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Speaker 1: Welcome to you, Stuff you should know from house stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Chuck Bryant and Jerry
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know the podcast. Hm. Hey,
Speaker 1: congratulations to Jerry. Oh yeah, she's got married. Congratulations Jerry,
Speaker 1: way to go. She just gave a thumbs up. She
Speaker 1: has the right. Germain silent. Yeah, So congratulations to Jerry
Speaker 1: and Anna and uh sadly Jerry had to go to
Speaker 1: a different state to get married, but she did it, yes,
Speaker 1: because they have initiative. That's right, don't you, Jerry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some of the nice yeah congratulations chairs were very happy
Speaker 1: for you guys. Um so happy in fact that we
Speaker 1: have a podcast. I just realized I said I'm very
Speaker 1: happy for you guys, and its sounded not at all
Speaker 1: happy for them. I'm very happy for you. I'm really
Speaker 1: happy for you guys. Yeah, but I think everybody bought that.
Speaker 1: You're happy for him. Everybody knows you, they know me. Well,
Speaker 1: Jerry bought it, and that's what counts. Jerry, did you
Speaker 1: buy it? Think interesting? I like your French chuck thanks
Speaker 1: to something I know how to say. Uh is it? No?
Speaker 1: I mean I've got the bonjour down and Frosch fries,
Speaker 1: Frosch bread, France dressing, fross dressing. Uh. So you say
Speaker 1: all those things, French dressing, French bread, French fries, and
Speaker 1: I can tell you that none of them were around
Speaker 1: years ago. Nice segue, my friend. It wasn't. It was
Speaker 1: pretty clumsy. It felt clumsy, but thank you. Yeah. Are
Speaker 1: you talking about the Paleo diet? Yeah, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: short for Paleolithic diet. And um, this thing's been around
Speaker 1: longer than I thought. The book was written by a
Speaker 1: guy named Dr Lauren Cordain, the creator of the Paleo
Speaker 1: Diet back in two thousand two, and um, Dr Cordain
Speaker 1: is no slouch. He is a celebrated PhD in Health
Speaker 1: and Health sciences UM, and he started looking at the
Speaker 1: massive chronic health problems that face Westerners and Americans in particular,
Speaker 1: I think we might be the most chronically unhealthy country
Speaker 1: in the world. Um, as far as like beats, obesity,
Speaker 1: heart disease, all of these things go uh, and Dr
Speaker 1: Cordin is like, there's out to be a better way.
Speaker 1: And what he focused on was the idea that the
Speaker 1: Western diet is also a very modern diet, full full
Speaker 1: of processed foods, foods that are pre prepared, prepackaged, boxed.
Speaker 1: Even a lot of the pictures of the food are
Speaker 1: on the box laden with chemicals, vaive, stuff you're not
Speaker 1: gonna do at home, and um, stuff that tastes really good,
Speaker 1: mainly because it's been designed to taste really good. Um.
Speaker 1: The problem is Dr Cordain believes this stuff is really
Speaker 1: bad for us because of those preservatives as chemicals, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the good stuff that was present in
Speaker 1: and at one point has been worked out removed. So
Speaker 1: his idea was, well, let's create a diet that's the
Speaker 1: opposite of modern, that's prehistoric even. And what he came
Speaker 1: up with was the paleo or Paleolithic diet. And the
Speaker 1: Paleolithic era um ended at about the advent of agriculture.
Speaker 1: So the premise of the diet is like all of
Speaker 1: this stuff would be the same diet that a hunter
Speaker 1: gatherer would eat. Yeah, And the idea is, and this
Speaker 1: is there's a lot of controversy. Not everyone believes us
Speaker 1: any there's controversy with every diet, with every diet, But
Speaker 1: if you subscribe to this, the idea is that our
Speaker 1: body chemistry and physiology has not changed. Like if you
Speaker 1: look at a if you think of it like a
Speaker 1: hundred yard football field, we went ninety nine yards as
Speaker 1: hunter gatherers, and then the last yard is since agriculture
Speaker 1: has come around, that's the longest yard. So are so
Speaker 1: our bodies have not changed genetically and they're the same
Speaker 1: way they were back then. So to eat how they
Speaker 1: were back then and they did for thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of years, makes more sense with that analogy with what
Speaker 1: happens when we succore a touchdown, like is at the
Speaker 1: end of vanity. I don't know, Um, but the dude
Speaker 1: you mentioned he wasn't the first. That was actually a
Speaker 1: guy in the seventies that wrote a book. Um Walter
Speaker 1: Voting wrote a self published book in seventy five called
Speaker 1: The Stone Age Diet. Oh, I didn't know that based
Speaker 1: on in depth studies of human ecology and the diet
Speaker 1: of man. But like I said, it was self published
Speaker 1: and he didn't like it didn't blow up. It definitely
Speaker 1: took till the two thousands to gain traction. Has Cordaine
Speaker 1: like given this guy credit and he said, like he's
Speaker 1: based his ideas on this guy or what. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I think he was the first guy to actually
Speaker 1: coin that term. But um, yeah, these are people who
Speaker 1: subscribed to that notion that since we haven't changed physiologically
Speaker 1: and how we're supposed to eat, then we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: eating how we're eating, right, we should eat how we
Speaker 1: used to eat. I would suggest that that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 1: And part of the problem with saying things like that,
Speaker 1: or saying like, you know this is this is how
Speaker 1: paleolithic body human body um absorbed nutrients or these are
Speaker 1: the nutrients that could absorbed. You're you're making a pretty
Speaker 1: broad and unsubstantiated claim in and of itself, like they did. Okay, Well, also,
Speaker 1: you don't have a paleolithic body to dissect to study. Um.
Speaker 1: All you have are modern bodies and assumptions about what
Speaker 1: paleolithic diets were like. Now, I mean, there are still
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer tribes currently, but I haven't seen anybody say, well,
Speaker 1: we study these hunter gatherer tribes specifically for a very
Speaker 1: long time, and we've concluded that this paleo diet is
Speaker 1: is totally supported by this. It's basically people saying, no,
Speaker 1: this is what Paleolithic people would have eaten, so this
Speaker 1: is how how their body would have been. And when
Speaker 1: they make a step to that second sentence, you're you're
Speaker 1: making a jump into an unsubstantiated claim. Just keep that
Speaker 1: in mind. That's all. And like you said, every every
Speaker 1: diet on earth is you're gonna find studies that say
Speaker 1: they're great and studies that say they're not so great.
Speaker 1: You're going to find people who say the food pyramid
Speaker 1: is what you should look at, and other people to
Speaker 1: say the food pyramids out of whack and we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be eating that many grains. Pyramid is out of whack. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But like you know, there is no definitive right or wrong.
Speaker 1: I think because every time there's a study done, it
Speaker 1: seems like there's another study that can refute it. You
Speaker 1: just hit the nail on the head. There is no
Speaker 1: right or wrong because we don't understand our body, our
Speaker 1: bodies and our bodies metabolic processes enough to say this
Speaker 1: one's right and this one's wrong for everybody. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no baseline that's been established. We don't
Speaker 1: know quite enough yet. And so the problem has been
Speaker 1: as we've set ourselves back decade after decade by basically
Speaker 1: picking a study whichever one got the media play and
Speaker 1: seemed the most sensible, and going with that, throwing lots
Speaker 1: of money and education, time and effort at bolstering that
Speaker 1: the findings of that study, even though it may or
Speaker 1: may not have been the case, rather than just saying, like,
Speaker 1: we're still figuring it out in the meantime, we think
Speaker 1: maybe don't eat so much of this or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that that's set us back quite a bit,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about more later. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: just personally, like, if you're if you're doing it healthily,
Speaker 1: then find something that works for you. If that's Sugar Busters, great,
Speaker 1: if that's Atkins, or if that's Weight Watchers or Jenny
Speaker 1: Craig or super Calorie Restriction or whatever. Not everything is
Speaker 1: gonna work for everyone, you know, or or paleo you
Speaker 1: know what are the other names, the warrior diet or
Speaker 1: the caveman diet. They're you know, they're fads, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean there can't be something to some of them
Speaker 1: for some people. Well, the other thing I think about
Speaker 1: diets that makes each one so controversial two is that
Speaker 1: they do end up ultimately being fats. But every single
Speaker 1: one of the diets aspires to be that one diet
Speaker 1: that works for everybody. They all kind of claim that,
Speaker 1: and that's to sell books, you know, let's get real,
Speaker 1: But there are It's not like these things are are
Speaker 1: necessarily just totally made up out of the whole cloth.
Speaker 1: Like we'll talk about the paleo diet and and and
Speaker 1: the basis of it. Right. So the whole idea is
Speaker 1: is that, like I said, the modern diet has a
Speaker 1: lot of foods involved in it that are not good
Speaker 1: for you. And by cutting those things out, that's step one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically eating cleaner. Right. But step two isn't just like, okay,
Speaker 1: so anything that you can find growing on a tree
Speaker 1: or you know that that has a face and you
Speaker 1: and you can eat it, um besides humans is healthy
Speaker 1: for you. Um, there's if you take it a little
Speaker 1: bit further, Uh, there's some things that you really shouldn't
Speaker 1: eat according to the Paleo diet. One of the things
Speaker 1: that it's centered around are foods that if you have
Speaker 1: to cook them to gain nutrients from them, Like beans
Speaker 1: are a really good example. Uh, you can't eat them.
Speaker 1: You don't want them. In the case of the Paleo diet,
Speaker 1: the reason is they affect gut health supposedly, right, what else, welch,
Speaker 1: I mean, should we just go ahead and talk about
Speaker 1: what is on the good list and the bad list?
Speaker 1: Just so if you, I mean you've probably heard of
Speaker 1: the diet before, especially lately, but generally very high in protein. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people make the mistake of saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just like eating huge steaks all the time, and
Speaker 1: and you know, pulling pulling women by their hair like
Speaker 1: it's like that. It's actually now they say proteins like
Speaker 1: fifteen or nineteen of the diet, right, whereas um protein
Speaker 1: for the average diet here in the West is about
Speaker 1: so more protein. Um. And when we say protein, we
Speaker 1: mean poultry and pork and fish and eggs, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, even red meat is on there of course. Uh,
Speaker 1: then lower carbohydrates, like a lower amount of carbohydrates and
Speaker 1: different kinds of carbohydrates. That's right, Um, The carbs you
Speaker 1: want are slow burning carbs. UM. And the idea behind
Speaker 1: this extends beyond just the paleo diet. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of diets, including Atkins, that believe in lowering carbs, and
Speaker 1: they based it on But it's not no carbs. You
Speaker 1: do want some carbs because your body does need some energy.
Speaker 1: But you you do want some carbs, but you want
Speaker 1: carbs from things like an apple, or from celery or
Speaker 1: black olives, things that are slow burning carbs that will
Speaker 1: give you energy without raising your blood sugar. Something with
Speaker 1: them low on the glycemic index. Yeah, that's how it's scored.
Speaker 1: So something that has about fifty five or lower on
Speaker 1: the glycemic index is considered low. And that's what you
Speaker 1: want as far as the carbohydrate is concerned, because it
Speaker 1: is going to give you energy without raising your blood sugar.
Speaker 1: When you raise your blood sugar, as I think we've
Speaker 1: talked about recently, UM, the insulin comes out to stabilize
Speaker 1: your blood sugar well, insulince and is a signal to
Speaker 1: your liver to start producing fat for storage and that's
Speaker 1: why you tend to gain weight when you eat carbohydrates,
Speaker 1: because your blood sugar spikes and your insulin comes out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the difference, like, that's the difference between eating a
Speaker 1: sweet potato or a regular baked potato. Sweet potato, good,
Speaker 1: baked potato not so good. Yeah, And it's glycemic index
Speaker 1: both carbohydrates though, right. The problem is also is the
Speaker 1: glycemic index is extraordinarily unproven. Still it's a I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's a relatively new thing, but it's been
Speaker 1: used much more frequently recently. But if you start really
Speaker 1: looking into the glycemic index, any uh reasonable source will say, like,
Speaker 1: here's the glycemic index. This is a pretty good understanding
Speaker 1: of it. But the difference between a tart apple in
Speaker 1: a very ripe sweet apple. You can't just say apples
Speaker 1: have a glycemic index of whatever, like one that's ripened
Speaker 1: more than another that's just the same exact apple from
Speaker 1: the same tree. You're going to have radically different glycemic induseries.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So I mean, like a solid point too,
Speaker 1: because it seems like there are too many definitive statements
Speaker 1: about diet when there shouldn't be. Absolutely the one that
Speaker 1: I think keeps coming up again and again. That's the
Speaker 1: most sensible is Well, we'll get too later, but it
Speaker 1: involves it's moderation basically. You know, paying attention to your
Speaker 1: food is very important, but but moderation, you know, like
Speaker 1: eating a bunch of Twinkies over the course of your lifetime,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna kill you. But if you have to
Speaker 1: box of twinkies a day, like that's that's kill you.
Speaker 1: And that's a moderate moderate ration. Is is I think
Speaker 1: the key to health. I agree, man, And that's sort
Speaker 1: of the key to I think most things in life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it pops up everywhere like moderation. Our moderation
Speaker 1: is the spice of life. No, I don't think that's
Speaker 1: the phrase, but uh so. Fiber fiber is a big
Speaker 1: part of the paleo diet. Um fiber is super great
Speaker 1: for your health. And people are getting too much fiber
Speaker 1: from um grains, or at least the thought is that
Speaker 1: you're getting too much fiber from your grains, whereas you
Speaker 1: should get it um and things like fruits maybe or
Speaker 1: whole grains instead of refined grains, non starchy vegetables. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: And you if you're if you're counting carbs to um
Speaker 1: on like a low carb or no carb restricted diet
Speaker 1: like say Atkins or something. You actually look at the
Speaker 1: total carbohydrates and then some act dietary fiber to come
Speaker 1: up with what's called net carbohydrates, and those are the
Speaker 1: ones that you actually count because apparently fiber is counted
Speaker 1: toward carbohydrates, which is why it shows up in things
Speaker 1: like non starchy vegetables and things like that. But um
Speaker 1: it doesn't raise your blood sugar, which is what we
Speaker 1: come back to again and again and again. Okay, as
Speaker 1: far as weight loss is concerned, right, another part of
Speaker 1: the paleo diet is um fat intake, higher fat intake,
Speaker 1: but the what they call the right kinds of fats
Speaker 1: um oh make it three and o maga six fats mainly,
Speaker 1: so you want to get into that, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's time. So this is a well before we do, man,
Speaker 1: let's pull back from the precipice here and take a
Speaker 1: message breaks so quickly to recap things that you're gonna
Speaker 1: be eating on the paleo diet or lots of protein,
Speaker 1: lots of protein, um to vegetables, slow burning carbohydrates, fruits, nuts,
Speaker 1: things that you might have hunted and gathered, but not today.
Speaker 1: Not beans, not legumes, not modern processed foods. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: salt and refined sugar is a really big no no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we got too fat and um, this is extremely controversial.
Speaker 1: I thought this super interesting. The well, the paleo diet,
Speaker 1: like pretty much any any typical diet these days, recommends
Speaker 1: that you really take it easy on the animal fats um.
Speaker 1: And the idea that the reason why pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: recommends you take it easy on animal fats saturated fats,
Speaker 1: which are steeric acid, palmitic acid, and louric acid. Um.
Speaker 1: Those are the three biggest saturated fats found in animal fats.
Speaker 1: The idea that that everybody has for um steering clear
Speaker 1: of them is because they will give you heart disease,
Speaker 1: heart attacks, coronary disease. Yeah, if you eat too many
Speaker 1: saturated fats, you're gonna die of a heart attack exactly.
Speaker 1: This idea gave rise to a complete change in diet
Speaker 1: among Americans and Westerners in general. The whole concept of
Speaker 1: a low fat diet, which your is everywhere you go
Speaker 1: to any store. It's like fat free, low fat, fat free,
Speaker 1: low fat. Everything is low fat now there's a version
Speaker 1: of its low fat came from an initial study from
Speaker 1: the fifties by a guy named Ansel Keys who carried
Speaker 1: out what's called the Six Countries study, and he basically
Speaker 1: was the first to link animal fat intake too heart disease. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, what do they call it? The diet
Speaker 1: heart hypothesis, And um, what stinks about that whole scene
Speaker 1: is that he sort of did the elementary school science
Speaker 1: fair project approach, which is he kind of ignored the
Speaker 1: data that didn't support what he wanted and cherry picked
Speaker 1: out the data that did and went with it. And
Speaker 1: somehow like even though there was like some opposition to
Speaker 1: it at the time, somehow it became the basis for
Speaker 1: how Americans were told to eat from now on, even
Speaker 1: though it was flawed. Uh. I mean, for instance, one
Speaker 1: of the countries he studied was the United States. One
Speaker 1: of them was Japan. And he kind of said, hey,
Speaker 1: they have way more heart attacks in the US than
Speaker 1: in Japan. It's because he eat more fat. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: eat more animal fat and they have more heart attacks.
Speaker 1: Eats less animal fat and has fewer heart attacks. If so. Fact,
Speaker 1: though eating animal fat leads to heart attacks, and heart disease, right,
Speaker 1: not not considering the amount of sugar Americans aid, or
Speaker 1: bread or nothing, lifestyle or anything. Yes, no, he didn't.
Speaker 1: Nothing else was controlled for. So that was part one.
Speaker 1: Part two is, like you said, he cherry picks six
Speaker 1: countries that supported his hypothesis. Uh. And at the time
Speaker 1: some other people pointed out, uh, countries. Yeah, we've got
Speaker 1: a data for twenty two countries. And when you take
Speaker 1: all that data and do it a survey across the
Speaker 1: twenty two countries of a correlation between animal fat intake
Speaker 1: and heart disease, it goes away that correlation dissolves, not
Speaker 1: only dissolves, but like disproves it in some cases. Uh.
Speaker 1: The death rate from heart disease in Finland, for instance,
Speaker 1: was twenty four times that of Mexico, even though in
Speaker 1: Mexico the fat consumption rate was uh twice as much
Speaker 1: as Finland. That's right. So that's complete opposite finding. So
Speaker 1: Keys does the six country study in the fifties, and
Speaker 1: then in nine he follows up with the seven country study. Uh.
Speaker 1: Well he this to this time he did Japan, Italy,
Speaker 1: the US, Greece, Yugoslavia, Finland, and the Netherlands. And he
Speaker 1: found the animal fat was a strong predictor of heart
Speaker 1: attacks over a five year period. Again, Um, they basically said, dude,
Speaker 1: what are you doing, Like you're you're not doing good
Speaker 1: science here. And it's unclear, I should say, it's unclear
Speaker 1: whether keys misrepresented his data. Um, he published his findings
Speaker 1: like all that's fine. He wasn't like, I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to publish this. It was more like in his
Speaker 1: discussion at the end of the studies, they he was
Speaker 1: saying like, yeah, this kind of came up, but we're
Speaker 1: not paying attention to that. It doesn't matter, So he
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily misrepresent the facts. He It seems like he
Speaker 1: was more a victim of the media saying, yes, there's
Speaker 1: the answer. We've been wondering why Americans die more heart attacks.
Speaker 1: This guy just figured it out. It's animal fat and
Speaker 1: takes saturated fats, and it took off like a rocket
Speaker 1: from there. In the seventies. Well, it's sort of I mean,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to the ear. When you hear saturated fats,
Speaker 1: it sounds like, well, that's gotta clog your arteries and
Speaker 1: give you a heart attack. Saturated well, you know it's
Speaker 1: saturated with the word saturated means that there's no double
Speaker 1: bonds of carbon in these atty change these fatty acid chains.
Speaker 1: So unsaturated means that there's at least one atom of
Speaker 1: carbon linked to another atom of carbon in the chain.
Speaker 1: In a saturated fat, there's hydrogen carbons linking all of
Speaker 1: the carbon atoms together. That's it. It's saturated with hydrogen carbon.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean it saturates your arteries right and clogs
Speaker 1: it up, which is what it sounds like exactly. And
Speaker 1: so Keys comes up with this, It takes off like
Speaker 1: a rocket. It becomes adopted officially by the federal government
Speaker 1: to encourage a low fat diet, and study after study
Speaker 1: after study just kind of follows and Keys footsteps. The
Speaker 1: thing is is if you really kind of look at
Speaker 1: these studies, especially ones that are just pointed to, is
Speaker 1: like these are definitive proof that the that that animal fat,
Speaker 1: that saturated fat intake uh produces heart attacks. They kind
Speaker 1: of all fall apart, and you realize that for decades now,
Speaker 1: we've just been taken as gospel a first of all,
Speaker 1: an unproven correlation as causation, like completely unproven as far
Speaker 1: as like you know, unarguable evidence goes yeah, And there
Speaker 1: is definitely a dogma that's evolved around this that's been
Speaker 1: tough to crack. But a lot of scientists have been
Speaker 1: creating research and publishing research that says, look, man, we
Speaker 1: don't understand fat like you think. It's not black and
Speaker 1: white and as simple as that, Like, for example, there's
Speaker 1: l d L fat and there's HDL fat, and people
Speaker 1: typically think that HDL is good fat. L d L
Speaker 1: is bad fat. Yes, right, So if you have and
Speaker 1: your body uses cholesterol to do things that produce hormones,
Speaker 1: especially sex hormones, so you need cholesterol, right, But it's
Speaker 1: the idea that you're that animal fats raise your l
Speaker 1: d L, which is the bad cholesterol. Uh, that that
Speaker 1: gave them this bad rap. But even if you look
Speaker 1: at LDL cholesterol, not all the L cholesterol is the same.
Speaker 1: There's different things called subfractions, and depending on the subfraction,
Speaker 1: these start to correlate to heart disease finally, right, right,
Speaker 1: So some are small dns types of l d L
Speaker 1: and some are puffy and right exactly, and the pillowy
Speaker 1: ones are fine. They seem to be totally fine. And
Speaker 1: what they found also is that the overall ratio of
Speaker 1: pillowy to dnse L d L is what finally you
Speaker 1: can get a good predictor of heart disease risk, not
Speaker 1: just L d L cholesterol, but the ratio. Like you
Speaker 1: can't even say, well, this guy's got a ton of
Speaker 1: small dense ld L particles in his bloodstream, so he's
Speaker 1: going to die of a heart attack. That's not necessarily
Speaker 1: true because you haven't taken into account the fluffiness. And
Speaker 1: if you have more fluffiness then dense articles, then it's
Speaker 1: gonna even out. Yeah. Well, I like Ronald Krauss. He's
Speaker 1: a doctor out at UC Berkeley. He seems to kind
Speaker 1: of be hitting it on the head with at least
Speaker 1: how he's characterizing some of this stuff. Uh Like, one
Speaker 1: of his statements that struck me was he said it
Speaker 1: may these findings may simply suggest that unsaturated fats are
Speaker 1: are a healthier option, but not necessarily that saturated fats
Speaker 1: are killing you. And that's just a very like reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to say to me. Yeah, he seemed like a
Speaker 1: very reasonable guy when he came in the other day. Well,
Speaker 1: in this article, and we should say this is the
Speaker 1: NBC um really exhaustive NBC news article called what if
Speaker 1: bad fat isn't so bad? It's really worth reading? Well,
Speaker 1: it is, and one of the lead how the article
Speaker 1: leads in is super interesting. Um. They have found tribes
Speaker 1: in Africa, one called the mess ay Uh nomadic tribe
Speaker 1: in Kenya in Tanzania, and they basically live on a
Speaker 1: diet of fat, of of supplemented with blood from cattle,
Speaker 1: they heard, but they basically exist on red meat and
Speaker 1: whole milk. They're die it's like fat, and they're super
Speaker 1: lean and they're super healthy. And their cholesterol levels were
Speaker 1: some of the lowest they've ever measured in people. Right.
Speaker 1: So people who responded to this these these findings said, well,
Speaker 1: obviously them as I have some sort of genetic predisposition
Speaker 1: to lower cholesterol. Somehow, there's something going on. No, because
Speaker 1: they studied a group of these these tribes, people who
Speaker 1: moved to the city and basically adopted a Western diet,
Speaker 1: and all of them just immediately there they went right
Speaker 1: into the normal levels of risk for heart disease. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's clear that it's not just animal fats that
Speaker 1: are associated with heart disease, and they may not really
Speaker 1: be associated with heart disease at all, we're kind of
Speaker 1: in the stage now where science is undoing the damage
Speaker 1: while it still hasn't figured out the true answer. They
Speaker 1: just know that the that the the hot the the
Speaker 1: heart diet hypothesis has is not correct. There was more too.
Speaker 1: Why did Congress in nineteen seventy seven say this is
Speaker 1: the way to go even though the American Medical Association
Speaker 1: said this is not necessarily true? Why did Why is
Speaker 1: the food pyramid endorsed? Does it have something to do
Speaker 1: with people lobbying for grains? Like? Who knows? Um? And
Speaker 1: apparently it wasn't just nineteen seventy seven. They very recently
Speaker 1: also um the government endorsed and even lower saturated fat diet,
Speaker 1: like they dropped the percentage of calories daily from ten
Speaker 1: percent to seven percent, like this year or last year.
Speaker 1: And the big problem with this is that like it's
Speaker 1: not like, oh, all these people missed out on all
Speaker 1: that prime rib. They could have been eating the whole time, right,
Speaker 1: That's not the problem with it. The problem is is
Speaker 1: like when we adapt, when we adapted adopted this low
Speaker 1: fat diet, fat gives taste to food, Yeah, delicious taste,
Speaker 1: it does. So when you remove fat, you you you're
Speaker 1: not gonna sell a product that's just fat free or
Speaker 1: even low fat unless you add more salt, unless you
Speaker 1: add more sugar. So if you look at the nutrition
Speaker 1: info on a low fat product, like yeah, there's lower fat,
Speaker 1: but buddy, you've got a lot more calories than you do.
Speaker 1: And just the regular version of that side by side,
Speaker 1: which if you look at the medical records of every American,
Speaker 1: if you could from the sixties to today, you would
Speaker 1: find that while we reduced our intake of fat by
Speaker 1: a third, race of obesity multiplied by almost three times,
Speaker 1: and then eleven times where people have diabetes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a truth that they found
Speaker 1: that people eat more of low fat foods because they
Speaker 1: think they can. Yes, like, oh, it's just low fat mayo,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna slather up both sides of my sandwich
Speaker 1: bread because it's low fat. And again this, well that's why,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not a paleo diet guy, but I think
Speaker 1: there's definitely something to eating cleaner. And you know, a
Speaker 1: doctor and a nutritionist that knows what they're doing, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you straight up, like don't eat things from a
Speaker 1: box in your headed in the right direction. Yeah, it's true. Um,
Speaker 1: and anything that's kind of been taken from its natural state,
Speaker 1: even if it's like not in a box. Like for example,
Speaker 1: I did a brain stuff on what's the difference between
Speaker 1: whole milk and skim milk. Well, skim milk is really really,
Speaker 1: really messed around with milk, I processed, you could say,
Speaker 1: whereas whole milk you're like, oh, it's got a ton
Speaker 1: of fat, and I mean like that's cream mixed in there.
Speaker 1: That's it's whole milk for a reason. It's not messed
Speaker 1: around with. I mean, yes, there's the whole thing with antibiotics,
Speaker 1: and you may be lactose and taller, But I'm just
Speaker 1: saying specifically from a nutritional point of view, if you
Speaker 1: have whole milk, you have whole milk. If you have
Speaker 1: skim milk, you have milk that's had the fat removed
Speaker 1: and replaced with some thing like high fruit toast, corn
Speaker 1: syrup or something like that, some powdered milk proteins. It's
Speaker 1: it's messed around, it's it's processed. It's not the same thing.
Speaker 1: And the other problem with drinking anything but whole milk
Speaker 1: is that when you take the fat the milk fats out,
Speaker 1: which by the way, some uh margeric acid has been
Speaker 1: shown to actually lower your risk of heart disease. It
Speaker 1: actually increase your HDL good cholesterol. Um. When you take
Speaker 1: the milk fats out, you're also taking out the vitamin
Speaker 1: A and the vitamin D and those are fat soluble,
Speaker 1: which means that fat needs to be present for your
Speaker 1: body to absorb them. Yeah, and you can make up
Speaker 1: for that in other areas, but you have to know
Speaker 1: to do that. It's like people who jump on and
Speaker 1: become like vegan or vegetarian, like you have to do
Speaker 1: your homework. If you want to do that, that's great,
Speaker 1: but you need to find a way to give your
Speaker 1: body the things that needs that maybe uh was in
Speaker 1: that milk or that red meat. Like with the paleo
Speaker 1: diet that they say stay away from dairy, which I
Speaker 1: disagree with. Yeah, this I found that some paleo will
Speaker 1: drink dairy or ingested dairy. It's sort of a but
Speaker 1: it definitely isn't endorsed. But it's it's interesting that like
Speaker 1: we're the only animal that drinks milk into their life,
Speaker 1: like after after we're you know, weaned off of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it's It's definitely an odd thing, and that's
Speaker 1: I think that's why the Paleo they say not to
Speaker 1: drink milk because Caveman didn't, you know, go around milk
Speaker 1: and cows no, And I mean we are rear to
Speaker 1: drink milk. We remember in the Microbiome episode, we talked
Speaker 1: about how your your mother's like gut bacteria is transferred
Speaker 1: to you so that you can break down breast milk.
Speaker 1: So apparently the newest thing that I saw was that
Speaker 1: lactose intolerance comes from the fact that everybody can digest milk,
Speaker 1: but then only something like a third of humans keep
Speaker 1: maintain that ability to break down milk, and everybody else
Speaker 1: loses as they Yeah, it's interesting. I never really thought
Speaker 1: about it before. But no one else but us drinks
Speaker 1: milk as adults. You know, even goats they don't drink milk.
Speaker 1: So um, Before we keep going, let's you want to
Speaker 1: do another message break Yeah. Okay, hey, Chuck, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know this or not, but this episode
Speaker 1: has brought to you in part by squarespace. That's right,
Speaker 1: it's the all in one platform that makes it fast
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Speaker 1: fourteen day trial with no credit card necessary, and if
Speaker 1: you use the offer code stuff s t u f F,
Speaker 1: you can get ten percent off of your first purchase.
Speaker 1: Well that sounds like a deal, my friend. It does,
Speaker 1: So everybody go to squarespace dot com slash stuff and
Speaker 1: use the promo code stuff. So Chuck, you said, I
Speaker 1: wanted to also say you said that, Um, you know
Speaker 1: some paleo people say, well, you can still eat butter
Speaker 1: or something like that, or drink milk if you go
Speaker 1: on the paleo website and read stuff from Cordaine. He
Speaker 1: is like, there's people out there who are like pay
Speaker 1: leo experts who say you can eat leg ooms or
Speaker 1: you can have a little bird something. He's like, they're wrong,
Speaker 1: none of that right. Yeah, he's basically saying, like what
Speaker 1: I wrote is right, and like it's not an evolving
Speaker 1: concept that it's like you can't eat lagoons, you can't
Speaker 1: eat beans, like, it's not okay. There is something called
Speaker 1: the rule that he built into it, which I think
Speaker 1: was smart the time go paleo. Yes, you can have
Speaker 1: about three meals a week, um where that are non
Speaker 1: paleo and still get the benefits of the paleo diet
Speaker 1: according to the paleo diet. Hm, well it is that
Speaker 1: they found. Do they have any like definitive research. There
Speaker 1: is no definitive research on any of these, right, like
Speaker 1: that the paleo will cause you to be healthier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean no, here's the thing, Like, from this episode,
Speaker 1: I think the one thing everybody should walk away with
Speaker 1: besides an understanding of the basics of the paleo diet.
Speaker 1: So are you saying this is the takeaway? All right?
Speaker 1: The takeaway is as follows, Chuck. If you see a
Speaker 1: study and uh, an article like, click on the link
Speaker 1: and read the abstract and see if the sample size
Speaker 1: is enough to convince you that it's a believable study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't even get into the four studies that a
Speaker 1: lot of the saturated fat argument is based on throughout
Speaker 1: the years. But there are four notable ones that are
Speaker 1: always pointed to, and every single one of them are
Speaker 1: flawed in some way. Yeah, I mean there's a there's
Speaker 1: a problem with it. And and I say that also because,
Speaker 1: like even the article that we have on how stuff
Speaker 1: works sites a two thousand nine study published in Cardiovascular Diabetology,
Speaker 1: which is a journal, and it found that um, people
Speaker 1: with type two diabetes who followed the paleo diet for
Speaker 1: three months benefited more than those who followed a standard
Speaker 1: recommended diet for diabetics. That sounds like a problematic study,
Speaker 1: Well it's it's but if you just read that sentence,
Speaker 1: and this is a very typical sentence for any media
Speaker 1: ar coal. You're like, oh, well, that proves that the
Speaker 1: paleo diet works. At least there's one study out there
Speaker 1: that proved that it works. But if you click the
Speaker 1: link and read the abstract, there were thirteen people in
Speaker 1: the study, ten men and three women. They were they
Speaker 1: carried it out for two consecutive three month periods, and like, sure, okay,
Speaker 1: the findings proved that among these thirteen people, the paleo
Speaker 1: diet was better for people with type two diabetes than
Speaker 1: a diabetic diet. And but that can you extrapolate that?
Speaker 1: And the problem is is like even on our beloved
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works website, the way that the media is
Speaker 1: set up, it's like here, here's something that proves my point.
Speaker 1: Here's something almost yeah, And it's just if you, if you,
Speaker 1: as a consumer or a thinking person, can just go
Speaker 1: a step further and just click that link. Like I
Speaker 1: almost guarantee you whatever study is being discussed the journalists
Speaker 1: is you know, link to it. Click the link and
Speaker 1: it'll take you to an abstract and you can read,
Speaker 1: you know yourself about this study and make your own decisions. Agreed.
Speaker 1: I think like that's my takeaway is to be your
Speaker 1: own health advocate. Read read the labels of the things
Speaker 1: you're eating and putting into your body, do the research,
Speaker 1: read studies, and decide what works for you, uh and
Speaker 1: try it out. It's not like the end allbl you
Speaker 1: don't have to stick to it for life. No, And
Speaker 1: I mean I think most of the most of the
Speaker 1: diets that are around these days are for a prescribed
Speaker 1: period of time, very difficult. There's like a boot camp
Speaker 1: like kind of version at the beginning, and then it
Speaker 1: becomes easier and easier and you reach like some sort
Speaker 1: of level of general maintenance. But I think from doing
Speaker 1: any diet like that for a couple of weeks even,
Speaker 1: one of the great things that you get from it
Speaker 1: is that you learn about your food, whether you want
Speaker 1: to or not. Because just by preparing your own food,
Speaker 1: planning your own your meals every day, rather than just
Speaker 1: like going down to the cafeteria or going to like
Speaker 1: a fast food place and just buying something like, you're
Speaker 1: forced to get to know the food you're eating, Like
Speaker 1: you know how many carbs are in salary, you know
Speaker 1: like how much fat is in like this um this,
Speaker 1: you know, five ounce steak, Like you just know these things,
Speaker 1: and that in and of itself is something that makes
Speaker 1: you better off just for having done it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the ill health comes from from not planning and
Speaker 1: resorting to what's around you. Because what's around you and
Speaker 1: easy is usually not good for you. So you gotta
Speaker 1: put a little little effort into it. Um. I did
Speaker 1: find this, and I'm gonna I'm pooping it right off
Speaker 1: the bat. But US News and World Report did evaluated
Speaker 1: and ranked thirty two diets from a panel of experts. UH.
Speaker 1: To be top righted, a diet had to be relatively
Speaker 1: easy to follow, nutritious, safe, and effective for weight loss
Speaker 1: and against diabetes and heart disease. So according to the experts, UH,
Speaker 1: these are the top ten diets. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the Paleo diet was thirty two out of thirty two.
Speaker 1: They had it dead last. The DASH diet is number one, UH.
Speaker 1: And we're not going to get into what all these are.
Speaker 1: You can look it up if you're interested, but the
Speaker 1: DASH diet came in at one. The TLC diet is
Speaker 1: number two, and that is not the TLC network. It
Speaker 1: stands for something. The Mayo Clinic Diet, the Mediterranean Diet,
Speaker 1: and Weight Watchers all tied at number three, and then
Speaker 1: at number six something called the Flexitarian diet, which had
Speaker 1: never heard of. Also tied at six was Volume Metrics
Speaker 1: number it does, uh. Number eight was Jenny Craig. Number
Speaker 1: nine was the Biggest Loser diet apparently they have their
Speaker 1: own diet, and number ten was the Ornish diet O
Speaker 1: R n I s h and uh man that it's
Speaker 1: a big industry. If you want to write diet books,
Speaker 1: try and get people going on good health, write diet books,
Speaker 1: start making like convenience food that falls within the diet.
Speaker 1: That that's some money. But uh so what's our advice,
Speaker 1: be your own health advocate, try to avoid package foods
Speaker 1: and and uh put some time into it. That's right.
Speaker 1: How's that we should write a book? That's good stuff.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the Paleo diet,
Speaker 1: so you can um look them up online at Paleo
Speaker 1: diet dot com. Uh And yeah, just start looking around.
Speaker 1: If once you start poking into that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: like it, it's almost like a great entree into the
Speaker 1: world of like understanding your own nutrition. It's empowering. Yes, uh.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about the paleo diet,
Speaker 1: you can type those words into the search part house
Speaker 1: to work dot com. And since I said bad, it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this defending Skinner. Hey,
Speaker 1: guess my name is and I don't know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce it's h A I k E. Any idea hike hike?
Speaker 1: H what h A I K? Hey? Maybe I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with Hake. Hi. Guys, my name is Hake and
Speaker 1: I'm an Austrian UH psychology student. UM. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to defend poor B. F. Skinner in case no one
Speaker 1: else did it yet. In the Anesia episode, you mentioned
Speaker 1: how Skinner's daughter should be honored because she was tortured
Speaker 1: in a box. Well, all Skinner ever put in the
Speaker 1: Skinner box where rats and pigeons. The thing he invented
Speaker 1: for his daughter was called the air crib. It is
Speaker 1: a crib that is higher than the average crib, so
Speaker 1: it's easier to stoop over. Uh. And in it there
Speaker 1: was a controlled climate for the infant. UH. Fresh clean
Speaker 1: air was coming in from the outside, and temperature as
Speaker 1: well as humidity could be controlled. It sounds like a box.
Speaker 1: To me, it was just a device designed to make
Speaker 1: the baby's life more comfortable, in the parents life a little, uh,
Speaker 1: a little easier. Deborah Skinner is fine and untraumatized, and
Speaker 1: she herself says that people should stop talking rubbish about
Speaker 1: her dad and her So maybe I can help help
Speaker 1: her out with this email she owes you she does.
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work. Guys. Um, my boyfriend is
Speaker 1: also a fan. Oh so he is a is a
Speaker 1: lady not necessarily, Oh yeah, that's true. Look at me.
Speaker 1: I'll find out I'm a caveman eating meat and nuts.
Speaker 1: That is very unlike me too. Good boyfriend's gotta be
Speaker 1: a girl, right. Oh and also, I wanted to point
Speaker 1: out an error I made and when I was talking
Speaker 1: about how I wanted to punch Jared with the toxic
Speaker 1: bread of subway. Oh yeah, you heard about it for that. Well,
Speaker 1: in my defense all the it turns out that it's
Speaker 1: not true. But all that stuff came out after we recorded,
Speaker 1: like that was had just hit the news the day
Speaker 1: we recorded, and then all the other stuff saying no,
Speaker 1: this is one lady who had a bund to pick
Speaker 1: and she was wrong. That came out afterwards so, uh,
Speaker 1: Subway does not do that, and I still want to
Speaker 1: punch Jared. Okay, I hope Jared doesn't listen to this.
Speaker 1: I feel so bad if he came up with me
Speaker 1: one day he was like, Man, I really I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan. Video con hug him. Uh. I will look
Speaker 1: forward to that. I'll get a video of that and
Speaker 1: post it. Uh if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with me and Chuck and point out how we were
Speaker 1: wrong or how we can better ourselves and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Oh and thank you. By the way, what
Speaker 1: did we end up on, Hike or Hake? I went
Speaker 1: with Hake. We'll go with Hack. Thanks hack Um. If
Speaker 1: you want to be like Hake and correct us, you
Speaker 1: can send us a tweet to s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, you
Speaker 1: can join us at our home on the web. Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it, How stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: M