Speaker 1: I've got a team. Welcome to another installment of your project.
Speaker 1: Calespo and I are flying. I was going to say solo,
Speaker 1: but it's more of a duo. There's no trio tiff
Speaker 1: where sands tiff. She's out to dinner on some date
Speaker 1: or something, some kind of sordid affair. But me and Glass.
Speaker 1: But I've been here, just holding the bloody baby, just
Speaker 1: doing it. Yeah, I made How are you?
Speaker 2: Yeah good? How are you good?
Speaker 1: Before we jump into tonight? Are you busy? Like? Is
Speaker 1: it is work? I don't know that you ever. I
Speaker 1: don't really ever close down. I don't really have a
Speaker 1: quiet period. Maybe a little bit over Christmas. But does
Speaker 1: it get busier for you? Or is it somewhat the
Speaker 1: same through the year.
Speaker 3: It's pretty much the same all the time. What makes
Speaker 3: me well? I decide what makes me busy? I guess,
Speaker 3: And so I'm and I guess I'm easily bored. So
Speaker 3: you know, if I get a ten minutes where I've
Speaker 3: got nothing on, I think, oh my god, I've got
Speaker 3: nothing to do on board as board as anything. So
Speaker 3: I tend to get stuff to do. So I'm always
Speaker 3: at about that level of business.
Speaker 1: How would you I mean, if you met somebody that
Speaker 1: didn't know you, like, this is one of the things.
Speaker 1: Because I do a film. I'm not very good at anything,
Speaker 1: but I do do a lot of things. So you're
Speaker 1: an author, you're a researcher, you're a lawyer, you're a like,
Speaker 1: you're an entrepreneur. I guess you're an.
Speaker 2: Oh sort of entrepreneur over encountered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't. Yeah, But you're also a philanthropist because
Speaker 1: you do do in that. You know, you do do
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff for people that you genuinely just
Speaker 1: want to help. You're an educator. You wouldn't call yourself that,
Speaker 1: but you're very much an educator. What where where does
Speaker 1: that like? What do you see yourself first and foremost
Speaker 1: as a lawyer because that's your background and that's your
Speaker 1: chosen career, or how do you see yourself?
Speaker 3: It's what I describe myself as to people who I
Speaker 3: don't have time to say any more than that.
Speaker 2: Most people know what a lawyer is.
Speaker 3: And by the way, describing yourself as a lawyer when
Speaker 3: you go through customs is an excellent way to make
Speaker 3: sure you don't get searched. Right, describing yourself as a
Speaker 3: salesman or something like that, right, right, usually results in
Speaker 3: a strip search.
Speaker 1: So that's hilarious.
Speaker 3: I hope the people from customs aren't listening because now
Speaker 3: I'm probably going to get searched every time. But anyway,
Speaker 3: that's I've found over many years putting lawyer on the form.
Speaker 3: I think it protects you from searching.
Speaker 1: And is that because they think potentially they stand a
Speaker 1: greater chance of litigation?
Speaker 3: No, probably you're just going to be painful. Lawyers tend
Speaker 3: to be painful people. Sorry to all the lawyers out there.
Speaker 1: Shout out, shout out to the fellow. So clearly you're
Speaker 1: the super popular in your face, right, they tend they
Speaker 1: tend to.
Speaker 2: Be detail oriented. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: You'll be getting zero Christmas cards every year?
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, So well what's.
Speaker 1: The stuff and we'll get to the topic of hand. Well,
Speaker 1: what's the stuff that gives you? I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is the right question, but it's like, if you
Speaker 1: ask me this, I'd have an answer for it. But
Speaker 1: what gives you the most joy or the most fulfillment?
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's not about fulfillment but or the most purpose,
Speaker 1: Like is it the philanthropic stuff?
Speaker 3: No, not really, it's I mean, that's good, and I
Speaker 3: like spending my time doing that. But the thing that
Speaker 3: I find engages me the most is discovering new things,
Speaker 3: new connections, and being able to follow a thought down
Speaker 3: a rabbit hole of evidence gathering and testing whether it
Speaker 3: holds up or doesn't hold up. A lot of time
Speaker 3: it doesn't, but sometimes it does and your feel that
Speaker 3: you've discovered a new connection that either no one else is.
Speaker 2: Aware of or very few people are aware of.
Speaker 3: And sometimes that connection matters a lot to the way
Speaker 3: most of us live. And finding those things, I find
Speaker 3: really is the thing that drives me.
Speaker 1: And in a time where evidence and bullshit are next
Speaker 1: door neighbors, how do you do? You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like they're virtual next door neighbors, because people all the time,
Speaker 1: people are saying to me, this is science, that science.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it isn't, but that's okay. How do you
Speaker 1: do how do you find evidence? Like like does everything
Speaker 1: need to come back to high level research and studies
Speaker 1: or is there another metric?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't have any relevant qualifications In ninety percent
Speaker 3: of the ninety nine percent of the stuff I write about,
Speaker 3: I you know, I don't have a medical qualification. I
Speaker 3: don't have a dietetics qualification, health and pe psychology.
Speaker 2: None of them.
Speaker 3: I have no qualifications in any of these areas. I
Speaker 3: have qualifications in commerce and law.
Speaker 2: And that's it.
Speaker 3: So and I never write about those things because do.
Speaker 1: You want to sell books? You want to sell books.
Speaker 3: Well, and also I don't you know, they're not particularly
Speaker 3: interesting areas for new research. And also I want to
Speaker 3: be able to bring the third party view to whatever
Speaker 3: I write about. I want to not care about the answer.
Speaker 1: So that's so good. And this is what people sorry
Speaker 1: to understand. Yeah, this is what people don't understand. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean through research or science or scientists under
Speaker 1: the bus, but people need to understand that most people
Speaker 1: that are doing scientific research have a vested interest in
Speaker 1: the outcome. And that's not to say that that any
Speaker 1: particular science is good or bad, but it's to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, all sciences created by humans are conducted by humans,
Speaker 1: interpreted by humans, and then disseminated the way they want
Speaker 1: to disseminate it to the world by humans. So it's
Speaker 1: not this flawless fucking thing that people all people people
Speaker 1: just think they need to say it's science and then
Speaker 1: viberty bobbedy boot it's all absolute, unequivocal truth.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, yeah, And I mean there's that famous saying.
Speaker 3: I can't remember who said it. You're probably able to
Speaker 3: look it up, or if Tiff was here, she'd probably
Speaker 3: already know the You know, it's very hard to convince
Speaker 3: a man of something when his salary depends on him
Speaker 3: believing the opposite. And that's the difficulty with science. Even
Speaker 3: though you know not to suggest you will do things
Speaker 3: intentionally corrupt, but as you say, there's an inherent bias.
Speaker 3: If your salary depends on you finding something and you
Speaker 3: don't find it then or you find the opposite even worse,
Speaker 3: the chances of it being published or brought to anyone's
Speaker 3: attention dropped fairly dramatically. And I think what I bring
Speaker 3: to all of the things that I write about is
Speaker 3: I don't care about the result. I'm interested in what
Speaker 3: the science says about the results, and I'm interested in
Speaker 3: it being tested. And every time I've ever spoken publicly
Speaker 3: on radio or podcasts or anything, I've generally always said,
Speaker 3: I'm saying this is what I think the science says.
Speaker 3: If you can produce some science that proves what I'm
Speaker 3: saying is wrong, then I'm open to it because you know, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, you don't have an emotional attachment to an outcome, right,
Speaker 1: then that's.
Speaker 3: A financial or importantly a financial one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. That's true. By the way, that person
Speaker 1: was Upton Sinclair.
Speaker 2: There you go, and the.
Speaker 1: Quote was it's difficult, which you nailed it. It's difficult
Speaker 1: to get a man to understand. We could replace that
Speaker 1: with person a person who understands something when their salary
Speaker 1: depends on not understanding it. And then chat GPT's commentary
Speaker 1: is it's a sharp insight into cognitive bias and self interest.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yep, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I think that's what I bring to
Speaker 3: the equation is I view myself as an advocate for
Speaker 3: people who buy my books in a way that I'm
Speaker 3: their agent. I'm not the agent of the people who
Speaker 3: want to sell them things.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So, and if the evidence tells me that what I'm
Speaker 3: doing is wrong or what I have said is wrong,
Speaker 3: then I'll be the first to admit it. It hasn't
Speaker 3: happened yet, by the way, In the sense. I'm not
Speaker 3: suggesting I can never be wrong, but I have thrown
Speaker 3: out that challenge now for the very you know.
Speaker 2: I was first started.
Speaker 3: Appearing on radio and relation to Sweet Poison in about
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, and that challenge has been part
Speaker 3: of just about every thing I've ever done, and not
Speaker 3: once has anyone ever been able to prove that something
Speaker 3: I've said about the science is wrong.
Speaker 1: M And what's that seventeen years ago? Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think what is what is a parent? And I mean
Speaker 1: this to be the fucking David Gillespie fan club show,
Speaker 1: But somebody was asked, by the way, you're the person
Speaker 1: I get most asked about, probably because you're on a
Speaker 1: fair bit, but the person, Yeah, what's what's gillspo like?
Speaker 1: And people call you Gilespo? Right, It's funny this is
Speaker 1: a person who calls me that.
Speaker 2: So yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if somebody ever meets you, you know, and
Speaker 1: they go go Lesbo.
Speaker 2: Then I know where they came from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're a devote. That's a very Australian thing. Just
Speaker 1: back the whack ando on the end of a boring name.
Speaker 1: It's like Craigo. I get called Craigo by friends as well. Right,
Speaker 1: So just put an EE on it or a Y
Speaker 1: on it. Cregy crego's better than harp. Oh, it's way
Speaker 1: better than that. But I think the thing that's evident
Speaker 1: with you is you don't give a fuck about money. Like,
Speaker 1: I get no sense that you're writing books to make money,
Speaker 1: because I think you could. I think you could do
Speaker 1: do it a lot easier, Like if your focus was
Speaker 1: building wealth, I don't think you'd be writing all the
Speaker 1: books you're writing, even though you sell a lot, even
Speaker 1: though you sell plent I'm dollars.
Speaker 3: Per hour, dollars per hour invested books are a terrible
Speaker 3: way to make money. Yeah, you know, I come from
Speaker 3: a profession that regularly charges out of a thousand dollars
Speaker 3: an hour, and you are not making that or anything
Speaker 3: even in the same postcode as that when you write past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Do you so like with that kind of
Speaker 1: challenge that you put out with Sweet Poison, which is
Speaker 1: seventeen years ago? Now, do you like? I've been surprised
Speaker 1: because you're quite opinionated. It's not the right word because
Speaker 1: they're not really opinions, right, that's science. So opinionated is
Speaker 1: actually an inappropriate label for you, I think, But you're
Speaker 1: quite well.
Speaker 3: I don't have a right to an opinion because I
Speaker 3: am not an expert in the area, and I think
Speaker 3: opinions are wrong in most areas of science. Nobe, it
Speaker 3: gives the rats what your opinion is.
Speaker 2: What's important is what does the science say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what I mean is you don't hold back,
Speaker 1: and you're not really because also you're not in the space.
Speaker 1: I actually think for somebody who knows how to research,
Speaker 1: and somebody who can think clearly, and somebody who can
Speaker 1: under read the science, understand the science and share what
Speaker 1: you find without having a financial or emotional interest in
Speaker 1: what you find and therefore what you share. I actually
Speaker 1: think it's the perfect formula. But as close as we
Speaker 1: can get to objectivity, and it's very hard, you know.
Speaker 1: And as you and I have said many times before,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I shouldn't say it too many
Speaker 1: times before I finished my PhD because I could get
Speaker 1: in trouble from the university. But psychology is a pretty
Speaker 1: shit science, you know. It's it's just in that I.
Speaker 2: Think you're flattering at calling it a science.
Speaker 3: But anyway, okay, yeah, I rest my case, but it's
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, it's so it's so subjective.
Speaker 1: It's like I was talking with somebody yesterday. There's a
Speaker 1: happiness scale, right, and I said, what's fucking hiparious about
Speaker 1: the happiness scale?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 1: Well, one that depends when you ask me, Right, I
Speaker 1: could get seven different lots of You could get seven
Speaker 1: different lots of data from me on the one day,
Speaker 1: depending on when you ask me. Two Let's just say
Speaker 1: it's a one to seven scale. Right. For me, what
Speaker 1: I understand or experience of happiness is not what somebody
Speaker 1: else does, like they might call it contentment or calm
Speaker 1: or joy or like. These are just these slippery constructs
Speaker 1: that we then brian subjectively evaluate, and then we take
Speaker 1: all of that subjectivity and compare it to you, Like
Speaker 1: the fuck is that scientific?
Speaker 3: It's not like all of psychology. It's narrative building. You know,
Speaker 3: if you had it'd be what medicine would be. If
Speaker 3: medicine had no diagnostic tools. If a doctor couldn't X
Speaker 3: ray your leg to determine if it was broken, he
Speaker 3: might make up stories about whether it was broken or
Speaker 3: not based on I don't know, feeling it or you know,
Speaker 3: the way you look.
Speaker 2: When, or a conversation, conversation with you.
Speaker 3: Does your leg hurt? Yes, it does? How badly?
Speaker 2: Does it hurt quite a lot?
Speaker 1: How do you feel about your leg?
Speaker 2: It could be broken?
Speaker 3: Then that's kind of where we're at with psychology and
Speaker 3: and it's being rapidly overtaken by neuroscience, where we're starting
Speaker 3: to be able to measure stuff, and you know, it
Speaker 3: will be rendered as relevant as I don't know, attaching
Speaker 3: leeches to people, you know, to cure them of things.
Speaker 3: But for the moment, it's it's a fairly well patronized
Speaker 3: profession all right.
Speaker 1: Now, I totally disagree with David everybody. That's just so inappropriate.
Speaker 1: Speaking of research, we've chatted about this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but we haven't done a standalone episode, and so I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read. So David put this up on
Speaker 1: where where did I get this?
Speaker 3: This substack? To have a substack is where I put
Speaker 3: all my articles.
Speaker 1: Now, so go there, everyone. It's called feeding Aslies. This
Speaker 1: is the name of the or the title of the article,
Speaker 1: Feeding Aslies the Food Industries grip on Healthy Eating Guidelines.
Speaker 1: Subtitle is how four decades of healthy eating left us
Speaker 1: sicker than ever. Now I'm just going to read one
Speaker 1: paragraph because it's it's a nice starting point. First Australian
Speaker 1: Healthy Eating Guidelines were published in nineteen eighty two. It's
Speaker 1: now been four decades since our government became worried enough
Speaker 1: about our health to start telling us what to eat.
Speaker 1: There is now little doubt that it has been an
Speaker 1: unmitigated disaster. And it's a really good article everybody. There's
Speaker 1: some really nice illustrations and graphs and stuff. I love
Speaker 1: a good pie chart. There's a pie chart, no pun intended. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so have a look at that. But so we have,
Speaker 1: it hasn't been a raging success, has it.
Speaker 2: Well, let's do a little bit of history on this.
Speaker 3: So before nineteen eighty two, governments didn't tell us what
Speaker 3: they thought we should eat. They the only thing they
Speaker 3: were really worried about, and this was only sort of
Speaker 3: since the end of the Second World War, was getting
Speaker 3: enough food and enough of the vital nutrients to stay
Speaker 3: alive and avoid things like rickets and so on. So
Speaker 3: that was the concern of governments from pretty much the
Speaker 3: end of the Second World War till the early eighties,
Speaker 3: and then in the United States they started becoming obsessed
Speaker 3: with the facts that you know, US citizens were starting
Speaker 3: to get a little bit chunky, and it hadn't been
Speaker 3: a problem before, but it was starting to be quite
Speaker 3: a big problem. And you know, the obesity and overweight
Speaker 3: rate was i think, nudging up around forty percent of
Speaker 3: the population, and they were starting to get a.
Speaker 2: Bit worried about it.
Speaker 3: By the way, just for context, it's now seventy percent,
Speaker 3: so we'd take forty percent every day of the week.
Speaker 3: But in the early eighties, they were starting to worry
Speaker 3: about this increasing plague of overweight and obesity, and you know,
Speaker 3: various other chronic diseases were starting to rear their head.
Speaker 3: For the first time ever, they were noticing what was
Speaker 3: then called adult onset diabetes and what we now call
Speaker 3: type two diabetes as distinct from juvenile diabetes, which was
Speaker 3: type one, which was the type you're born with. And
Speaker 3: they were starting to see that appear in the population.
Speaker 3: Hadn't even been something that anyone bothered with prior to
Speaker 3: the early eighties, and so they were starting to think, well,
Speaker 3: maybe it's got something to do with what we're eating.
Speaker 3: For various historical reasons, they concluded they made the giant
Speaker 3: logical leap that fat makes us fat, and then even worse,
Speaker 3: than that, they decided it was saturated fat arounimal fat
Speaker 3: that made us have heart disease and type two diabetes
Speaker 3: and various things that, of course all subsequently turned out
Speaker 3: to be totally wrong, but it didn't stop them putting
Speaker 3: out healthy eating guidelines in nineteen eighty two in the
Speaker 3: United States, which we promptly copied, which is what we do.
Speaker 3: It seems the Australian nutritional establishment is incapable of independent thought,
Speaker 3: So if the US puts out a guideline, then we
Speaker 3: instantly get out the photocopier and there we go. We've
Speaker 3: done the Australian guideline.
Speaker 2: So we did it.
Speaker 3: Nineteen eighty two put out the first guidelines, and they
Speaker 3: told us a whole bunch of things to do. They
Speaker 3: told us to stop eating fat, because obviously fat makes
Speaker 3: us fat. Turns out that fat doesn't make us fat
Speaker 3: any more than eating cucumbers makes us green, but that's
Speaker 3: what they went with. Seemed logical. Twice as many calories
Speaker 3: in fat as there are in anything else. Therefore fat
Speaker 3: makes us fat. They told us to eat less fat.
Speaker 3: So if we look at the stats between when the
Speaker 3: guidelines were released and twenty twelve, which is the most
Speaker 3: recent stats we've got. Unfortunately, on fat consumption, we dropped
Speaker 3: our fat consumption by a quarter.
Speaker 2: So we did it.
Speaker 3: They said less fat. We did, and anyone who.
Speaker 2: Lived through that phase knows that's the case. Low fat.
Speaker 3: Everything on the supermarket shelves, constant marketing about low fat, this,
Speaker 3: low fat, that.
Speaker 1: Iron dite, drinks, diet fucking everything.
Speaker 3: Yep, everything low fat, low fat milk, you know, trim light,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, it's all there. By the way, low
Speaker 3: fat milk always amuses me because normal milk is three
Speaker 3: percent fat and low fat milk is two percent fat.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going to make a lot of difference, really,
Speaker 3: but if you want your milk to taste like water,
Speaker 3: knock yourself out.
Speaker 2: So we did.
Speaker 3: We bought all those products, we stopped eating as much fat,
Speaker 3: knocked a quarter off our fat consumption. And on the
Speaker 3: animal fat, we really smashed it. We knocked it back
Speaker 3: by eighty five percent. So all that stuff about you know,
Speaker 3: only trimmed meat, only eat chicken, don't eat red meat,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, all that stuff, we really listened. Eighty
Speaker 3: five percent less animal fat consumed over that period.
Speaker 2: So all right, big tick for us. We did that.
Speaker 3: We're also told knock back the salt, cut back on
Speaker 3: the salt, don't put the salt on your food, and
Speaker 3: we did it. One third less salt now.
Speaker 1: As we said last time, donot eggs. For God's sake,
Speaker 1: dynat eggs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're part of the fat thing. So don't eat eggs,
Speaker 3: don't eat any eggs, and don't put salt on them.
Speaker 3: We did all that. We now eat a third less
Speaker 3: salt than we did in nineteen eighty two. They said
Speaker 3: you got to eat more veggies. Eat more veggies and fruit.
Speaker 3: That's what you got to do. We did it up
Speaker 3: by fifteen percent on vegetables and seven and a half
Speaker 3: percent on fruit. That's not counting fruit juices and some
Speaker 3: which we can come back to later, but just on
Speaker 3: the solid stuff, we did ate more fruit and veg
Speaker 3: They told us to exercise more.
Speaker 2: We did.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, thirty percent of us performed moderate
Speaker 3: or high levels of exercise every week. Twenty twelve that
Speaker 3: it increased to thirty two and a half. It's actually
Speaker 3: gotten even higher than that since COVID. For some reason,
Speaker 3: since COVID, we've all decided to exercise even more, so
Speaker 3: we're doing it. So they told us to eat less fat,
Speaker 3: particularly animal fat.
Speaker 2: We did.
Speaker 3: They told us to eat their salt, we did. They
Speaker 3: told us to eat more fruit and veg we did.
Speaker 3: They told us to exercise more.
Speaker 2: We did. And yet now seven percent of us overweight. Nobees, Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: I realized that I see also in that time, like
Speaker 1: this is this is a really good one too, Like obesity,
Speaker 1: not just overweight, but obesity was ten percent, which is
Speaker 1: now thirty it's so that's tripled ye in that same
Speaker 1: so doing and this is like why is this? And
Speaker 1: I mean, like when I said before, everyone like there's
Speaker 1: not an opinion in this, like this is this is
Speaker 1: just data, This is just information. These are just numbers.
Speaker 1: This is just research. And I would think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a pity that's twenty twelve, because I would think
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, it's it's signific some of that
Speaker 1: stuff is significantly worse if we could have today's data.
Speaker 1: But why is there? Is it just because it's so
Speaker 1: profitable all of those things? Is it just because the
Speaker 1: majority of people live in this this echo chamber? Like
Speaker 1: why when you and I have this conversation. And obviously
Speaker 1: we're not Channel nine or Channel ten, but we still
Speaker 1: thousands of listeners. Why does it make even if we
Speaker 1: had this with five million listeners, Why doesn't it make
Speaker 1: a difference.
Speaker 3: It's mostly about the food supply. So you can read
Speaker 3: Healthy Eating. Whenever you criticize the Healthy Eating Guidelines, some
Speaker 3: smart ass dietitian will pop up and say, yeah, but
Speaker 3: no one actually eats according to the Healthy Eating Guidelines,
Speaker 3: so what you're saying is a lot of rubbish. And
Speaker 3: the point I'm trying to make here is actually we do.
Speaker 3: We have been doing exactly what the Healthy Eating Guidelines
Speaker 3: tell us to do, and not because we all went
Speaker 3: out and got our own personal copy of the Healthy
Speaker 3: Eating Guidelines and started eating that way, but because the
Speaker 3: people who supply our food do follow the guidelines. They
Speaker 3: see the guidelines as an opportunity to market, which is
Speaker 3: why you've got low fat everything. It's why you've got
Speaker 3: people who've got gym memberships to sell, promoting exercise. It's
Speaker 3: all of these things are ways to sell products. If
Speaker 3: the Healthy Eating Guidelines says eat less fat, eat less salt,
Speaker 3: then what do you do You create a product that's
Speaker 3: got less fat and less salt and say it's in
Speaker 3: accordance with the health eating guidelines. Instant health washing of
Speaker 3: your product. So that's how it ends up that in
Speaker 3: our food supply, and regardless of what you do or
Speaker 3: don't know about nutrition, the food supply is being manipulated
Speaker 3: by the people who have got money to make from it,
Speaker 3: and they are doing it simply on the basis of
Speaker 3: whichever thing gets them the health halo. So it comes
Speaker 3: back to the people designing the guidelines who say this
Speaker 3: is what will get you a health halo, and so
Speaker 3: the people do it. That's the same as with the
Speaker 3: healthy Eating stars that we've talked about before, where you
Speaker 3: really should be doing the opposite of what they say,
Speaker 3: because they are after the health halo of having five stars.
Speaker 3: And if the calculation of the five stars is garbage,
Speaker 3: that doesn't bother them because they want the five stars.
Speaker 3: So if you want to change what people are eating,
Speaker 3: you have to change the healthy eating guidelines. So let's
Speaker 3: look at how that flowed through. There was one guideline
Speaker 3: we didn't follow in nineteen eighty two. The guideline on
Speaker 3: sugar was you should eat it in moderation. What does
Speaker 3: that mean who knows.
Speaker 2: For most people, it.
Speaker 3: Means whatever I'm currently eating is eating it in moderation.
Speaker 2: In subsequent revisions of.
Speaker 3: The guidelines, I think by about two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: they actually put a number on that and said twenty percent.
Speaker 3: You should eat no more than twenty percent of your
Speaker 3: diet from sugar.
Speaker 2: To me, that's a lot.
Speaker 3: One in five calories coming from sugar. That's still a.
Speaker 2: Lot, all right.
Speaker 3: You might exceed it if you if your breakfast, if
Speaker 3: your diet consists entirely of cocoa pops, but you really
Speaker 3: shouldn't be getting one in five calories from sugar, particularly
Speaker 3: given what we now know about the science of how
Speaker 3: destructive sugar is. So that's the one we didn't obey.
Speaker 3: And the reason we didn't obey it is because the
Speaker 3: Healthy Eating Guidelines, aside from mentioning it, kind of ignored it.
Speaker 3: The Heart Foundation in fact, put out a TICK system
Speaker 3: that completely ignored the sugar content of food. So the
Speaker 3: Heart Foundation tick did not have sugar as a criteria,
Speaker 3: which is why they were able to give the TICK
Speaker 3: to products that were seventy two percent sugar like fruit
Speaker 3: roll ups, which we've discussed before. Because sugar wasn't actually
Speaker 3: a criteria, so everyone kind of avoided the thing about
Speaker 3: the whole sugar thing because the food industry didn't want
Speaker 3: anyone mentioning sugar. It was the elephant in the room.
Speaker 3: And the reason they didn't want anyone mentioning it is
Speaker 3: because it's addictive, and they know it's addictive. They know
Speaker 3: that products with sugar sell an awful lot better than
Speaker 3: products without sugar, so they don't want any kind of
Speaker 3: clamp down on sugar in their products, and they will
Speaker 3: resist that even to this day. So the only healthy
Speaker 3: guideline we've ignored is the one about sugar, and the
Speaker 3: reason we've ignored it is that while it is in
Speaker 3: the guideline, although a bit odd at twenty percent of
Speaker 3: your diet, the food industry doesn't mention it.
Speaker 2: Ever. They're quite happy.
Speaker 3: To go with low fat, low salt, eat more fruit
Speaker 3: and varage, exercise more. They're all good things that they
Speaker 3: can make money out of. The last thing they want
Speaker 3: to tell you is to eat less sugar, because then
Speaker 3: you might start looking at how much is actually in
Speaker 3: the products, which is a considerable amount. Because of that,
Speaker 3: everything has gone the opposite way of what the guideline said.
Speaker 3: The guideline said, if we do all these things, which
Speaker 3: we did, we should all lose weight. We should all
Speaker 3: not have type two diabetes, we should all not have
Speaker 3: kidney disease, we should not have cancer, we should not
Speaker 3: have you know, you name it. All of those things
Speaker 3: should go away if we follow these guides. Well, we
Speaker 3: followed the guidelines except for the sugar bit, and what happened. Well,
Speaker 3: as you said, overweight and obesity went from four forty
Speaker 3: percent so well, in nineteen eighty forty percent of us
Speaker 3: were overweight, and that included ten percent who were who
Speaker 3: are obese, So thirty percent overweight, ten percent OBEs now
Speaker 3: seventy percent overweight and obesity is tripled.
Speaker 2: So that didn't work out so well?
Speaker 3: Yes, why well, the science is pretty simple on this.
Speaker 3: You want to make people fat, feed them sugar job done.
Speaker 3: So that's what the food industry has done with a
Speaker 3: sort of you know, free pass from the healthy eating
Speaker 3: people for the last forty years, and the result is
Speaker 3: as predictable as day following night. You want to make
Speaker 3: people fat, feed them sugar done, tie two diabetes. Less
Speaker 3: than one percent of the Australian population in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: nine had type two diabetes less than one percent.
Speaker 1: Wow, yep.
Speaker 3: And now twenty twenty two it is five point three percent.
Speaker 1: Now that's I mean, I know that's a five hundred
Speaker 1: and whatever a percent increase. I mean, like that is
Speaker 1: five x. And I know it's only five percent in
Speaker 1: inverted commas, but it was less than one, so it's
Speaker 1: probably great. It's probably six or seven hundred percent. But
Speaker 1: do you know what else I find interesting? I don't
Speaker 1: know if you'll find this interesting, but from my background, right,
Speaker 1: so I started working in gyms coincidentally in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two when this we're referencing nine eighty two here, and
Speaker 1: you know, then there were no twenty four hour gyms.
Speaker 1: There were no ladies gyms, there were no boutique gyms. Really,
Speaker 1: there was no you know, CrossFit, there was no forty five,
Speaker 1: and there were no personal trainers. There were no personal
Speaker 1: training centers. You know, I set up the first personal
Speaker 1: training center in Australia in nine ninety. There's been an
Speaker 1: absolute proliferation of fitness options and training options, and you know,
Speaker 1: fucking pilates and group this and commando programs and boot
Speaker 1: camps and indoors and outdoors and and I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this is causal, but I'm just saying and at the
Speaker 1: same time everything, you know, everything's still gone through the roof.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, and I'm not saying.
Speaker 3: That there'd be a sane argument to make to say
Speaker 3: that the gym's cause obesity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but clearly they don't.
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying they don't. But the state It's interesting.
Speaker 1: For me though, is like people are working out more
Speaker 1: so it just tells me how fucking terrible our diet is.
Speaker 1: Because despite the fact that more people are training and
Speaker 1: more people are working out, more people are aware, there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of people who don't work out and
Speaker 1: don't do any structured exercise, of course, but it is
Speaker 1: probably more than it's ever been in the last one
Speaker 1: hundred years where people are intentionally going working out. But
Speaker 1: I think also another factor while I'm banging on is
Speaker 1: incidental and occupational activity a down somewhere around eight hundred
Speaker 1: calories a day, I think based on a couple of
Speaker 1: generations ago. So we just as a population, we don't
Speaker 1: move much.
Speaker 3: Although there was that really interesting study and I don't
Speaker 3: know the reference off the top of my head, where they.
Speaker 3: I think they went into the darkest parts of Africa
Speaker 3: and found a tribe that was essentially untouched by Western
Speaker 3: civilization and measured their calorie intake and their exercise, and
Speaker 3: the average urban dweller in the US I think in
Speaker 3: that study consumed considerably more calories but also did considerably
Speaker 3: more exercise than these people. Mostly what they did was
Speaker 3: lie around and do nothing because food was hard to
Speaker 3: come by and they didn't want to expend energy unless
Speaker 3: they were going to end up getting some food out
Speaker 3: of it. So, you know, the thing is, lumberjacks eat
Speaker 3: a lot of calories. Office workers eat not many, and
Speaker 3: that's all automatically controlled if you haven't stuffed up the
Speaker 3: automatically controlled by consuming sugar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but some office workers eat lumberjack calories. That's the problem.
Speaker 3: And the only way they can do that is by
Speaker 3: consuming a chemical which interferes with your appetite control system.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No matter how much we want to attribute it
Speaker 3: to a character flaw, it's actually biochemistry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. When you were and I don't want to
Speaker 1: open any door that you don't want to open, but
Speaker 1: when you were kind of integrating this thinking and this
Speaker 1: way of eating being living into your family, into your home.
Speaker 1: Did you have any pushback from anyone or did you
Speaker 1: like or did you just do it and they caught
Speaker 1: on or did you go listen, toeam, here's our protocol.
Speaker 3: Well, I did it when two of them weren't born,
Speaker 3: so they didn't get a choice.
Speaker 1: So they they grew up in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the old cult, that's the oldest. The oldest one
Speaker 3: was eight, then the next one down was six. They
Speaker 3: theoretically had a choice and probably didn't go with it
Speaker 3: entirely at the start, but eventually it's I mean when
Speaker 3: it's the only thing you're offered at home, and home
Speaker 3: controls most of what you're eating, you know, either at
Speaker 3: home or at school. Giving you don't you're not independently wealthy,
Speaker 3: which they weren't, then you're really controlling most of what
Speaker 3: they eat, even if they do go out and have
Speaker 3: the occasional binge with their mates. Yes, you know, almost
Speaker 3: all of what they eat is being controlled by home life.
Speaker 3: So yeah, initially some pushback. Ultimately no, by the time
Speaker 3: they were teenagers, they could read the books and the
Speaker 3: science themselves. And and that's what I find about this
Speaker 3: is if you go to the trouble of understanding why
Speaker 3: people do understand it and do it. And that's not
Speaker 3: just in relation to sugar. It's in relation to everything
Speaker 3: I write about. You know, people say, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: I go and talk with schools about teen brain for example,
Speaker 3: and the dangers of addiction to devices, and if you
Speaker 3: just bang on the way everyone does about our devices
Speaker 3: are evil and so on, most teenagers tune out at
Speaker 3: about sentence number two. But if you explain the biochemistry
Speaker 3: to them and in detail and have them understand why
Speaker 3: and how it exactly works, I'd say about a third
Speaker 3: of them instantaneously change the way they interact with technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know we've spoken about a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I know you've got to go. But how much
Speaker 1: how much of an impact do you think, Like you
Speaker 1: having raised a whole tribe of kids who basically most
Speaker 1: of them from you know, either from very young or
Speaker 1: from birth, didn't it didn't have any sh in their diet,
Speaker 1: you know, like very few chemicals, very little sugar, very
Speaker 1: little processed food, you know, very few chemicals in the house.
Speaker 1: And of course you don't have a b sample to
Speaker 1: compare your tribe too. But how much of an impact
Speaker 1: do you think that the way you know, what was
Speaker 1: put in their body and what their bodies were exposed
Speaker 1: to more broadly kept them mentally well because we know
Speaker 1: there's a relationship between food and mental health, among other things.
Speaker 2: Well, touchwood doing okay so far.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, youngest ones are now twenty one and doing
Speaker 3: okay so far. I think it's more the case of
Speaker 3: a good setup. Everyone's healthy till they're twenty. You know,
Speaker 3: the human the human body is extremely resilient. It can
Speaker 3: take a lot of punishment in the younger years, but
Speaker 3: some of the stuff you do to it then can
Speaker 3: set you up for bad outcomes later on.
Speaker 2: And I probably fall into that category.
Speaker 3: You know, I probably wrecked my teeth through the way
Speaker 3: I ate until my early thirties when I started reading
Speaker 3: and doing something about sugar. And they've been fine since then,
Speaker 3: but you know, I didn't give them a good start.
Speaker 3: And I think it's not just teeth that are in
Speaker 3: that category. Lots of people are doing lots of damage
Speaker 3: with no visible symptoms until they hit their thirties and
Speaker 3: then they start to worry about it. And sometimes it's
Speaker 3: too late. Sometimes it's reversible, but sometimes it isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so true. I mean, obviously, depending on what
Speaker 1: you're doing and how much you know shit, you're either
Speaker 1: eating or exposing yourself to or doing or not doing.
Speaker 1: But I feel like, having worked with lots of people
Speaker 1: face to face, one on one with them their bodies
Speaker 1: and with them the inhabitants of said body, that people
Speaker 1: can kind of get away with some pretty rubbish lifestyle
Speaker 1: habits and behaviors till around thirty. But yeah, if somebody's
Speaker 1: flogged themselves or they're forty five or fifty, you can improve,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty you can't reverse it, like you're never
Speaker 1: gonna You can improve, and you can make better decisions
Speaker 1: and choices, and you know, upgrade their physiology somewhat. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a point of no return, I reckon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think a lot of things are reversible, particularly
Speaker 3: the sugar related damage. Seed oil is less so, but
Speaker 3: the sugar related damage. You know, you can be pre
Speaker 3: diabetic and cut the sugar out and reverse that and
Speaker 3: really swerve away from type two diabetes, you know, kidney disease.
Speaker 3: The damage is cumulative and relatively permanent, and that's another
Speaker 3: consequence of sugar consumption. Luckily, we can get by on
Speaker 3: kidneys that only work five percent of the time. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, at five percent efficiency, you know. But sadly,
Speaker 3: between twenty and one and twenty twenty two, for example,
Speaker 3: kidney dialysis admissions tripled in Australia. We've gone from a
Speaker 3: non existent disease to a serious, serious, chronic disease. And
Speaker 3: then that's a very bad one because kidney dialysis is
Speaker 3: a daily thing just to keep you alive. And before
Speaker 3: we were talking about those type two diabetes stats. Five
Speaker 3: point three percent is a fairly dry stat but that
Speaker 3: means every day twelve people in Australia will have an
Speaker 3: amputation because of type two diabetes. Every day, twelve to day,
Speaker 3: another twelve tomorrow, another twelve the day after, and twenty
Speaker 3: seven more are admitted to hospital for complications of diabetes.
Speaker 3: So this is starting to be a seriously, seriously bad story,
Speaker 3: and it just gets worse and it's accelerating, and the
Speaker 3: only way to change it is actually have our healthy
Speaker 3: eaty guidelines be healthy eaty guidelines, have it that a
Speaker 3: five star rated food is actually something that's full of
Speaker 3: saturated fat and has no sugar in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the thing with type two diabetes too, is
Speaker 1: without you know, trying to be insensitive. It's like completely
Speaker 1: self created. It's like we do it.
Speaker 2: Is, but there's no judgment in that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's I mean that, Yeah, of course it's
Speaker 3: it's a consequence of doing what they told us to do.
Speaker 1: That is true. Yeah, yeah, it's always fun, sir. Do
Speaker 1: you want to steer our audience towards anything? I know
Speaker 1: you're the worst self promoter of all time, But.
Speaker 2: Well they can go and have a look at that
Speaker 2: substack I put.
Speaker 3: I put a new article up every couple of days
Speaker 3: there so, and we talk about one or two of
Speaker 3: them every fortnight. But there's always interesting stuff there if
Speaker 3: you want to have a look at it.
Speaker 1: All right, I appreciate you as ways, we'll say goodbye
Speaker 1: fair but again thanks for your time, buddy.
Speaker 2: Pleasure