Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #198: How Food Rules Gag Your Doctor & The New Diet Lie Detector: MAHA MANIA (Part 2)

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Episode #198: How Food Rules Gag Your Doctor & The New Diet Lie Detector: MAHA MANIA (Part 2) · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's narrative can become tomorrow's national misstep.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to limit ultra-processed foods on a personal level, sure, go ahead and do that.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I do that.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I try to limit them in processed food consumption in general because I feel better when I don't eat them.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're talking about is implementing a sweeping policy across the nation that affects everybody in America and it affects some other Western countries as well, who will base their guidelines on our dietary guidelines.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point, what I'm going to show you and have showed you in the last episode is that the science is not settled, and we should proceed with caution.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, everybody.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to another episode of the Beyond Labels Podcast.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your co-host, Joel Salatin, the farmer, and our favorite researcher here, Dr.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Cena McCullough.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is going to be kind of a part two of the Maha Report.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: You may remember part one.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: I did most of the talking on that one regarding the care that the report does to make sure that they never impugn a farmer, that it's just farmers, are farmers or farmers.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's not good farmers and bad farmers.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: And we kind of uh finished out that that episode with Cena bringing in some interesting studies regarding ultra-processed food and and uh various combinations that don't always you know run run true to the to the narrative.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: And her question was concerning are we are we cherry picking some data and running down the same road as Ansel Keys, who you know who got us to all quit eating lard and butter.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so this was a this was a fascinating um uh road to go on.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're gonna start today with Cena moving along that road now and continuous uh continuing to um bring some surprising uh it it it's surprisingly more nuanced, you know, than you might hear in the narrative.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: And everybody listening to us knows, well, you know, what else is new, but that's why you listen to us so that you can get these nuances that you won't get other places.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, Cena, go ahead and move us forward.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Joel.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I want to continue on this part too.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're also going to address the question of when when your medical doctor actually does prescribe dietary intervention for you, why do they predominantly stick with the dietary guidelines?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I think the answer might surprise our audience.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but first, let's continue on with um this part two.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that study, uh, I mentioned a couple studies in part one.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: As Joel said, one of them was looking at a real world chemical cocktails um at levels that we would be encountering in the real world.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those um additive cocktails were amplifying harm, and other ones seemed to cancel each other out.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, what this tells us is that the there's a lot of nuance.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's much more complex than we think.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this might be partly why we're seeing conflicting results in the scientific literature.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Last time I walked you through some studies that showed that some categories of ultra-processed foods, like savory snacks and sugary drinks, did tend to increase disease risk.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But other categories, like some cereals and even pastries in certain studies, showed that there was really no association.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, one of the reasons why we might be seeing these discrepancies is because it's very nuanced.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these studies don't tend to isolate the individual variables, so like the individual ingredients in the ultra-processed food, they're clumping all the ultra-processed foods together, usually using that NOVA classification system, which is what the Maha report also used.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the point is, you can't at this point scientifically clump all of the ultra-processed foods together and claim that the science is settled and that all ultra-processed foods are bad, because we don't have um we don't have the data that's showing that yet.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And let's we're gonna go into what that looks like.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one thing I want to point out from the get-go is that these studies are also an example of how challenging it is to do nutrition research.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and as someone who did nutrition research myself, I can tell you it is very difficult to use the scientific method and try to do what we call control all of these variables to come up with some conclusion that applies in the real world.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there's so many things you have to control for here: macronutrient content, so the amount of protein, carbs, and fats, the activity level of the person, the age, chemical contaminants in and on the food, like GMOs, glyphosate, herbicides, pesticides, possible microplastics.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: How does that um in interfere with disease uh formation when you're consuming ultra-processed foods and these unknown roles of the chemical additives?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's so many different components here.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's very complex.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um Joel and I and Cena people um people tend to not remember what they actually ate.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Or when they do the surveys, they not intentionally lie, but they tend to they tend to color it a little more, whatever, more natural, more, you know, they don't want to let you know that, oh, I really had two Snickers bars on Thursday.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh oh, I forgot to put that down.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh people are notoriously um, you know, difficult to pin down on what they had.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so so these nuances just add um add a point of dis uh whatever dubiousness to the industry, because the industry's fighting back.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they they don't want the Maha report to actually you know start dominating our food culture in our country, and because it is so damning to the you know, to the uh to the ultra-processed industry.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're fighting back, and they can use, can't they seen as some of these nuanced studies to see, well, it really isn't like that.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: They can use those studies to say it's not um, you know, definitive.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And to your point, if you look in the scientific literature, um, for example, I found two studies that were looking at people who are doing these dietary recalls.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, so like Joel said, the vast majority of nutrition studies are based on dietary recall.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's when the subject will try to remember what they ate, like in the last 24 hours, for example, and then they will relay that information to the researcher.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're just looking at calories alone.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: People will underestimate the amount of calories they consumed by anywhere between 33% to 52%.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So they may be leaving out almost half of the calories that they actually consumed.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you can understand or imagine the impact that this, what I call a study design flaw, what impact does that have on the outcome of that particular study and on conclusions that that study could make, and that conclusions that are made um when you combine these studies together and then you turn those into policy, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a lot of error done in these studies.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll dive more into that um too when we talk about the Maha study that they're really hinging their statements on.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I want to say that Joel and I have harped on this for years, that most chemicals that are approved to be added to our food or on our food, um, they're tested in isolation, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in the real world, we actually consume them in combinations.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's why that study I referenced in part one of the chemical cocktails, that's why it's so important is to understand that these chemicals can interact together and cause more harm.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: But on the flip side, like we said, the surprising finding was sometimes they cancel each other out.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: So my whole point is that uh today's narrative can become tomorrow's national misstep.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to limit ultra-processed foods on a personal level, sure, go ahead and do that.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I do that.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I try to limit them in processed food consumption in general because I feel better when I don't eat them.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're talking about is implementing a sweeping policy across the nation that affects everybody in America and it affects um some other Western countries as well, who will base their guidelines on our dietary guidelines.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point, what I'm gonna show you and have showed you in the last episode um is that the set the science is not settled and we should proceed with caution.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a new study.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, well, so let me give you one example.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: If if you do go through and create some sweeping policies based on what I call shaky ground, science, shaky scientific ground, you're opening the door for the next person to be able to come in to you know, USDA, FDA, and claim that the science is settled on other things that you and I may be um may like and they may be opposed to.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: For example, red meat, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can look in the scientific literature and you can see all these studies about, oh, red meat causes this and it's associated with this disease.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's there, it's in the scientific literature, and they can use that to then maybe even ban red meat and start growing more lab meat, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: You basically are giving them the ammunition they need because they can easily tear down the validity of the science, and they will have the moral right, the high ground to make those changes because you base your changes on flimsy science as well.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So let me give you an example.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: This just broke ground.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's this new study from researchers from the National Institute of Health, the NIH.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: They used metabolomics to create a scorecard for diet.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they're proposing that they can tell if you consumed ultra-processed foods based on which metabolic markers are present in your blood and your urine, and they're calling this your scorecard.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: The the the guys, uh, the motivation they're saying to do this is like you mentioned, Joel, most studies use dietary recall, recall, and it's highly inaccurate.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they're saying, oh, we can reduce the inaccuracy of nutrition studies, and this will propel the field forward and this will impact the dietary guidelines because now we're going to know what people are really eating, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: I like to think of this as um, they're trying to create like a dietary lie detector, right?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: To help the scientists gather more accurate data.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is this is an important study because this is the first validated biomarker for ultra-processed food intake.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of like how we now have those, they develop those biomarkers to tell if you're smoking, right?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because they didn't trust people to tell them if they're smoking or not.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So this is our first biomarker that's been validated to tell if you're lying about your ultra-processed food intake.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: The study was small, it's only 20 people, um, but they're calling for more work in this area.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, they want to start using this uh in studies.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So this method comes with the risk of reductionism.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you two quick examples.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the markers that they're using are ceramides, those do rise with ultra-processed food exposure, okay?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: But those also increase during chronic stress.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So poor sleep.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm sorry, uh Cena, I'm not keeping up with you on the uh the technical term here.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's the word again?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's called ceramides.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's a relative of termites.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh you're so cute.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is uh ceramides are a type of fat um that plays a critical role in like skin health and uh forming skin protective barriers and helping you maintain maintain moisture.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're also involved in various other cellular processes like signal transduction and and cell signaling.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so what they've noticed is that this is one uh metabolite, one compound that increases with exposure to ultra-processed foods.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: But as I said, there's it's a it's a con there's a lot of confounding variables because it also will increase if you have poor sleep, if you have an infection, or if you had intense exercise training or exposed to pollution.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't just use that marker.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's nonspecific.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It just tells you that something stressful is happening, but it doesn't tell you what it is.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if they start using ceramides as a pure ultra-processed food marker, you could accidentally blame junk food when somebody's just stressed from an illness, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the one here's the one that gives me great caution.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: One of the markers that was listed in the study is acyl carnitines.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those are used to um they're shuttles, they shuttle fat.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um they can shuttle fat to be metabolized by the cell.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you need them.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: They do rise with consumption of ultra-processed foods, but guess who else has increased levels of acyl carnitine?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Meat eaters.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the meat is fresh and unprocessed, red meat, red meat will increase the amount of carnitine, which can contribute to higher acyl carnitine levels.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if they label these acyl carnitines as a pure like junk food signal, there's the risk of a steak dinner um being counted as the same as this frozen pizza that's ultra-processed, right?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um you can see how somebody can use this and be like, oh, well, based on our um, you know, verify metabolomics data, um, when you eat ultra-processed food, it causes these metabolites that are damaging.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we also see that in people who eat red meat.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we should now ban red meat.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for those of us that aren't scientists, can you spell both of those just so our listeners know if they want to speak to this to somebody?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: Spell those ceramines and the X.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so ceramides is spelled C-E R A M I D E S and Aceal carnitines, that's A C Y L and then hyphen C A R N I T I N E S.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And those are your fat shuttles.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So so could you imagine, Joel, somebody, this this technology can easily get away from us, right?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they can now use it against us.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And because the NIH has said that this is a validated, this is our first validated biomarker, that's going to carry a lot of weight, right?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's our government agency saying this is validated.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a slippery slope.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why we're trying to call these things out now.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like just because somebody is in office right now that you may agree with, don't just jump on the bandwagon because there are unintended consequences.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm highlighting for you one now so that we can stand by our principles and not get swept up in the mania.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: So do you think, do you think a a biomarker, uh let's say a UPF, that's ultra-processed foods.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Don't want to get people lost in the jargon, that that a UPF biomarker either A has not been found or is almost or or impossible to exist.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: What's your sense of that?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that most markers that we have are non-specific.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this could be a whole other podcast, but um, even markers that we use now.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say um, let's say blood pressure, right?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: People equate that to, okay, that's the heart of the health.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And while I'm not denying that, um, people have really specified it as this is specifically related to like heart health, for example.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is that in a way, because the body is very holistic, uh, it's body, mind, spirit, these are all non-specific.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a functional perspective, we think of high blood pressure as an indicator of chronic stress, chronic inflammation that's not specific to the heart.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, I don't think you can actually um uh this is one of the downsides of reductionism.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: We take a compound and we attach a label to it, an identifier, like they're doing, like they're trying to do here.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: This one means you have too many, you know, you consumed ultra-processed foods.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not necessarily.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: You could just be stressed, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think all of these markers in general need to look at, need to be looked at as non-specific.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: They can all give you kind of pieces of your story, but we shouldn't classify them to specific body parts or specific foods because the body is much more complex than that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're still in our infancy in modern science, I would say.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, because uh because you can you can get a a bad blood uh blood pressure reading for for numerous reasons, not just because you have a bad heart or clogged arteries.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um exactly.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: But if you recall from my mother's that's why you you don't you don't want to go, you don't want to go uh worried about it, you know.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Every every time they put that thing on my arm, you know, I'm always calm down, take a deep breath, you know.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, it it's it's uh because I mean just just the fact that, oh no, what are they gonna find?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that just that in and of itself is um is stressful, which is why I don't go to doctors.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: It it's true.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you recall for my mother's story, the when we got her off like you know, most of her medications, the one medication we were able to reduce but not eliminate was her blood pressure medication.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even though um her cholesterol was great, you know, all the way down to triglycerides, there were she had no heart disease anymore.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's no um clogged arteries, nothing.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but she was grieving.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: So see, it's totally different.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: It had this emotional root.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So again, these things are not they're nonspecific in terms of uh, you know, to put it in a scientific term.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but okay, so now let's apply this to um a study that was cited in the Maha report as being quote unquote compelling.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this was compelling evidence presented in the Maha report to say that um, you know, we shouldn't be consuming these ultra-processed foods.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was a study published in 2019 in cell metabolism.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: The researchers took 20 adults and they can find them in an NIH facility, uh, which is good.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what we'd call like a metabolic ward.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a step beyond um using dietary recall.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they're in this facility together.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Participants consumed for two weeks ultra-processed foods, and they had unlimited um amount that they could assume.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So they would give it to them for a period of time, but they didn't tell them, oh, you can only have this much, you know, they just put a bunch of the food on the plate.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, after two weeks, then they were switched and to a second group where they had um two weeks of unlimited unprocessed foods.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: These were like um whole foods.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the study said that despite having identical caloric access, participants consumed roughly 500 fewer calories per day and lost two pounds on the unprocessed diet.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they gained two pounds on the ultra-priced diet.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the compelling study cited in the report.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and like I said, it is an improvement over most ultra-processed food studies because they were in the metabolic ward.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, this is what I'm gonna lay out for you now.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: No one to this date has designed a study to test whether it's actually the ultra processedness itself that's the culprit, or if it's the chemicals that are in or on those foods.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this study that was cited did not answer that question either.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to bring up, I was really excited to see um Gary Tobbs, and some people may be familiar.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: With him.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's an investigative science and health journalist and co-founder of the Nutrition Science Initiative.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And after we recorded part one, I got a little bit anxious because I thought, am I the only one that's like bringing this up?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, am I out here on my own and we're gonna get a lot of hate mail?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then I came across Gary Tobbs Substack.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he, just like me, he is raising an eyebrow at how quickly nutritionists and activists and policymakers, as he says, have boarded the ultra-processed food express without even asking whether the tray the tracks are laid down straight.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're doing right now is what Ansel Keys did with his low fat hypothesis.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this before on the show.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: His hypothesis was never adequately tested before it was unleashed onto the American public.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Here again, we see nobody has even designed a study to question the ultra-processedness itself.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're assuming that all these ultra-processed foods are alike enough to just clump them together.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: So Tao gave this example, and I want to walk you through it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Quaker oats, right?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oatmeal.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is not considered an ultra-processed food according to this Nova classification.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, instant Quaker oats are considered ultra-processed because they contain multiple synthetic ingredients.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: But he points out what about the sugar?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: The sugar is actually the second ingredient in the instant Quaker oats.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: It makes up 20% of the calories on the label.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: If the ingredients were only the whole grain oat, so we're taking the whole grain oat that's considered not ultra-processed, okay?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you had that and you added sugar to it, it's not considered an ultra-processed food.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if you added that sugar, does it make that whole grain oat healthy or does it make it benign?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: The ultra-processed food classification implies that it makes it benign.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say in the instant oatmeal example, for example, should we worry about that second ingredient, which is sugar, or should we be worried about the handful of the synthetic ingredients?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you got sick from it, would it be the sugar or would it be the chemical cocktail?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: So which one is actually the culprit?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Along these same lines, he points out that if you made an apple pie from scratch at home, it would not be counted as ultra-processed.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if you ate the apple pie from like a fast food restaurant, it would be considered ultra-processed.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Cookies are the same.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Homemade cookies with sugar, they're not considered ultra-processed, but an Oreo cookie would be.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So his point is we're losing sight of even the macronutrients here.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the macronutrient content that actually dramatically shifted when the dietary guidelines were first introduced.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about this on the podcast several times, Joel, how we went from, you know, this animal-based, high, uh, pretty high-fat, higher protein diet, and then it flip-flopped.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're in this high carbohydrate diet.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I have even said on the program that yes, chemicals, more chemical exposure has happened between the 1970s and now, which is um important to note.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I do try to avoid the chemicals, many chemicals whenever possible.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: But you also can't disregard the macronutrient content shift.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is dramatic.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So what if it is the what if it's not the ultra-processedness itself that's making the food unhealthy?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's the macros?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's the sugars, the seed oils, right, that are causing this insulin spike?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or what if it's the glyphosate?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, what if the chemical cocktails are just the window dressing?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: What if they are harmful, but it's minor compared to this greater harm?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: The the study that Maha cited that was this compelling study, this metabolic ward study, the sugar was not controlled for.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, when when the subjects were presented with these three daily meals and they were instructed to consume, consume as much or as little as desired, um, some of these the meals that were the whole field food meals were very low in sugar.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let me read this quote from the study itself.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: The researchers said, and I quote, while we attempted to match several nutritional parameters between the diets, the ultra-processed versus the unprocessed meals, differed substantially in the proportion of added to total sugar.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: It differed by 54% versus 1%.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: So 54% sugar versus 1%.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge, huge difference, right?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: The fiber also differed 16% versus 77%.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what if it was the fiber?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're obviously going to eat less.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: It, you know, fiber's filling, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're eating a bunch of fiber, you're going to be eating less.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I'll give you an example of some of these of uh two of these meals.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the ultra process menu, um, this is um one of the days, this is for lunch.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was a cheeseburger with American cheese on a Kaiser roll, alongside French fries and ketchup and diet lemonade um with um fiber added to it.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is compared to this is the unprocessed meal.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the meal was um a salmon with with just with garlic and fresh squeezed lemon, and then a sweet potato with olive oil and some spices on it, and then green beans that were frozen, frozen green beans with olive oil and garlic, and then plain Greek yogurt with strawberries and salt and pepper.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: So just from reading that, you can already tell why there's confounding variables in you know, between these in this study.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um number one is the sugar.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if let's say you don't like uh Greek yogurt with no sugar.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I hate Greek yogurt if it's just plain.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not even gonna eat that, right?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I'm eating this whole food meal and they gave me plain Greek yogurt, and then they gave me um this green beans that have olive oil on it that were frozen and then have olive oil on it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever tried to eat vegetables with olive oil drizzled on them?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like it.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: It does not, it's so pungent.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Olive oil is so pungent, and frozen vegetables are disgusting.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I I probably wouldn't be eating this either.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not like they got to choose.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they were given.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd put a pile of salt and pepper on them.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and there's what happened, there's no butter.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: What you know what I'm saying?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so there's no animal fats here.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's these these oils that are consumed.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't I wouldn't even compare it to this diet.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is more of a dietary guideline diet, you know.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um the goal of this study was actually to determine if people ate more when they consumed ultra-processed foods.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said, what if they didn't like salmon?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: What if they don't like the green beans?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what if so so there's no blinding, right?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: This study is called compelling by a Maha, in part because it is classified as a randomized controlled study.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Those studies are highly regarded, but there's no placebo group because the subjects are not blinded.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: They see what they're eating.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's also the perception of um there's a healthy diet virtue signaling, where you see what's healthy here, and it goes along with the message of eating in moderation.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all these psychological components that are also at play.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that none of this control was actually done.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you can conduct a study to actually blind people to see if it's actually the ultra-processedness of these foods or if it's the chemicals.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, Tobbs uh presented a way to do this.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you would um you would actually purchase foods that are these ultra-processed foods, and then you would purchase their look-alikes that are considered not ultra-processed based on the definition that Maha is using.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you could match them for macronutrient content, and you could also then match them for like glyphosate contamination, because you could test the foods for things like that.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, example would be you're gonna buy peanut butter.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: You could buy GIF peanut butter, and it's considered ultra-processed because it has hydrogenated vegetable oils and mononiglycerides and stuff.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can produce, you can also buy the non-ultra processed peanut butter, which could even be smuckers because it just has peanuts and salt, right?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: So those two look identical.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're both peanut butter, but the current definition that Maha is using is that one of them's ultra-processed because it has these synthetic chemicals and one of them's not.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: You could do the same thing with breads and jams and jellies and get two side-by-side foods that one has these synthetic chemicals and one does not.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: If in that situation, the subjects consume more of the ultra-processed food by their definition than the non-ultrocessed food, then you can consider blaming the ultra-processed food itself.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you can blame the man-made chemicals for that.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, instead of instead of it might be the simple fact that somebody didn't like salmon or prefer the sugar-sweetened yogurt, you know.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I loved about this, I mean, he really walks you through.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: This makes a lot of sense when you actually think about it and when you see the science that they're using.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is flimsy science.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even a control group.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I love his conclusion.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Tobbs concluded this.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if we think ultra-processed foods are making people fat and sick because of the industrial ingredients and the number of ingredients, how about we do the kinds of experiments that can establish if that is true?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then we can move on to maybe learn something meaningful here.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: But that really sums it up, right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, well, we we could just dispense with all that and feed the different and have a uh a worm bed and have a worm bed and just feed the feed the different foods to worms and see which ones the worms liked and which they didn't.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's fantastic.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fabulous idea.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, so this leads me to the second thing I want to bring to our listeners' attention is that there is a growing movement for having a second food guide pyramid.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and um this, as you know, we had um Dr.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Nina Taischultz on the show, and she and some of some of her colleagues published that peer-reviewed study on that food pyramid for people with metabolic dysfunction.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that is being proposed as a second food guide pyramid, and um what and I'm gonna go into why that's being proposed um in just a minute, but something that was shocking to me is that uh do you remember the former FDA commissioner David Kessler?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, he has a piece in the Wall Street Journal where he is calling for a low-carb option in the dietary guidelines.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he is calling for this second food pyramid.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: He is the first mainstream person to be arguing for a low-carb option.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And let me just tell you what he says.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a couple quotes in his piece.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: He says, um, Health and Human Service Services Secretary Robert F.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Kennedy Jr.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: says he wants to quote, make America healthy again.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: With HHS updating its dietary guidelines for Americans this year, now is his chance.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Nearly all Americans are at risk for metabolic disease.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's time to recommend for them a lower carb option.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: The dietary guidelines were first released in 1980, yet the U.S.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: obesity rate has tripled since then, right?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if that's not evidence that it's not working, right?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then he says the recommendations were designed primarily for healthy bodies, which most Americans don't have.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think a lot of people know this.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: The dietary guidelines are not intended.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I'm quoting this, I'm quoting this from their actual website, okay, from the dietary guideline website.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: The dietary guidelines are not intended to be guidelines for managing chronic disease.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: not only are 74% of us overweight or obese, 40% of us are insulin resistant or pre-diabetic.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're estimating only 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, that would mean based on the government's own criteria for their dietary guidelines, that the U.S.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: dietary guidelines for Americans only apply to 12% of our population.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's based on their own words.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, some people are saying that the guidelines are potentially illegal at this point.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because I thought I thought you'd get a kick out of that, Joel.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Something in the government's doing is illegal.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not just you and me.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, based on a 1990 law, it states that the dietary guidelines must be for the quote general public.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: But now the general public is the is defined as those with nutrient-related diseases.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's incredible.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in 20 the guy, the dietary guidelines committee members in 2020, um, you know how you can go when you can listen to them to their discussions on day one in the afternoon, there was a committee member who actually said this, and I quote, but if you exclude such people, meaning those people with disease, that would not actually be representative of who lives in this country.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they acknowledged it, they knew it.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yes, by that by their own definitions, these guidelines are now illegal.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, while Kessler didn't come out and say that, there's a rough, there's an inference here to that.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he goes on and he says the guidelines don't account for the dysfunctional metabolic state of our bodies.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Americans suffering from insulin resistance, obesity, and diabetes need less carbohydrates in the diet.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says a 2024 study found that the insulin levels rose from 28% to 41% just between 1998 and 2018.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: So he's um so insulin is in the functional medicine world, you often hear insulin being uh labeled as one of the most inflammatory compounds that our body makes.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: So one way, one of the quickest ways to try to reverse any of these chronic conditions is to lower and stabilize the insulin level.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's saying that just between 1998 and 2018, insulin levels rose from 28% to 41%.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's devastating for a country in terms of health.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's he goes on to say when metabolically vulnerable people consume less carbs, their insulin levels decrease.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says the dietary guidelines are wrong to recommend that 45% to 65% of daily calories come from carbs.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: That percentage is too high for the metabolically challenged bodies that have become the norm.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then he says, this so this is the next, this is the part I wanted to talk about.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I've talked about this in my book, and we've talked about this on the program of how the dietary guidelines affect every American in numerous ways, right?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, aside from all the food labels and these government um assistance programs, but they also affect the advice that you're gonna get from a registered dietitian and most medical doctors, okay.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because the doctors, many doctors' hands are tied by the dietary guidelines.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Kessler alluded to this in his Wall Street Journal piece.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: He said, until recently, doctors and scientists advocating low-carb diets were viewed skeptically by the nutrition and cardiologist cardiology communities.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: They had separate meetings and had to form societies separate from traditional endocrinology, obesity, and diabetes organizations.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And why is it that they had to form separate um meetings and organizations?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because some doctors will be reprimanded and can lose their license if they go outside of the dietary guidelines.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just that, oh, they have to follow them.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we kind of toss that around in conversation, like, oh yeah, dietary guidelines form the basis of dietary recommendations.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, there are real implications to this.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: It it limits, it limits how much your doctor can help you.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so people will often give medical doctors like a hard time and uh about like not embracing this food is medicine culture, right?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this principle that we believe in.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: So part of that is because most medical doctors don't receive adequate nutrition training.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there was a survey that came out of 121 medical schools, and they found that future physicians get about 19 hours at most of required nutrition instruction across all of their training.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: So just 19 hours.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Kennedy has come out and said, um, this was reported in ABC News, that he plans to tell American medical schools that they must offer nutrition courses to students or they're going to um lose federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: So he is trying to fix that.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: But part of this is because they're just not trained in the power of food and that food is medicine.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the catch.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: What's not usually talked about is that some medical doctors have realized that food is medicine and they want to offer that to their patients.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: But in many cases, their hands are tied.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: They are not allowed to prescribe diets outside of the dietary guidelines.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to give you some examples of people who have actually been threatened and reprimanded and taken to trial because they dared to go outside the guidelines.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a um, there's the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act of 1990.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: That act requires every federal health program from the Veterans Health Administration to school lunches to promote the dietary guidelines.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: That means that if you are a medical doctor or a registered dietitian working for a federal program, by law, you have to follow the guidelines.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: There is a uh I can't I can't tell you his name right now because his case has been escalated to a national level, but um a well-respected physician was working for the VA, and he was offering a low-carb option to his diabetic patients, and they were healing, and he um was actually reprimanded from that.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was removed from his role at the VA hospital because he was healing them with his low-carb diet.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as I said, that that case has escalated to a national level.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what's great about it, it's it's the veterans that are coming to his defense, like the ones that he helped.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are the ones that have escalated it.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: There are now, aside from the federal agencies, there's no formal rules on this, but the large medical practices like United Healthcare, they follow the dietary guidelines.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's probably because they may fear legal uh like legal ramifications from not following these guidelines.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, one example of a person who got into trouble in one of those scenarios is a registered dietitian named Michelle.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Del Hearn.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard of her because she's the author of The Dietician's Dilemma.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: So she had great success with her own health following this low-carb diet.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so she presented a bunch of randomized trials on the low-carb diet, reversing various diseases, to her clinical director.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: And her administrator said that no, you have to follow these dietary guidelines.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, do not do not tell the patients about that.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she did.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: She would give it to him as a second option and say, if you want to do this, here's some literature on it, or whatever.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she actually was suspended for two weeks.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody told on her.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: And she was suspended for two weeks and told it was her only warning.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: But then shortly after that, she was reassigned to a call center where, as a registered dietitian, all she could do was take meal orders.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: She could not give any dietary advice anymore.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there's others.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Nina and I have been working together to try to um gather testimonies from different medical doctors in the country.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've got two more rolling in from doctors in the U.S.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: that have been reprimanded.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I'll share those as they come in, as they um come across my desk.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this this is like a breaking story, you know.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just telling you what I have available.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we also see this.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Remember at the top of the show, I mentioned that our dietary guidelines influence some other Western country guidelines as well.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: So um there was in Australia an orthopedic surgeon, Dr.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Gary Fetke.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: He actually uh recommended a low-carb option to his diabetic patients, and he spent four and a half years being investigated.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like they dragged him through court.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it it basically cost him his his livelihood.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: He spent all this money doing it.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: He was um issued, he was issued a like pretty much a gag order.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he couldn't talk about diet with his patients or on social media or anywhere.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was the first doctor ever to be silenced on nutrition, like so he just couldn't speak about it.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's interesting here is that about four and a half years later, the medical board there in Australia ended up apologizing and dropping all charges.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: There was no patient harm.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: All he did was help people heal.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was after that, shortly after that, that the Diabetes Australia organization issued a position statement where they then said, hey, low-carb eating and ketogenic diets are safe for improving blood glucose and um heart disease risk factors.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, now those diets are considered best practices for diabetic patients in Australia.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a go-to.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, crazy, right?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's a last one I wanted to share was um a sports science professor, Tim Um Noaks, I believe it's N-O-A-K-E-S.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he actually was in, he faced trial in South Africa for going against their established dietary guidelines, uh, which were high carb.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he advocated for a low-carb, high-fat diet uh for infants.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a complaint lodged against him of get this, unprofessional conduct and potentially endangering the public by offering off you know, suggesting a high-fat, low-carb diet.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: This hearing became known as the nutrition trial of the 21st century.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And basically he got acquitted, uh, you know, like all charges were dropped.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it underscores this tension between like this the scientific evidence that's emerging and this entrenched guidelines, you know, that are prescribing these high-carb diets.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it reminds me of uh, oh goodness, 30 some years ago there was a NRCS uh agent in uh Pennsylvania, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, named Roger Wentling.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: So NRCS is Natural Resources Conservation Services.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um and he totally bought into this grass-based dairy and quit feeding dairy cows grain, you know, put them out on grass, controlled grazing, move them every day, you know.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he literally turned that two county area of Pennsylvania upside down to the point where two grain companies lost so many customers as dairy farmers switched over to grass-based that they put pressure on the NRCS and um and issued a gag order uh for him.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: He he could no longer discuss uh grass-based dairying with anybody.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, in fact, I remember when uh Stockman Grass Farmer ran a picture of him on the front page kneeling in a pasture with uh you know with duct tape on his mouth and and uh hands tied behind his back, you know, as a as an illustrative uh picture that this guy's being um you know gagged and and uh handcuffed for promoting grass-based um dairy farming.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: It happens, you know, uh silencing has happened for a long time.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: That and that picture, what a brilliant picture.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's so vivid.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've never even seen the picture, but I could imagine it in my mind as you're describing it.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: That speaks a thousand words there.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's yeah, so so the reason why I thought this was so important to bring to our listeners is so that they understand that some of these doctors are well-meaning, they don't have a choice, right?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: They can't give you the option of, you know what, there's literature over here, here's another diet you might be able to try.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: They can literally lose their license.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: So can registered dietitians.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: They can literally some of them lose their license, lose their jobs, you know, um, for going outside of these guidelines.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the reason why you see this push for this second food pyramid that would be um a high, like a higher fat diet, um, you know, something more aligned with what our ancestors would have consumed, um, it's just to give them that option, right?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: So so but here here's here's where so here's where I have kind of a um Donnie and I have been going back and forth debating this because um on one hand, so I can see why they're creating this second food pyramid, right?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because you want your doctor to have more than one option.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as I've laid out here, that original dietary guideline wasn't for people who are sick, right?
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you want your doctor to have another option, okay?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but could you imagine what might happen?
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say now there's two options, and your medical doctor, who is not trained adequately in nutrition, now has to say, okay, there's two options.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Which one do I think I should choose for this patient with X condition?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: What if the patient doesn't follow the diet, right?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: But they think they're doing it.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: I get this all the time.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: People are like, oh, the diet doesn't work.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: But then you really talk to them and they're not actually doing it, right?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, or not doing it properly.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, what if what if that happens and the patient comes back and they're like, oh my gosh, the diet didn't work.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm sicker, or you know, God forbid, has something happened like a heart attack or something, and then they blame the doctor.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you are supposed to know you picked the wrong diet for me.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like it could be a liability issue for these doctors as well, you know.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's part of this whole, I think, slippery slope that the guidelines just shouldn't be there.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like in general, they shouldn't be there.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're we're back, we're back, we're back to the government just get out.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: Let the government get out and let people vet, sleuth, you know, make their own decisions and um and and let the let the marketplace run it.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and don't don't put your hands on a scale one direction or another, you know, through the government um agency.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: But boy, we're a we're a long ways from that.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we are a long way.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I so that's why Donnie and I were debating it, because we're like, I don't think they're just gonna do away with these guidelines or even bring them down to a state level, or you know, ideally they just let each organization do its research and come up with their own guidelines if if they need them, you know, to like implement foods in hospitals and stuff like that.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: But um, it it is this dilemma because it's not they're not just gonna get rid of it.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: So then what do you do?
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like, okay, well, then I can see why they need this second option, but then what's gonna happen?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: What now we're gonna have a third option, a fourth option, or someone else is gonna get in there and then they're gonna be like, do we really need this?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's merge them together, or they're gonna change the whole concept of it and be like, so one of the reasons that they're saying that this diet works, um, like uh like the in the metabolic food pyramid that's been proposed, is because they're not pushing things like seed oils, right?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's back to like animal fats, for example.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: What if the next person gets in there?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: They've got ties to the seed oil industry, which a lot of people have, and then they're like, you know what?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: We will stick with your macronutrient content.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's new research that came out that said seed oils are not bad.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then they stick seed oils in that pyramid, and now you're gonna have problems again, more metabolic dysfunction because you're consuming a high-fat diet with lots of seed oils.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is not a far-fetched example of what could actually happen to the guidelines.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: So again, I I just feel like it's this slippery slope.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know, Joel.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked a lot.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Joel, what do you think?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, I mean, yeah, we're we're we're really out of time now, but uh, you know, what I mean, what about what about the option of fasting for a week?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I run into so many people that have solved really, really big problems with like a 10-day or two week, I mean, a significant, not a one-day, but but you know, a significant fast.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I'm I mean, you know, cancer love sugar, for example.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: If you starve, if you start, you can starve out lots of things.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to, we're gonna go down a rabbit hole here, but but anyway, I mean, there is you say that there are so many um what ifs, what ifs, what ifs, what ifs, uh that you just can't give a a two, a two-option approach.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: You can't even give a three-option approach.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's just what what we know about the complexity, the relationships, and the dynamism of of the human body, um you know, it it's unbelievably what you said, reductionist, simplistic, um, ignorant to actually make a a two, three, four option deal.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's way more way more difficult uh difficult than that.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's why we're seeing this rise of n equals one experiments.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a group of us that are pushing this narrative that that is your best experiment, is you are your best experiment.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: So people ask me all the time, why do you try all these different diets?
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like you know, I tried the lion diet, I'm trying the carnivore diet now.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, I because I'm experimenting to see what's best for my body.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I use my intuition and then I apply it and let's see what let's see how I feel on these different diets.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good way to do it, you know, if if you have that level of intuition is to actually just try these different diets.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get set in your way.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a good way to add in variety, right?
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about that before that that the immune system gets overexposed to certain foods.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you change up what you're doing, you're it's almost like resetting in some ways the immune system.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: You give it a break, you know, you add in that almost that seasonality to it.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: So there's so many things that you can do on your own, like on an individual level.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: This whole issue of the national level gets very complex very fast.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so, well, I think it's great that on one hand that they're having this second option in there, it's not gonna be the end all be all, right?
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have more problems and unintended consequences that are coming out of this this solution as well.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think I think the bottom line on on this, you know, we can leave our folks with this that trust yourself, not the government.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it sounds so simple and it sounds it sounds incredibly rebellious, doesn't it?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: Trust yourself, not the government.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, you know, that that's been my concern all along is that the good intentions of Maha will be uh, you know, we'll trade we'll trade one one negative for another, and and and and and we still don't we still don't actually move past the ignorance factor because now people are saying are just doing what the government tells them to do again, you know, and so we don't move past the ignorance factor.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and there's only so much that he's gonna be able to change.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I know they banned those food dyes.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: Someone's gonna find a loophole in that, somebody's gonna come up with another die, and it'll just be a rabbit chase, you know.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think one thing that I think it was great that he ran for office because it brought to light of these issues some people finally were listening.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: This HHS position is that I personally have seen so many people that have kind of washed their hands with it now, and they're like, Oh, he's gonna take care of it.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's look what he did with the dives.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he's gonna change it all.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: And like, so they just start trusting the food again.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, don't fall asleep at the wheel.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, yeah.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a it's a big bureaucracy.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when uh uh Obama got in and all my uh my liberal organic friends were all euphoric about oh, everything's gonna be different now.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_02: Michelle's got a White House garden and everything's gonna be different.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh another friend said, Well, just remember, there are 10 10 miles of USDA offices that won't change.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_02: So so it's uh, you know, that that that uh paradigmatic um uh imperative is deeply, deeply entrenched within the system.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and the financial, you know, the financial um interests of powerful entities is still there as well.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so let's close out on a community question.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so go ahead, Joel.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: So um, so my my community question is um, how many diets have you experimented with?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: And what did you find about yourself, about your body, about the food?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um have you experimented with different diets?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and if so, you know, what what did you find?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's such a great question.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and that I I don't want to turn this into a into a laborious thing, but maybe it's just you you cut out something for a while, you know, whatever, soft drinks or something.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but just just uh have you made a food change?
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if so, did you see anything?
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know what we're trying to do here is is is to to affirm people in yeah, I did see something.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_02: I had better bowel movements, I had, you know, I I felt better, uh, you know, whatever.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I know for me, my my big thing when I travel is getting enough water.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: I never drink enough water.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I and you know, see you've been here, we have the best water in the world here.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: And when I come home, I just guzzle, guzzle, guzzle, guzzle.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it it takes me, it takes me a day actually to rehydrate when I get home because bottled water just doesn't do it.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: It just it's it's not it's not the best either.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, have you made a food change and did it did it make an impact?
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: Cena, thanks for digging into this for us.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's a it's a profound, um, profound view, and only a a really um uh iconic researcher like you could suss it out, but you've done it beautifully.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_02: And we're always thankful for your your um elucidation of these issues.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh hey everybody, thanks for joining us on another Beyond Labels podcast.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_02: We really appreciate you being here.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: Tell your friends if you like this content, tell your friends.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and we'll just let this continue this community continue to um to expand um organically, dynamically, and um without regimen.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: So um so join us next week on another Beyond Labels podcast.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.