need an exhaust pipe, you need an engine, you need, you know, spark plugs, and and it sees it sees uh food, our our sustenance as being uh fundamentally mechanical, if you will, uh parts oriented, as opposed to um as opposed to I don't know what, uh uh holistic or or or or ha or having or having a life uh wrapped up in itself and not just a bunch of pieces on a table.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not i i you know it it it's it's like it's like if if you took my heart and liver and lungs out, put them on the table, you don't know me.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have me.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and and that's kind of what we've done with our food.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know we don't know our food uh philosophically, kind of spiritually, mentally, when it's when it's all laid out there on the table in pieces.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: So an example of that would be the calories, right?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: How do we even come up with a calorie content?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that is stemmed from a bomb calorimeter, which is an actual machine, and they would put the food in this bomb calorimeter, like a piece of broccoli, and they would burn it, and they would calculate calories based on the amount of heat that was given off.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then you know, and then there's assumptions that are made in that equation as well.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a machine that's that's burned something into ash, gave off a certain amount of heat, and then we um take that unit of energy and we make assumptions based on like fiber content and things like that to come up with some caloric number for that piece of broccoli.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's many problems in that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: One is that we are not machines, we don't burn our food in our body to ash, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're not pooping ash.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like here we are again talking about poop on our shelf, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that I mean, that's obvious, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: You don't poop out ash.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't actually break these things down like a machine, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we don't burn it like you would in a fire, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we have all these enzymes and um, you know, acid that we use and things like that.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Our whole decomposition um process is different, the assimilation is different, metabolism is different, but we are making these assumptions that we are like a machine.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So a calorie isn't even a real thing, it's not even a real um when you're talking about when you're talking about applying it to the human body, it's not even a real thing because it's based on a machine breaking it down and then subsequent assumptions that man has built into a calculation to get a calorie.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not even real, but a lot of us count calories, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know this is to be true because if you uh instinctively, because if you had a hundred calories of broccoli versus a hundred calories of coke, we as scientists, based on this label, consider both of those carbohydrates, but they're not going to be considered the same by your body, right?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna have totally different responses in your body.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So there's the flaw right there.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Just think of it using your intellect, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's common sense that it's not gonna be the same in the body.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So calories don't even matter on this label, they're not real in an application to the human body.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, that's just that's just one example of another assumption that's built into this label, but we buy into it, right?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we could go on and on about that.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I want to dive into the history of it because this will bring forth um another pattern that we are seeing in the food and nutrition sector.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Then it and it continues, it's it's alive and well today.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: So on this program, we already talked about in 1906 that we handed our responsibility over ensuring the safety of our food to the federal government.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we did that out of fear, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about how this piggybacked on up in Sinclair's the jungle, and it led to ultimately the creation of the FDA, and that was out of fear, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in 1952, we again acted out of fear.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: We handed over the responsibility of deciding what to eat to the federal government.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: So when that happened, the government started to change the way we actually think about food, and it was through these dietary guidelines.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it all started actually with one man.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: This one man changed our entire course of history in terms of nutrition, disease, and our medical system.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: He changed the way we all think about food, and in doing so, he changed the way that all of us eat, and we've gotten sicker because of it.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: His name was Ansel Keys.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So Ansel Keys created a hypothesis that fat caused heart disease.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the 1950s, heart attacks seemed to just suddenly appear overnight.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: They were still rare, but they just kind of suddenly started to appear.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so people became afraid.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know why this was happening.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1952, Keyes stood in front of an audience with a graph.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And this graph showed that the more fat you eat, the higher your chance of heart disease and subsequent heart attack.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: So his message was eat less fat if you want to avoid heart disease and heart attack.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that graph shaped our entire food system, still to this day.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, by the mid-1950s, Keyes no longer blamed total fat.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: He started to isolate saturated fat.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 1955, his dream came true when President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: So Eisenhower's medical doctor was friends with Ansel Keys, right, who, of course, was blaming saturated fat for Eisenhower's heart attack.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So one day after the president's heart attack, his medical doctor, who, as you know, is considered the top doctor in the nation, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: So his the nation's top doctor stood in front of America during a press conference, and he told all Americans that to avoid a heart attack, you need to eat less saturated fat.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: That prompted the American Heart Association, the AHA, to form a committee to develop diet advice in order for all Americans to avoid a heart attack.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that committee, they analyzed the available data and they released a report, which actually concluded there wasn't enough evidence to make a dietary recommendation.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: All right, because this was a big deal.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Up to this point, there were no dietary recommendations, not by the government and not by organizations.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: So this would have been a historic moment.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the American Heart Association said, no, there's not enough data.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna, we're not gonna actually put a guideline out there.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, just a handful of years later, the American Heart Association released a second report.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that report said to avoid heart, a heart attack, you must eat less saturated fat.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: This was a huge deal.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, this was the first official dietary statement ever made by a nationally recognized organization, right?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: The government guidelines had not been established at this point.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: The American Heart Association Guideline was the first.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And these American Heart Association guidelines became the first, um, the first and the and the gold standard for dietary advice around the whole world.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And many of us probably remember like the heart healthy label, right?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: You see it on um cereal boxes, and it was like this little red heart.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, like cocoa puffs were heart healthy, right?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: That should that should have been a red flag to everybody that cocoa puffs were deemed heart healthy by the American Heart Association.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Think of how many, how many households think about anybody here of the of the 1960s and 70s, how many households had Crisco in them?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, every single household and and and and this war on on butter, butter and lard um was you know was devastating, not only in the dairy industry, but also um, you know, just in the in the health.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: But boy, yeah, yeah, Crisco, hydrogenated vegetable oil.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's where all that really uh came into the the the household by the truckload.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's why uh Americans we predominantly before all this happened, Americans were predominantly eating a higher fat diet.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'll get to that in a minute.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and animal fats, right?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: When heart disease and heart attack was relatively scarce, and then all of this starts to happen, and we switched out the the fats for carbohydrates and we switched out the type of fat as well.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of eating these animal fats, we started eating the vegetable oils, you know, the the Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable oils, the trans fats, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you can already, this is like foreshadowing where this story is gonna go, right?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: That we're getting sicker, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so was was was was Ansel was Ansel Keys um a crook?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so let's dive.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the perfect segue into what I wanted to say next.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, you can answer that for me after the after I tell you what's next in the story.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so so the American Um Heart Association guidelines did eventually become the foundation for the US dietary guidelines, which did promote the low-fat diet.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into more of this.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I said the American Heart Association first published a report saying there's not enough evidence to make a recommendation.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then just it was like two years later or something, there was a second report saying, Oh, yes, we need to cut out saturated fat.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Did we all of a sudden get all this new evidence?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Ansel Keyes and one of his friends got on the guidance committee at the American Heart Association.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they steered the vote.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so then two weeks after the American Heart Association's announcement of their dietary guidelines where you got to eat low fat, Keyes was on the front page of Time magazine.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And practitioners across the country started to then advise patients to eat a low-fat diet, and then the media went into high gear promoting this low-fat diet.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: One of my biggest problems with these dietary guidelines is that Ansel Keys's hypothesis of low fat would prevent heart disease.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually never tested before it was massively unleashed on the American public.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So nobody fed the diets to humans or anybody or even animals to see if it really could decrease the risk of heart disease.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody did that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So about three years after the low fat recommendation was already out there, they finally decided that the diet should be tested.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So then Keyes conducted the famous study that most of us have heard about, the Seven Countries study.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And his intent was to prove that his theory was correct.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, after all, everybody's now supporting it, right?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Americans are already eating it.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, surprise, surprise, his study showed Keyes was right.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is his study was not only biased, it contained major flaws, and Keyes cherry-picked the data in order to get the statistical outcomes that he wanted.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna give you um three examples.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: The first is during the study, they collected samples three times, all right, on all these different subjects, three times.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: One time when they collected the sample was during Lent.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So people were not actually eating animal products.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, it's estimated.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: 60% of the study population was actually fasting when they collected the data.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the saturated fat intake was roughly cut in half during all of Lent, but they still use that data anyway, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is like basic science 101 that you can't use, you know, that's an anomaly, right?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: The second example is there were three methods used for measuring fat in the sample foods.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Keyes himself said that the results from those three methods were actually all different.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't know which set of results was accurate.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: He simply just picked one.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So this is speculation, but I would guess that he probably picked the method that would favor his hypothesis, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Either way, we know it didn't match up.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: The third example is we call it the seven countries study, but there were actually 22 countries studied.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So from those countries studied, there were 22 sets of data.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: But Keyes cherry-picked just the handful of countries and used just that data to get the results that would support his theory.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: So all the other data was just left out.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do that in science, right?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this is basic.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is the stuff we learned in high school, right?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot do that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: So interestingly, years later in 1999, one of the lead Italian researchers reevalued reevaluated all of the data.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he actually found that the most most likely culprit for heart disease was not actually fat, it was sugar.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: But Keyes' famous seven country study is actually still cited today to support low-fat diets and government recommend recommendations.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when I was when I was learning about the story, I thought, well, why why did everybody just go along with it?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like where were these researchers to counter him?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, this this was long before um for uh uh censorship for Mark Zuckerberg and um you know other people.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: This was before censorship.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where were the where were the um muck wreckers?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, well, you still had a form of censorship, right?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: The the scientists were largely silenced.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: You did not question Ansel Keys.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he it was it was like a barrage of intimidation.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you opposed him, you could lose your funding.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And funding is your your lifeline, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have funding, you don't have a job in science.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: You could lose your job, you could lose your ability to publish, right?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they had control over the publications, and sometimes you would lose your reputation.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So people learned very quickly that you do not oppose him.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the consequence of this is that Americans got sicker and sicker.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: So one example of this is you know, while our government has been pushing the low-fat diet for decades, largely because of keys, what are those low-fat foods usually high in?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sugar.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sugar.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they've been directing us towards the thing, the very yeah, fat.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Fats where it's at that's where it's at.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the taste is.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you if you take out all the taste, then you gotta go in with the sugar.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's why they filled the foods with sugar so that they would still taste good and we'd eat them.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the very same thing that Keyes' own study showed was going to make us sicker and kill us is a thing that we were driven toward eating, right?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was all deception.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, by 1977, Americans were dutifully eating a low-fat diet, but heart disease continued to increase.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the government decided to get even more involved in our food choices, and they released a report titled Dietary Goals for the United States.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: This was the first official government dietary recommendation.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it told Americans eat less saturated fat if you want to avoid heart disease.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it piggybacked on the American Heart Associations, but now it's official.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: The government officially sent uh posted a dietary recommendation.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the committee that created that report for those dietary recommendations, it was actually made up of lawyers and journalists.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: There were not medical doctors or nutritionists on the committees.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: There was one man on the committee who was named Modern.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: He was actually a staffer who was in charge of conducting the research for the committee and writing the report.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Modern was a progressive who fought against, this is no surprise, the meat, dairy, and egg industry.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: He relied on a man named Dr.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hegstead.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hegstead worked at Harvard, and Dr.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hegstead would provide Motten with information and uh Modern with information and recommendations.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Dr.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hedstead supported Ansel Key's hypothesis.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you can see where this is going.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the dietary recommendations were again going to be nope, low fat.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the meat, dairy, and egg industry got wind of it and they sent lobbyists to the committee.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we have an exem exception carved out for lean meat, right?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because it means lobbyists.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you could eat fish or chicken as long as you remove the skin.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: But it was not okay to eat red meat, butter, or whole milk.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's from the lobbyists getting the carve out.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, large food companies were also thrilled with these government diet uh dietary guidelines because by recommending that Americans eat more carbohydrate and less fat, it benefited this, benefited the cereal companies.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And these cereal companies already kind of had their hands in the cookie jar, right?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: They had researchers um, you know, at universities conducting research on their products.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, right, there's that introduces bias by academia.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: They also would host conferences, right, um, for different experts in the field, much like they do today, you know, and big pharma does this too.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there is this cozy relationship between academia, big food companies, big ag big pharma, and the government.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, the research that they use to come up with these guidelines are not truly independent.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you go, I mean, I've I've spoken at um at uh Culinary Culinary Institute of America in uh Hyde Park, New York, and all the buildings, all the buildings on the campus carry, you know, here's the Kel Kellogg building, the yes, you know, Tyson building.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it's unbelievable.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: They, you know, I mean they own they own the um uh uh American Institute of Culinary, you know, um colleges.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's it's pervasive in academia.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there is so you know that's why I say there's no really true independent reason, or it's very rare to have truly independent research these days, right?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: You've always got to look at who's funding it.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the same is true for these dietary guidelines.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: So so the 1977 dietary goals for the US eventually evolved into the dietary guidelines that we have today.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So now who creates those guidelines?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Again, there's a committee.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: It usually consisted of 11 to 20 quote-unquote experts.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: They tell the USDA and the Health and Human Services, which is part of the FDA, they tell them what the guidelines should be, and they base their recommendations on reviews from organizations like the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, which are heavily supported by food and drug companies, right?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, in essence, what that means is the food and drug companies have great influence over the dietary guidelines, right?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Lobbyists are influencing these dietary guidelines.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And now, so someone might ask, well, what's the problem with that?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's just don't pay attention to them.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but as I've already said, we're all influenced by these guidelines.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Even today, it has shaped the way that you view food.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's shaped the way that you're selecting your foods.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, think of how you select food to be on your plate.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're taught, oh, let me have a protein, carbohydrate, and fat, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were already this reductionist thinking is in grain.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of thinking of food like intuitively, right, ask what your body needs to consume at that point.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: We don't.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: We outsource it to the label based on putting pieces on our plate together as though we're picking pieces of a puzzle, right?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: From these this limited template that they've given us to choose from.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: So Americans in general have dutifully followed these dietary guidelines for nearly four decades.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're sicker and we are less free.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, example, in 1965, as I mentioned, heart disease and heart attacks were still rare.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, based on the government's own data, Americans were eating a low carbohydrate diet.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: About 39% of the calories came from carbs and 45% of them came from fat.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: So almost half of our diet consisted of fat, yet heart disease and heart attacks were rare.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Then once the government got involved, we dramatically lowered the amount of fat that we eat.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Today, the average American still consumes predominantly a high carbohydrate diet, and we're still seeing skyrocketing rates of heart disease, along with cancer, diabetes, and any other kind of chronic disease or autoimmune disease you can think of.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a caveat.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: There are, of course, multiple variables involved in disease formation, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: More chemicals in the food supply, GMOs, stress, heavy metals, mycotoxins, nutrient deficiencies, just to name a few.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't overlook this huge shift in this macronutrient profile as a contributor toward what we call these diseases.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, several there have been many, many studies since the early 2000s that have tested Ansel Keys' low-fat hypothesis.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And overwhelmingly, these studies have concluded that it's not healthy fat that's making us sicker.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting sicker in part from eating the sugar.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's the refined carbohydrates in the sugar, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, one of the most effective ways of reversing any kind of dis-ease is to eat less fat.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, is to eat less sugar, right?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Including no refined sugar and more healthy fats.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, saturated fat, let's just touch on that for a minute, because that's the fat that Anso Key really isolated.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of saturated fats, scientists have now studied over 65,000 people from around the whole world.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And none of those studies have ever conclusively shown that saturated fat causes heart disease.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: In contrast, there's overwhelming evidence that consuming saturated fat from like the animal sources increases the HDL, or what scientists now call the good cholesterol.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the famous Framingham Heart study, right, this showed, this study showed that eating more saturated fat actually decreased your chance of dying from a heart attack.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: But still today, we have doctors and nutritionists and dietitians, leading authorities that are still pushing you to reduce saturated fat.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the American Heart Association has begun backpedaling on this long-standing advice that we should all eat lower fat diet.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: So they've taken little steps forward.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the word low fat doesn't appear in their guidelines anymore.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're actually recommending a moderate fat diet.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, they're still demonizing saturated fat, which means they think that you shouldn't be eating red meat and whole fat dairy, right?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: But they've now gotten rid of the low fat uh designation.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: They also dropped the cap on cholesterol, right?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: That happened in 2013, which meant egg yolks were back on the table, right?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the US government has also started walking back their hardcore stance on fat and cholesterol.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2015, when the dietary guidelines were revised, because they're revised every five years, they dropped the cap on total fat and on dietary cholesterol.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: They actually said cholesterol was no longer, quote, a nutrient of concern.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right, now the expert committee that I told you about that guides them on what to include in our guidelines, they actually came out and said this in the last in the latest version that they that they um updated.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: They said, quote, reducing total fat, replacing total fat with overall carbohydrates does not lower cardiovascular disease risk.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Dietary advice should put the emphasis on optimizing types of dietary fat and not reducing total fat.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: That was huge.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was a huge deal.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: It meant, you know, they're not demonizing fat.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can eat the eggs.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: It also meant that these organizations are starting to reverse their course.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the low fat and the low cholesterol movement have been two pillars of dietary advice for all Americans for decades.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: And literally with the stroke of the pen, it's like they just vanished, right?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're just gone.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my one of my take homes is that one of the reasons why Joel, you and I share these stories is to help people better understand the ins and outs, right?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: The behind the scenes of how the food, agriculture, and medical systems work so that you can give informed consent and not be duped, right?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: But we also share these stories to help you feel empowered so you don't live from a place of fear.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: The fat label, the dietary guidelines, they were all born out of fear.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was this fear that this one isolated component of this food was going to kill you.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And most Americans bought into that fear, at least at some point for some time, including myself.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it, if we allow somebody outside of ourselves to change our perception of food, right?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: To shape that in the first place, but to change it so that we think that food is bad, that food, like we start fearing of food, and that a food is going to actually kill me, you know, make me sick, and and I'll die of this prolonged, awful, you know, disease.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: It is a way that we've enslaved ourselves.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: We have largely adapted these beliefs from the government and from quote unquote trust trusted health organizations.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we are susceptible to believing their truths because we don't know the history, and because we're so far removed from the food supply and from ourselves, right?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I would like to throw out there just a quick exercise.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: If imagine how this food label would be different if big ag, big food, and big pharma weren't lobbying the government.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: It would be immensely different, right?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is supporting the lobbies.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: The ones that have the money to go and lobby the government in these organizations are the ones that get a placeholder on our labels, right?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: The ones that have the money, the ones that speak loudest.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you think about it, what would you actually want to have on your label?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the things that most of us want on a label aren't actually there, right?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or there's a facade of what is what is there.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, this label promotes a false sense of security.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: But there's there's this false sense of government regulation and oversight of your food supply.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so we trust it.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you look at the label, it looks very scientific.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these numbers, right?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's numbers of grams, there's percentages.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: We take classes on how to learn how to read this label, right?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's complex, it's complicated.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, oh, it looks like some expert created this, so I'm going to believe it, right?
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Even though I've already told you that a lot of it's based on assumptions and lies.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the things that the government requires to be on this label are to me not that important, right?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the calories, for instance.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: If I was going to put something on a label, it would be things that I want to know in the food that are potentially toxic to me.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And those things aren't here.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost to me like a sleight of hand.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, oh, look at how much vitamin D is in this food, right?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like focus on all of these things that we told you are important in this.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: Don't focus on all of the potential toxins that could be in this food that we know can hurt you, right?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, RBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: You and I have talked about this.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: We know the backstory behind this.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about this on the podcast.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was suppressed, right?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: The government worked with uh Monsanto and they did not want it on the label.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you still won't find that on the label.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: You find a FDA disclaimer, right?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, antibiotic residues, right, from the antibiotics that are in not only fed to you know, um animals, but also end up in some of the produce.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: You don't see antibiotic residue levels on this product label.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Heavy metals.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: We know heavy metals are have found their way into our food supply.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about this in terms of rice.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's other foods with heavy metals on it as well, like cereals and whatnot.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: You don't see heavy metal contamination content on a label.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: GMOs.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: People scream for labels, right?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: For that.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have this bioengineered food label.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we've talked about that on the podcast too.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: All the loopholes and caveats that are carved out.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a facade of a label.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Grass chemicals.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about grass on this podcast.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: You don't see them listed here as, oh, these are grass chemicals, right?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: On the ingredient list.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: You won't see that.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have to disclose it here.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Artificial and natural flavoring.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about that.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: How a natural flavor can be made up of um tens or even a hundred different chemicals.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're not required to be disclosed on your label, even though some of them, as we have said, can be toxic, right?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Residuals from growing conventional produce in sewage sludge that does not have to be included on the label.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, this is a sleight of hand.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's look over here at all these things we're doing to tell you what's in this food, but there's this entire laundry list that's not actually on here.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not looking there because we're we're all still focused on some resemblance of these dietary guidelines.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Cena, I wouldn't, you know, uh it wouldn't uh increase my uh my plum sales uh if my plums had uh sewage grown um on the label.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: That somehow I I just I just don't think that would sell very well.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so it's not required to be on there.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what a what a great uh what a great history lesson.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're uh we're about out of time.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: You got any closing closing thought here as we as we uh close out?
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: So my big take-home message from this is I I hope that you can maybe just sit with yourself and really explore where these guidelines may still be influencing you, you know, even if it's just like I said, about you know, if you're gonna try a new diet or whatnot, or even how you shape what's on your plate, so that you can just be aware of that and then make a decision if you want to move away from that construct.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, I move beyond all these labels, right?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hence our podcast beyond labels.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: I move away from the reductionist thinking that goes along with it.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: The way I view it is our our ancient ancestors did not choose foods based on labels, right?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: There weren't any labels.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: But once they got past childhood, our ancient ancestors actually lived roughly as long as we do today, but they actually lived healthier lives.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: They had a better quality of life up until the day that they died.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I can guarantee you they never counted calories and they never based uh a food decision on, oh, that's gonna be too much fat for me today, you know.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, the take-home is let's stop outsourcing our power to this fear-based, man-made label that is filled with inaccurate, man-made concepts that has been dictating how we view and think about food for far too long.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, trust your own intuition and eat intuitively.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um human constructed, agenda driven uh um label.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's great, great, great history lesson, Cena.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for sharing with us.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all for being with us on another podcast of Beyond Labels, and we look forward to being with you again next week.