Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Halloway. So, Tracy, we've
Speaker 1: been working together for a long time, a few years,
Speaker 1: maybe coming on three and a half years or something,
Speaker 1: and we've been doing three years, yeah, three years, and
Speaker 1: we've been doing this podcast for a while. But do
Speaker 1: you think we really know each other well? Like? Do
Speaker 1: you think I don't know? Do you think so well?
Speaker 1: The fact that you're asking me this question worries me
Speaker 1: a bit and makes me think that maybe you think
Speaker 1: that we don't know each other that well. But I
Speaker 1: also feel like you share a lot of yourself on
Speaker 1: social media, so I learned about you through that avenue.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. And we've traveled together and stuff.
Speaker 1: We've traveled to London together for work, and we've traveled
Speaker 1: to Hong Kong and we've gone out to eat in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, various night markets in Hong Kong. So I'd
Speaker 1: say we know each other pretty well. I hope so
Speaker 1: I really do. But why are you asking me? Because
Speaker 1: one sometimes I wonder if, like I've always throughout my life,
Speaker 1: I've had this sort of very weird interest in unconventional
Speaker 1: dietary habits, extreme diets in one way or another. I
Speaker 1: was vegan for a long time. I was raised vegetarian.
Speaker 1: I've always just sort of been fascinated by people who
Speaker 1: take ideas to the extreme in one way. And I
Speaker 1: sort of wonder whether we've ever talked about that at all. Well,
Speaker 1: I was about to say that that I do know
Speaker 1: about I know about your history as a vegan growing up,
Speaker 1: and I know I think it wasn't until you were
Speaker 1: in college or something like that that you actually ate meat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, So you're probably crazy. Sorry, I can't imagine it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially anyone who follows me on Instagram. Anyway, Probably people
Speaker 1: who are listening are wondering where the heck we are
Speaker 1: going with this conversation, aren't they? Yes, has Odd Lots
Speaker 1: become a cooking show, which we totally should do, By
Speaker 1: the way, I'd be totally fine with that, and I
Speaker 1: was seriousness. But today I think we're going to have
Speaker 1: a very nice crossover between multiple topics, because we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking to an economist who has been blogging
Speaker 1: for a long time and writing about various aspects of
Speaker 1: the economy and monetary policy and stuff like that, who
Speaker 1: also of late, has been writing about diet and obesity
Speaker 1: and the research that he has done in this area,
Speaker 1: and much of what he talks about is of high
Speaker 1: interest to me. Today we are going to be talking
Speaker 1: to Miles Kimball. He is an economics professor at the
Speaker 1: University of Colorado in Boulder. He has a great blog
Speaker 1: called supply Side Liberal, where he writes about all kinds
Speaker 1: of topics, including economics. But lately he's been writing a
Speaker 1: lot about obesity and diet, and he has become a
Speaker 1: proponent of fasting, so going long intervals without eating anything
Speaker 1: at all, and why that is an important and feasible
Speaker 1: approach to losing weight. And I find his insights in
Speaker 1: this journey to be extremely interesting. So on that note, Myles,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Thanks that's great
Speaker 1: that you could have me so, Miles, Before we get
Speaker 1: into your interests in obesity and the merits of fasting,
Speaker 1: and the merits of eating high fat diets and all
Speaker 1: this stuff which interests me a lot, I'm curious about
Speaker 1: your career. You're you're an economist, You're at the University
Speaker 1: of Colorado, Boulder. What's been your sort of primary focus
Speaker 1: of study throughout these years. Oh well, actually I'm labeled
Speaker 1: a macar economists, but I'm interested in almost everything. In fact,
Speaker 1: just like people google themselves, I look up my ranking
Speaker 1: on this research papers in economic site repic and of
Speaker 1: course you want to cherry pick the one that makes
Speaker 1: you rank the highest. And the thing I rank the
Speaker 1: highest and is the diversity of of citations across fields
Speaker 1: of economics. So I'm interested in almost everything. You have
Speaker 1: to search hard for something within economics that I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in, and you know many things that are outside
Speaker 1: the traditional boundaries of economics. So does nutrition count as
Speaker 1: economics in this context? Or I guess what I'm asking
Speaker 1: is how you got interested in that topic. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you my view on that first of all, and
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is true of other disciplines as well.
Speaker 1: What defines economics to me is the training that economists get,
Speaker 1: and of course that evolves over time, but very slowly.
Speaker 1: And so given the training that economists have, I think
Speaker 1: that the economists should go out and address every scientific
Speaker 1: question that they are well prepared to address that they
Speaker 1: have in economist terms of compared advantage at addressing the
Speaker 1: other thing I think is that any important scientific question
Speaker 1: you can't trust one discipline to do it. Every important
Speaker 1: scientific question you need at least two different scientific disciplines
Speaker 1: with different traditions to look at it, because every individual
Speaker 1: scientific discipline, including economics, gets to have an orthodoxy and
Speaker 1: it gets blind spots. So if you don't have two
Speaker 1: different scientific disciplines looking at every important question, you're going
Speaker 1: to get in big trouble. So obviously obesity, you will
Speaker 1: just jump right into the topic at hand. Obesity is
Speaker 1: a issue that intuitively spends many different disciplines and questions
Speaker 1: about obesity because obviously there's health within that. There's nutrition,
Speaker 1: public policy, sociology, certain aspects of behavioral stuff, why people
Speaker 1: eat what they eat or live a certain lifestyle the
Speaker 1: way they do. You know, I think it's pretty intuitive
Speaker 1: that there are many ways to attack it. But before
Speaker 1: we get to sort of some of your research on it,
Speaker 1: what is the conventional story about how people become OBEs?
Speaker 1: The mainstream view that is perhaps riddled with some blind spots,
Speaker 1: which people eat too much and exercise too little. That's
Speaker 1: the conventional view. And what's wrong with that view? Oh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't ask why people eat too much. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the exercise too little is is easier to understand.
Speaker 1: But even that, there's is more affected by what you
Speaker 1: eat than you might think. You know, if you eat
Speaker 1: things that give you a lot of energy or that
Speaker 1: leave you with a lot of energy, then you'll tend
Speaker 1: to move around more. And but it matters what you
Speaker 1: eat and when you eat, because that will determine your
Speaker 1: energy levels, it will determine how many calories you feel
Speaker 1: like eating. So the blind spot is acting as if
Speaker 1: we just consciously choose the amount we eat and consciously
Speaker 1: choose the mount we move around. That's not true at all.
Speaker 1: You have all kinds of things below the conscious level
Speaker 1: that are and sometimes literally metabolic things that are determining
Speaker 1: how much energy you burn and how many calories you eat. Wait,
Speaker 1: but isn't the conventional wisdom that when it comes to
Speaker 1: how much we want to eat, we are biologically programmed
Speaker 1: to get basically as many calories and fat into our
Speaker 1: system as possible. Right Like we evolved from cavemen that
Speaker 1: had to harvest things, and they tried to save up
Speaker 1: energy for the lean times, the lean winters, and that
Speaker 1: continues today. And well, that I think is a myth.
Speaker 1: I mean, the way to see that it's a myth
Speaker 1: is that there are many many other types of animals
Speaker 1: that had a similar kind of issue with, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to survive the winter or lean times as
Speaker 1: humans did. And animals don't get obese like humans do. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're a hibernating animal and you've got to sleep
Speaker 1: through the winter, you've got to get fat before you
Speaker 1: go and sleep through the winter, or you wouldn't make
Speaker 1: it through the winter. But other than seasonal things like that,
Speaker 1: animals don't get very fat, and evolutionarily, the reason is
Speaker 1: there's a real cost to being fat. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't run away from predators as well if you get
Speaker 1: too fat. That matters for that mattered for our ancestors too.
Speaker 1: You can't you can't move as fast in order to
Speaker 1: catch wild game either if you're too fat. So there
Speaker 1: are plenty of evolutionary disadvantages to being too fat. This
Speaker 1: this argument just doesn't hold water, though it's widely believed.
Speaker 1: So what made you Before we get into your own
Speaker 1: endeavors in the area and some of your thoughts on
Speaker 1: the subject, what made you interested in this topic other
Speaker 1: than the fact that you're a poly math who's who
Speaker 1: is interested in everything. How did this become an area
Speaker 1: of focus and you thought it would be worth putting
Speaker 1: time into it? Well, really personal, it's because I've been
Speaker 1: interested in losing weight myself, and I've never been dramatically overweight,
Speaker 1: and the averages in our society have gone up enough
Speaker 1: so that I don't think I've ever stood out as
Speaker 1: being as being fat, but I've felt overweight and wanted
Speaker 1: to lose weight, and so it's exploring over time what
Speaker 1: would work. You know, back in the I think it
Speaker 1: must have been the eighties. I listened to the advice
Speaker 1: that was out there to eat low fat, and so
Speaker 1: so I did that with I mean I tend to
Speaker 1: pursue things fairly thoroughly, so I ate a lot of
Speaker 1: them milk and brand flakes, and I gained quite a
Speaker 1: few pounds on that. So I've been interested just for
Speaker 1: personal reasons and trying to keep my weight under control
Speaker 1: or like many many people, and that sparks the intellectual interest. So, Miles,
Speaker 1: what was it that you found in your research. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it's going to be something that contradicted the popular
Speaker 1: nighties advice to eat a low fat diet, and Joe,
Speaker 1: I know that partly by watching your Instagram and your
Speaker 1: Twitter feeds where you're eating a lot of fatty foods. Well,
Speaker 1: Joe has oversold my my research a little bit. So
Speaker 1: I am indeed involved in research projects involving obesity, but
Speaker 1: they have begun very very recently, since you know, not
Speaker 1: not that long before I started blogging about this issue.
Speaker 1: What I have done is identified some really great books
Speaker 1: on the subject. So I'm a big fan of Jason
Speaker 1: fun who wrote the book The Obesity Code and then
Speaker 1: the Complete Guide the Fasting. He's a doctor who started
Speaker 1: out as a kidney doctor, but then you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of kidney problems come from diabetes. Eatis and diabetes
Speaker 1: is associated with people being overweight. So pretty soon Jason
Speaker 1: Flung got involved in trying to help his patients lose weight.
Speaker 1: And he then started with putting them on a low
Speaker 1: carb diet, and he found that was actually a little
Speaker 1: hard for them, and that worked, but it was hard
Speaker 1: for them to understand. He would tell them to not
Speaker 1: eat bread, and then they would come back and said, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't eat any bread, I only ate pea and this,
Speaker 1: And so he found that and they they didn't have
Speaker 1: time and everything, and so he found that fasting that
Speaker 1: is periods of time with eating essentially no food, you know,
Speaker 1: drinking water or drinking coffee, drinking tea, but not eating
Speaker 1: any food was actually easier for people to do then
Speaker 1: to change in a complicated way that things they were eating,
Speaker 1: and he had great success with that. It's also something
Speaker 1: where not my research, but many people's research is starting
Speaker 1: to verify the idea that fasting for periods of time
Speaker 1: is really really helpful. And you know, sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: the research isn't quite as on point as I'd like,
Speaker 1: but it definitely reinforces. In other words, they're not doing
Speaker 1: it exactly the way I would do it, but still
Speaker 1: if it suggests that fasting is really really helpful, So Miles,
Speaker 1: not to bang on about the conventional wisdom, but isn't
Speaker 1: the response to fasting usually that you put your body
Speaker 1: in starvation mode and your metabolism ends up slowing. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what puts you in starvation mode. If you
Speaker 1: restrict your calories but spread them out throughout the day
Speaker 1: every day, that will put your body in starvation mode.
Speaker 1: That's a big mistake. What you don't want to do
Speaker 1: is just cut back on the amount you eat, but
Speaker 1: spread it out through every day in the kind of
Speaker 1: timing that people normally do. That's a huge mistake. Puts
Speaker 1: you in starvation mode. Fasting doesn't, because what happens is
Speaker 1: if you have no food at all, then for anyone,
Speaker 1: your insulin levels and other associated hormones will get low
Speaker 1: enough so that your your body starts burning its own fat.
Speaker 1: And once you burn your own fat, you've got energy
Speaker 1: flowing through your bloodstream and you're going to be fine.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of nutrition for yourselves because with designs for
Speaker 1: periods of of no food if if not, our ancestors
Speaker 1: wouldn't have survived. So this is a really important distinction
Speaker 1: that we need to clarify. The goal of going for
Speaker 1: periods and so in your view and in the work
Speaker 1: of some of these researchers, is not to reduce calories.
Speaker 1: It's not to say, take a typical American diet and
Speaker 1: then dropped the amount of calories by It's to lengthen
Speaker 1: the window of time when you're getting no calories. But
Speaker 1: during the periods when you are eating two eat sort
Speaker 1: of a normal amount of food. Absolutely, Yeah, So what
Speaker 1: happens during that window. Why is it important to sort
Speaker 1: of restrict your eating to a narrow window even if
Speaker 1: you end up eating the same amount of calories as
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't fast. Well, you know, thinking about it
Speaker 1: as a window is really a convenient way to think
Speaker 1: about it. But what actually matters is the length of
Speaker 1: the periods of time with no food. You know, if
Speaker 1: if you're eating at least once a day, then the
Speaker 1: length of the eating window is by arithmetic, that's going
Speaker 1: to be closely related to the periods of time with
Speaker 1: no food. But it's really the length of periods of
Speaker 1: time with no food that matters. And if you're you
Speaker 1: skip a whole day of eating, obviously that then it
Speaker 1: gets to be I think different from just the length
Speaker 1: of the window. But what happens is most of us
Speaker 1: are to some degree insulin resistance, and actually what that
Speaker 1: means is your body then produces extra insulin. And what
Speaker 1: that means is if we eat even a little bit
Speaker 1: of food, we're going to hang onto the fat. And
Speaker 1: so if you really have to get very very low
Speaker 1: on your body's hormonal signals of insulin and related hormones
Speaker 1: before you're going to burn your fat, and for most
Speaker 1: of us. You know, if if you ate well all
Speaker 1: your life, this might not be true. But for most
Speaker 1: of us, we've already missed, missed our system up enough
Speaker 1: that the only way to get to where you're really
Speaker 1: burning a lot of fat is by substantial periods without food.
Speaker 1: It's just things less than that you just won't cut
Speaker 1: it very well. It might work a little bit, but
Speaker 1: in the tough cases, let's put it that way. In
Speaker 1: the tough cases, it's the periods without food that really matters.
Speaker 1: On your blog, you talk about insulin and you liken
Speaker 1: it to money supply or velocity of money supply, and
Speaker 1: then you talk about inflation and you liken that to
Speaker 1: body weight. Can you walk us through that parallel? How
Speaker 1: do you see the connection? Absolutely that this is This
Speaker 1: is one thing I can bring that's new to it
Speaker 1: is comparative economic and obesity. So let's think about it.
Speaker 1: So what happened in the seventies, This is something that,
Speaker 1: by the way, is burned into the brains as central bankers.
Speaker 1: And why I don't think we're going to have a
Speaker 1: lot of inflation in the future because the way people
Speaker 1: are trained in economics, PhD programs and the way the
Speaker 1: people come out of financial backgrounds feeling about inflation. It's
Speaker 1: like that was a big bad example in the seventies
Speaker 1: when we increase the money supply too much for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons, and we got the double digit in
Speaker 1: lation in the seventies. And then how did that end?
Speaker 1: It ended when Paul Looker decided, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: willing to have a recession to bring down inflation. Okay,
Speaker 1: you could try to bring down inflation without from double
Speaker 1: digits to you know, four without a recession, but good luck.
Speaker 1: The success rate of trying to bring down inflation without
Speaker 1: a long way, like you know, eight percentage points or
Speaker 1: something without without a serious recession or some kind of
Speaker 1: recession is not so great. So the analogy is, if
Speaker 1: you're significantly overweight, good luck trying to bring down your
Speaker 1: weight without the equivalent of a recession, which here is
Speaker 1: a period of time with no eating. The big difference
Speaker 1: I've got to say is recessions are horrible, but fasting
Speaker 1: it's not. Fasting is remarkably easy if you do it right. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that aspect, because I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: a behavioral economics sort of substory within this or just
Speaker 1: a behavioral story at all. Because people are sort of
Speaker 1: familiar with various adjacent diet ideas. So people have obviously
Speaker 1: been pitched the low carb idea for a long time.
Speaker 1: That's pretty well known in popular culture. The keto diet,
Speaker 1: which is pretty similar ideas also, people have heard that
Speaker 1: buzzword a lot. But one of the persistent problems with
Speaker 1: almost any scheme via which people lose weight is the
Speaker 1: ability to stick to the plan, And so people come
Speaker 1: up with all kinds of personal tricks to stick to it,
Speaker 1: but in the end that proves to be very difficult.
Speaker 1: So maybe some diet will work for three months and
Speaker 1: then people revert. So what is it about the fasting
Speaker 1: approach that you say is easy and which in your
Speaker 1: view creates a higher degree of durability? Shows that well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I want to say that it's proven
Speaker 1: that this is durable. Jason fun has good experience with
Speaker 1: this particularly, But why is it so? First of all,
Speaker 1: the great secret is that a low carb diet and
Speaker 1: fasting go brilliantly together. The fasting is really hard if
Speaker 1: you're eating a lot of sugar and bread and potatoes
Speaker 1: and stuff in your normal diet and then you try
Speaker 1: to go straight over to fast. And so most people's
Speaker 1: experience of having a period with no food is pretty
Speaker 1: unpleasant because they're going straight from their usual, you know,
Speaker 1: diet with the sugar and the processed food and the
Speaker 1: bread and the potatoes and the rice and everything, to fast.
Speaker 1: Think that is tough, That is tough, That is painful.
Speaker 1: But if you're eating low carb h you know, no,
Speaker 1: you know, you basically stay away from bread and potatoes
Speaker 1: and rice and sugar, and and you know, if you
Speaker 1: stay away from sugar, you're gonna pretty much have to
Speaker 1: stay away from most processed foods too. So sometimes people
Speaker 1: talk about processed foods as the big bad but but
Speaker 1: you can't really distinguish processed foods from foods with sugar
Speaker 1: very well. There. You know, almost processed foods have sugar
Speaker 1: in them. So who knows whether it's processed foods that
Speaker 1: are bad or foods with sugar in them, because they're
Speaker 1: almost the same thing. But if you if you stay
Speaker 1: away from sugar and bread and potatoes and rice, and
Speaker 1: then you can fast. And here's what I'll say. It's
Speaker 1: not like you're not going to be hungry at all.
Speaker 1: But it's a mild form of hunger. It's not insistent hunger.
Speaker 1: So what do I mean by a mild form of hunger?
Speaker 1: I mean that you can distract yourself if you have
Speaker 1: a if you have a good TV show, you're not
Speaker 1: going to feel it while you're watching the TV show.
Speaker 1: If you're busy with work, you're not going to feel it.
Speaker 1: In fact, I time my fast to be my big
Speaker 1: busy work days. You know you can. You don't have
Speaker 1: to do a regiment. The funny thing about these fasting books,
Speaker 1: including Bason Funds, is they have all these systems for
Speaker 1: the timing of the fast. But the beautiful thing about
Speaker 1: fasting is you do it whatever the heck do you
Speaker 1: feel like it. It doesn't have to be on any schedule.
Speaker 1: Any substantial period of time with no food is going
Speaker 1: to help you lose weight and help, you know, improve
Speaker 1: your body system, and a variety of other ways too,
Speaker 1: So you don't have to do it in any regular way.
Speaker 1: It you need to have enough discipline to do a
Speaker 1: certain total amount of fasting of periods with no food,
Speaker 1: but any old schedule. You want substantial periods of time
Speaker 1: with no food, make sure you're you can you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff going, so you can be distracted,
Speaker 1: you know, even then I'm you know, if you real quickly,
Speaker 1: when you talk about a substantial period of time, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Well, so you experiment on yourself
Speaker 1: and see what works. So one of the simple facts
Speaker 1: about losing weight, and there's some interesting science behind this,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot easier when that that when your
Speaker 1: weight is high to begin with, then as you get
Speaker 1: closer to go away. And so at the beginning, just
Speaker 1: going off sugar is gonna do a ton for you
Speaker 1: in terms of losing weight. And if you go off
Speaker 1: sugar and bread and potatoes and rice, you're going to
Speaker 1: lose a lot of weight. Typically that might take you
Speaker 1: let's say that takes you ten pounds, then a plateau,
Speaker 1: then you can maybe you get another fifteen just from eating,
Speaker 1: uh you know, for a while. Anyway, while you're an
Speaker 1: active weight loss, eating just once a day. So you
Speaker 1: eat once a day. For when I say once a day,
Speaker 1: you might have a four hour eating window and basically
Speaker 1: within the realm of low carb you basically eat whatever
Speaker 1: you want as much as you want within a four
Speaker 1: hour window. And that twenty hour period of fasting before
Speaker 1: the next day, you're gonna lose a lot of weight
Speaker 1: from that. And then you know, if you plateau and
Speaker 1: you still or maybe you plateau and you're creeping up
Speaker 1: a little bit, then you know you can skip a
Speaker 1: whole day of eating. And the thing is, if you
Speaker 1: do it gradually like this, if you do it in
Speaker 1: those three steps, you'll find it isn't so hard. You know,
Speaker 1: because you've gone off sugar and you know, some other carbs. First,
Speaker 1: you don't even start trying to do the fasting until
Speaker 1: you've done that. And then because the fasting as associated
Speaker 1: with the low carb it's easier. And then you know,
Speaker 1: if you've been fasting for twenty hours for many, many days,
Speaker 1: you kind of have the tricks down and you've figured
Speaker 1: out how to distract yourself and everything, and it's not
Speaker 1: insistent hunger. So going a whole day without food when
Speaker 1: it's a busy day at work just isn't that hard. So, Miles,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this conversation, you drew a bit
Speaker 1: of an analogy between economics as a topic and nutritional
Speaker 1: theory as a topic. And one parallel I see between
Speaker 1: the these two things is that different economic theories or
Speaker 1: schools fall in and out of fashion in the same
Speaker 1: way that different nutritional theories fall in and out of
Speaker 1: fashion throughout the years. So we used to be told
Speaker 1: that cholesterol was bad, for instance, and now there's a
Speaker 1: general recognition that maybe it's not as terrible for us
Speaker 1: as we once thought it was. I guess I'm just wondering, like,
Speaker 1: what confidence can we have in this theory that you're
Speaker 1: talking about that this is the correct one if previous
Speaker 1: theories have been discredited at various times, well, you should
Speaker 1: only have a modest degree of confidence in it. I mean,
Speaker 1: definitely try it. But we've got to do research on
Speaker 1: all these things. So they're really you know, this stuff
Speaker 1: is worth so much money for the federal budget. It
Speaker 1: is pennywise and found foolish that the government is not
Speaker 1: spending a huge amount of extra money on doing the
Speaker 1: kinds of trials on all kinds of variations on this
Speaker 1: theme to see whether they work or not. Basically, if
Speaker 1: you have only a limited amount of government funding for
Speaker 1: for the kinds of trials where you have some people
Speaker 1: try one theory and some people try another and monitor
Speaker 1: them carefully and collected data, if you only have a
Speaker 1: limited amount of government money. You're only going to attest
Speaker 1: the orthodox see and so you know, every once in
Speaker 1: a while a study that's testing something other than the
Speaker 1: orthodoxy manages to get funded, and we learn a lot
Speaker 1: from that. But I mean, one of the best ways
Speaker 1: to keep from an exploding federal budget deficit in the
Speaker 1: future as the population ages is for us to actually
Speaker 1: spend more money on obesity research. Now, you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: confidence in what anybody's saying, including what I'm saying, without
Speaker 1: a lot more research. What I'm saying is I have
Speaker 1: enough confidence in this to know it ought to be
Speaker 1: carefully researched. Miles. Final question here, So you, speaking of
Speaker 1: study design, you say, okay, there should be more research.
Speaker 1: You also hinted earlier in the discussion that in all
Speaker 1: the studies you've read on the topic, you haven't totally
Speaker 1: been satisfied with the approach. So let's say the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Health were to come to you and say,
Speaker 1: Miles Kimball, please design the gold standard study that would
Speaker 1: help us determine whether a fasting regiment was truly a
Speaker 1: healthy and sustainable way for people to lose weight. What
Speaker 1: is the dream study that you would design Okay, first
Speaker 1: of all, I'd love to do ten studies. No one
Speaker 1: study can do it. But I mean, we can do
Speaker 1: this because I've had a little bit email exchange with
Speaker 1: the leader of the diets that study, and he'd be
Speaker 1: happy to do this. He says, you know, if you
Speaker 1: can get the funding for me, and it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be government funding, if there's if there's someone who
Speaker 1: has a substantial amount of their own money willing to
Speaker 1: fund this study, we will get it done. But what
Speaker 1: I would do would be I would, first of all,
Speaker 1: rather than focus on low car versus low fat, which
Speaker 1: is a way some of the debate has been framed,
Speaker 1: I would talk about having things low on the insulin index.
Speaker 1: So the insulin index is a little bit like the
Speaker 1: glycemic index, but it's much more directly focused on the
Speaker 1: amount of insulin your body produces when you eat different foods,
Speaker 1: and that matters because insulin is a signal, among many
Speaker 1: other things, for your body to store fat, and low
Speaker 1: levels of insulin and associated hormones are a signal for
Speaker 1: your body to burn fat. So I would focus it
Speaker 1: not on low car blow fat, although those are related.
Speaker 1: I would focus it on a low insulin index. And
Speaker 1: of course then the second thing you'd want to study
Speaker 1: is to really do fasting the way I would recommend
Speaker 1: where you you know, which is also the way Jason
Speaker 1: Fung recommends, where you have substantial periods without food. So
Speaker 1: you've had several different arms of the study where people
Speaker 1: were trying different things. I'd try to see how much
Speaker 1: you get from low insulin index, and and so this
Speaker 1: is it's not so easy to find data on the
Speaker 1: insulin index, and the easiest place to find it is
Speaker 1: a stally on my blog as I've organized it well.
Speaker 1: But you take a look. And on the fast thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Jason fun is great, except that
Speaker 1: they get a little silly about these different specific schedules
Speaker 1: that any old schedule will work. So anyway we could
Speaker 1: get this study done looking at fast being looking at
Speaker 1: low insulin index. Let me let me say one can
Speaker 1: I say one other thing about studies. One of the
Speaker 1: things you've got to realize is many people who are
Speaker 1: counted as nutrition experts are relying heavily on in the
Speaker 1: way they think about things on mouse and rats studies.
Speaker 1: So I actually question that Jason Fung, by the way,
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't trust the mouse and rats studies either. But
Speaker 1: my my logic is this, so you know, take you
Speaker 1: know mice and rats that have been hanging around human
Speaker 1: so you know, ten thousand years ago, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I forget exactly how long had the agricultural revolution and
Speaker 1: human being started eating brain and and the mice and
Speaker 1: he started eating brain along with us. And so mouse
Speaker 1: generations are only a few years and rat generations, so
Speaker 1: mice and rats have had many, many, many more generations
Speaker 1: to evolve to be well adapted to a high carb
Speaker 1: diet than humans have. And so if high carb is
Speaker 1: okay for mice and rats, I don't really trust that.
Speaker 1: Now there are other problems, like the rats that are
Speaker 1: used in the studies are actually genetically weird trained to rats,
Speaker 1: so there's a whole other problem there. But even if
Speaker 1: you just take the general category of mice and rats
Speaker 1: that have been paining around humans for ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: I worry that mice and rats are way way better
Speaker 1: adapted to high carb diets than humans are. And so
Speaker 1: if you say, oh, high carb diet is fine for
Speaker 1: a mouse or a rat, that doesn't I don't trust that.
Speaker 1: As tell like me it's okay for humans. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I never thought about this idea that there's been so
Speaker 1: many more right mouse and rat generations than there have
Speaker 1: been human generations since the advent of grains. Miles Kimball,
Speaker 1: fascinating discussion. I hope that you continue on this work
Speaker 1: and we get to read about it and your blog.
Speaker 1: I love hearing about new ideas and all kinds of categories,
Speaker 1: and we really appreciate you coming up. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much so, Tracy. You know why I really like that conversation,
Speaker 1: um because you're fasting. No, it's not because it plays
Speaker 1: to my biases at all. I would never that's never
Speaker 1: why I would like something. Of Course, I like the idea,
Speaker 1: of course, I like this idea. Of I feel like
Speaker 1: we're living in a golden age in which people with
Speaker 1: unconventional idea is on something could sort of plug away
Speaker 1: and make progress towards becoming more mainstream. Like I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the different economic ideologies that we see emerging, whether
Speaker 1: it's modern monetary theory and rethinking of deficits or people
Speaker 1: advocating things like m g DP targeting and rethinking the FED.
Speaker 1: I kind of see an analogy here. It's like all
Speaker 1: around the world and probably fakes to the Internet. There
Speaker 1: are people who say, you know what, I think that
Speaker 1: the current dominant ideology is wrong, and it feels like
Speaker 1: they can We're in a moment where they can make
Speaker 1: progress in overturning conventional wisdom. Joe, this plays into your
Speaker 1: love of extremism in general. I guess that sounds bad,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. But I guess I have to wonder is
Speaker 1: this a good thing? Is it a good thing that
Speaker 1: we're talking about different sides of an argument, different extreme
Speaker 1: sides of an argument, rather than trying to come to
Speaker 1: a more moderate consense US. I don't have an answer,
Speaker 1: but it seems worth questioning. I guess in the end,
Speaker 1: maybe I just restated another way of saying letter my biases.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I mean, I have to mention my
Speaker 1: all time favorite of food and economic story, which I
Speaker 1: think I've told you before, Joe, go on. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we talked about cholesterol, right, and how people used to
Speaker 1: think cholesterol was bad. So in the late nineties sixties,
Speaker 1: the US had an inflation problem and the government was
Speaker 1: desperately trying to bring down inflation in all sorts of ways,
Speaker 1: and uh, one of the problems where price increases were
Speaker 1: actually showing up, or one of the things where price
Speaker 1: increases were actually showing up was in egg prices. And so,
Speaker 1: according to Robert Samuelson's The Great Inflation and It's Aftermath,
Speaker 1: which is a really good book that everyone should read,
Speaker 1: the president at the time actually told the Agriculture Secretary
Speaker 1: that the Sir in general should issue alerts about the
Speaker 1: hazards of cholesterol in eggs and try to get people
Speaker 1: to stop buying them in order to bring down the price.
Speaker 1: I remember you telling that story. It's so good. It's
Speaker 1: also so depressing because you just think about how many
Speaker 1: things in modern life have origins like that. It's it's
Speaker 1: like you almost don't want to even go there because
Speaker 1: when you start feeling it back, you'll probably just be
Speaker 1: depressed left and right at how much conventional wisdom has
Speaker 1: such a cynical origin like that. Right, And for the
Speaker 1: rest of the century, we all thought that eggs were
Speaker 1: full of cholesterol and they were terrible to eat in
Speaker 1: nowadays they're actually considered healthy. And there are people who
Speaker 1: still eat egg whites without the yolks. They're still people
Speaker 1: who voted the yolk, which just seems completely crazy to me.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, all right. Um, shall we call it
Speaker 1: for the Odd Thoughts Nutritional Hour? Yes, let's not wrap
Speaker 1: it up all right. This has been another edition of
Speaker 1: the Odd Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. And
Speaker 1: you can follow our guest on Twitter, Miles Kimball. He's
Speaker 1: at Miles Kimball. And you should follow our producer tofur Foreheads.
Speaker 1: He is on Twitter at fore Heast, along with the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg head of podcasts, Francesco Levie at Francesca Today. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.