Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
Speaker 1: are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's
Speaker 1: coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know book, Chuck. That's right. What's the cool, super cool
Speaker 1: title we came up with. It's Stuff you Should Know colon,
Speaker 1: an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and
Speaker 1: it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys.
Speaker 1: The illustrations are amazing, and there's the look of the book.
Speaker 1: It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be.
Speaker 1: And we cannot wait for you to get your hands
Speaker 1: on it. Yes, we can't. Um, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but
Speaker 1: you don't have to wait to order. You can go
Speaker 1: preorder the book right now everywhere you get books, and
Speaker 1: you will eventually get a special gift for preordering, which
Speaker 1: we're working on right now. That's right, So check it
Speaker 1: out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's here somewhere,
Speaker 1: and this makes it stuff you should know, the Heart
Speaker 1: Healthy Edition. Yeah, I've been wanting to do for a
Speaker 1: very long time, Chuck. Yeah, and this was one that
Speaker 1: was put together by our buddy Dave Ruse. But back
Speaker 1: in February, and I lost it and thankfully you said, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, we got that seven countries
Speaker 1: thing just sitting there gathering dust. Ye, I said, Chuck,
Speaker 1: don't lose it here. I lost it and then I
Speaker 1: found it. I was lost, but now I'm found. And
Speaker 1: fat is good for your body the end, I know.
Speaker 1: But that's a that's such like a revolutionary statement these days,
Speaker 1: radical even basically to say fat is good for your
Speaker 1: body the end, especially our we I'll not even our age,
Speaker 1: but anyone in America and the eighties and nineties, somebody
Speaker 1: in our court. You mean, yeah, I do too. So um.
Speaker 1: The reason why it's kind of radical to say that
Speaker 1: fat is good for you is because, yeah, everybody, our age, Chuck,
Speaker 1: knows that fat is horrible for you. And even if
Speaker 1: you kind of know that fat's not as bad as
Speaker 1: we used to think, you probably still don't realize how
Speaker 1: much better it is for you than it actually is.
Speaker 1: There still some part of you that demonizes it. And
Speaker 1: during the eighties and the nineties you couldn't get fat
Speaker 1: if you shook it out of a pig, like it
Speaker 1: was nowhere to be found. In the United States, we
Speaker 1: had low fat everything. Remember we had uh like potato
Speaker 1: chips where they took out the fat and replaced it
Speaker 1: with a like a diarrhea creating agent. Right, what were
Speaker 1: those called the did this? But I think they were
Speaker 1: like like um las ola. Weren't they called ola chips?
Speaker 1: They should have been called oiv as. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: we're doing all sorts of things. And one of the
Speaker 1: worst things we did too, even worse than adding olean
Speaker 1: or replacing fat with olean, was a takeout fat and
Speaker 1: replace it with high fruit toast corn syrup. Because one
Speaker 1: of the things that fat does is give food flavor,
Speaker 1: and we take fat out of food, you still wanted
Speaker 1: to have flavor, and if you're a food processor, one cheap,
Speaker 1: easy way to put flavor back into it is to
Speaker 1: put high fruit toast corn syrup into it. And so
Speaker 1: they think that like all of this war on fat
Speaker 1: that took place in the eighties and nineties is actually
Speaker 1: at least partially, if not fully responsible for the outbreak
Speaker 1: of chronic diseases that we're seeing now, including obesity and
Speaker 1: um diabetes that is just epidemic right now in the
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, it was so ingrained in us that
Speaker 1: even after doing this podcast episode and knowing what we
Speaker 1: now know, it's still like you say things like, you know, boy,
Speaker 1: that steak you just feel like like clogging up your
Speaker 1: arteries as you know that fat just gets wedged in there.
Speaker 1: You just get these mental images of fat just like
Speaker 1: breaking off of food and sticking to your blood vessels. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is really unhealthier, this is super indulgent or
Speaker 1: something like that, And that just may not necessarily be
Speaker 1: the case, but yeah, we had a number done on us, basically,
Speaker 1: and we're still crawling out from under it. And what's
Speaker 1: the most magnificently amazing thing is that basically all of this,
Speaker 1: the war on fat, the low fat trend, the possibly
Speaker 1: the diabetes, and the obesity that resulted from taking out
Speaker 1: faster and placing it with sugar, all of this stuff
Speaker 1: came from one study that was conducted back starting back
Speaker 1: in the fifties that some people are like, the study
Speaker 1: isn't even legitimate methodologically, yeah, so that is the seven
Speaker 1: country study. And uh. The creator of the seven country
Speaker 1: study was someone named Dr Ansel keys Um who was
Speaker 1: married and published and this is I'm not gonna We'll
Speaker 1: just let this speak for itself. They published a number
Speaker 1: of high volume selling books about the Mediterranean diet. That
Speaker 1: these cookbooks and um sometimes like the very first one
Speaker 1: was only what like two years after they started doing
Speaker 1: this study. So they have been accused of cherry picking
Speaker 1: their data and promoting correlation as causation and uh. As
Speaker 1: a result of all this, the United States very famously
Speaker 1: came out with the food Pyramid that we was drilled
Speaker 1: into our heads in school and said fat is cholesterol
Speaker 1: and that is heart disease and eating fatty things will
Speaker 1: kill you. Yes, like ipso fact. Though, the problem is
Speaker 1: is that it was all based those recommendations. That food
Speaker 1: pyramid was all based on the study and not any
Speaker 1: kind of like clinical data. It was just basically a
Speaker 1: study that was set up and designed to support a hypothesis,
Speaker 1: not really test a hypothesis so much as support this
Speaker 1: hypothesis by Dr Antel keys that saturated fats uh rose
Speaker 1: cholesterol levels in your blood and that increased cholesterol levels
Speaker 1: in your blood would kill you through heart disease. And
Speaker 1: so doctor keys Is been very much demonized over the
Speaker 1: years as people have figured out like, no, fats aren't
Speaker 1: bad for you and actually you need them. But there's
Speaker 1: also been like an effort to reform him too. And
Speaker 1: in his defense, he wasn't just some some psycho narcissist doctor.
Speaker 1: From what I could tell, he is. Um. He invented
Speaker 1: k rations. K rations are called that after him keys Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that like kept a law of g I S alive.
Speaker 1: And World War two, Um, he was a major part
Speaker 1: of the Minnesota's starvation experiment where volunteers conscious just objectors
Speaker 1: and World War two volunteered to be starved um so
Speaker 1: that the scientists could figure out how to refeed people
Speaker 1: without killing them, which became very useful when we liberated
Speaker 1: the pow cants in Germany and some of the occupied areas.
Speaker 1: So he was like a good I don't okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know enough about him to say he was a
Speaker 1: good person, but I don't think he was like an
Speaker 1: evil person by any stretch of the imagination. And also
Speaker 1: the reason that he started conducting the study in the
Speaker 1: first place was because there was an epidemic of middle
Speaker 1: aged men, in particular in America who were just dying
Speaker 1: left and right of heart disease, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: figure out what the problem was. He also started the
Speaker 1: K pop phenomenon, so catchy and great. I don't know
Speaker 1: any K pop I know the kids love it, though
Speaker 1: they do, they're not for it. That one B twos
Speaker 1: band or something like that. I can't I can't remember
Speaker 1: their name, no idea, but if they're called the B
Speaker 1: fifty twos, then they should be sued because that's been taken.
Speaker 1: So Dr Ansel Keys as an American from Minnesota, a
Speaker 1: physiologist and in the forties when you know, uh, the
Speaker 1: Don Drapers, although that was a little later, but the
Speaker 1: Don Drapers of the world were falling over dead from
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes all the time and eating steak for lunch
Speaker 1: and martinis for lunch. He said, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna figure this out and see what's going on, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna identify some risk factors why men in this
Speaker 1: country are developing heart disease and men around the world.
Speaker 1: Is what it ended up being. But it started in
Speaker 1: Minnesota where he did a little pilot study. And while
Speaker 1: he was doing that, he got a message from a
Speaker 1: colleague in Italy who said, in southern Italy we got
Speaker 1: to no heart to disease. Everybody's a healthy And he said, really,
Speaker 1: and and he also said, southern Italy is really nice.
Speaker 1: You should come visit. And so he went there in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and a bet, I mean, Southern Italy
Speaker 1: is still great, but a bet in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties it was just idyllic. And he went down there
Speaker 1: and he started these informal studies comparing business business executives
Speaker 1: with the working class men of southern Italy, measuring serum
Speaker 1: cholesterol levels, talking about what you're eating, getting the data
Speaker 1: on heart disease and heart attacks there from the hospitals,
Speaker 1: and he started to form this hypothesis that you know what, dudes,
Speaker 1: middle aged dudes that have higher serum cholesterol levels are
Speaker 1: more likely to die or at least suffer from a
Speaker 1: heart attack. Yes, yes, And that was like the beginning.
Speaker 1: That was yeah, And that was his hypothesis. And it's
Speaker 1: pretty sound hypothesis, especially based on some of the data
Speaker 1: that he'd seen, because he around this time after his
Speaker 1: he was intrigued by his friend in southern Italy and
Speaker 1: his trip to southern Italy um, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: he fell in love with Southern Italy so much he
Speaker 1: shot shop there and I believe lived out his life
Speaker 1: till age one oh one. Yeah. Um, And that proves it.
Speaker 1: It basically does, because I believe he did adhere pretty
Speaker 1: strictly to the Mediterranean diet he espoused. He was no hypocrite,
Speaker 1: but um he uh. He started poking around and getting
Speaker 1: his hands on whatever data he could four things like
Speaker 1: fat intake in the diet and incidences of heart disease
Speaker 1: and heart attacks wherever he could get it in the world.
Speaker 1: And he compiled um data from twenty two different countries
Speaker 1: and he said, wow, this is really kind of all
Speaker 1: over the place. I'll just select six of these countries
Speaker 1: that really proved my point. And he created what's known
Speaker 1: as the six country graph, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: confused with the seven country Study, but it pre pre
Speaker 1: dated the seven country study. But it was this thing
Speaker 1: that was kind of like the transition period between first
Speaker 1: forming this hypothesis and begin the seven country study. The
Speaker 1: six country graph was kind of like the connective tissue
Speaker 1: between the two and it also told him where to
Speaker 1: look to really find the biggest disparities that might support
Speaker 1: or um undermine his hypothesis. And so we got to
Speaker 1: work looking around and contacting people around the world and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I have zero funding to offer you. I know that
Speaker 1: World War two just ended and everybody is basically trying
Speaker 1: to rebuild their economy and their nation in Europe is
Speaker 1: kind of war torn and shattered, and um, Japan has
Speaker 1: had bombs dropped on it. But do you want to
Speaker 1: start studying whether eating steak is bad for you and
Speaker 1: going to kill you? And actually, astoundingly some country said yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: So the countries ended up being Italy, Spain, South Africa, Japan, Finland,
Speaker 1: the US. And I guess was that Greece was the
Speaker 1: last one. Did that count Okay, Greece increase counts? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I knew, yeah, I know, grease increases the word. So, um,
Speaker 1: it was time in the in the mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: He had the interested countries and the interested parties, so
Speaker 1: in he developed these select populations and you kind of
Speaker 1: teased it earlier calling us cohorts. These populations of men
Speaker 1: they referred to as cohorts in the study so when
Speaker 1: you hear say cohort, it's not like one guy, it's
Speaker 1: a population of guys. Right. So the seven countries they
Speaker 1: would monitor for twenty five years and ideally lead to
Speaker 1: what risk factors would lead to heart disease. And that
Speaker 1: was his goal was, I'm going to find out what
Speaker 1: these risk factors are, provide some evidence, and then say
Speaker 1: here's what you should be eating. Basically, Yes, so that
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's exactly what he did. Like you said,
Speaker 1: within two years of starting this um study, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to last and actually did twenty five and some
Speaker 1: of the people who were the original participants were studied
Speaker 1: for more than forty forty years. But um, within two
Speaker 1: years he uh, he turned around and published that cookbook.
Speaker 1: That's how certain he was of his hypothesis being correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't you know, we don't want to poop
Speaker 1: of the Mediterranean diet. I think the idea, I'm sure
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean diet is it can be quite healthy. The idea, though,
Speaker 1: is is he shouldn't just be like, I'm gonna eat
Speaker 1: low fat, because that's what happened in America. Everyone didn't say, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll just eat Mediterranean. They said, we'll just eat junk
Speaker 1: food full of sugar and hyproc dose corn syrup but
Speaker 1: doesn't have fat. And and that was the other thing too,
Speaker 1: is he is very frequently unfairly accused of demonizing fat.
Speaker 1: He didn't do that. He said, you need to be
Speaker 1: eating olive oil by the gallonful, just injected daily. Basically
Speaker 1: he didn't say that. It's kind of paraphrasing, but he um.
Speaker 1: He didn't leave out things like, um, you know, fats
Speaker 1: from fish or from all of well, it was saturated
Speaker 1: fat and particularly that he was convinced was the culprit
Speaker 1: for heart disease and deaths from heart disease. Right, and uh,
Speaker 1: eat a lot of grains, eat a lot of pasta,
Speaker 1: eat a lot of fruit, eat a lot of bread,
Speaker 1: a lot of vegetables. Sure vegetables are good for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, right. Yeah. And also I think one of
Speaker 1: the other things that was so radical about the Mediterranean diet,
Speaker 1: like even now you're like, oh, that sounds kind of exotic.
Speaker 1: This is the fifties that this guy first introduced the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean diet. But one of the other things that was
Speaker 1: radical about it, and I should say, um, I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't give credit to his wife, Margaret, who co
Speaker 1: wrote the first book with him, at least the first one,
Speaker 1: if not more. Um, they wrote it together. But the
Speaker 1: the the thing that was radical about it was that
Speaker 1: he said, Hey, those fruits and vegetables and all that
Speaker 1: make those the main like make the meat your side dish, like,
Speaker 1: flip it over. You're gonna like live a lot longer
Speaker 1: than you are just by eating a big steak and
Speaker 1: some cream spinach on the side. Hey, I got no
Speaker 1: problem with the man. There is definitely a case to
Speaker 1: be made about eating what you like and living shorter.
Speaker 1: It's tough to argue with in some cases. Hey, what
Speaker 1: do we do when we occasionally on the road, We'll
Speaker 1: go to a steakhouse together? We split a cream spinach
Speaker 1: every time. Sure, I mean, how can you go to
Speaker 1: a steakhouse and not eat cream spinach? It's the best
Speaker 1: It makes you strong, right, Yeah, my forearm is just
Speaker 1: a freakishly bulging. Should we take a break, Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: go work out those four arms and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the cohorts right after this. If you want to know,
Speaker 1: then you're in luck. Just chuck. Okay, So we're gonna
Speaker 1: say it again cohorts cohorts. It's a study population that
Speaker 1: bears some sort of similarity to one another, sort of.
Speaker 1: There were sixteen in the seven countries study, and all
Speaker 1: sixteen cohorts total twelve thousand, seven hundred and sixty three participants.
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty good study. Sixteen different groups of
Speaker 1: people more than twelve thousand total in seven different countries.
Speaker 1: It's fairly impressive and ambitious study for the time. For sure,
Speaker 1: it was. And I think there were at least two
Speaker 1: in every country except for the U S which had
Speaker 1: one cohort. And he never said we have to be fair.
Speaker 1: He never said, you know what, this represents all men
Speaker 1: in these countries and sort of all men around the world.
Speaker 1: They never pretended like that was the case. But they
Speaker 1: had to start somewhere and um, and we're not pooping
Speaker 1: the whole study. Like the it was very robust. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you carry out a study in seven countries
Speaker 1: with all of these men over twenty five years, it's
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't slouches or anything like that. No,
Speaker 1: but the very fact that he went around and said, oh,
Speaker 1: these people eat a Mediterranean diet, I'm gonna include them.
Speaker 1: These people eat what I consider the opposite of Mediterranean diet.
Speaker 1: Include them, yea, rather than saying like, we'll just pick
Speaker 1: these countries at random and and start studying them and
Speaker 1: see if the their cholesterol intake is low and then
Speaker 1: if so, if that correlates with the lower heart disease.
Speaker 1: He didn't do that, and that is definitely worth criticizing
Speaker 1: for sure. So let's I guess talk about some of
Speaker 1: these cohorts and what they who they were, uh, former Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: He studied a couple of small towns um one that
Speaker 1: had the Western European diet and one that was on
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean diet largely. Finland was really interesting, I think
Speaker 1: out of all these, because he compared two villages in
Speaker 1: eastern and western Finland, because East Finlanders were recording a
Speaker 1: lot more heart attacks, in fact, supposedly like the highest
Speaker 1: record on planet Earth at the time. Yes, and for
Speaker 1: good reason too, you would think, because they would eat
Speaker 1: things like so great, this makes me hungry, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of does. Actually, they would eat a fish soup
Speaker 1: that was just loaded with butter for breakfast. They would
Speaker 1: he was called the Loggers launch, which was described by
Speaker 1: one of the researchers as um, are you ready large
Speaker 1: hunks of meat, suspended and congealed fat, enveloped in a
Speaker 1: dark bread loaf, fully permeated by fat. I'm so sorry
Speaker 1: to our being of vegetarian listeners because you're probably turning
Speaker 1: it off right about now. Yeah, we should have spoiled
Speaker 1: our trigger warning this one yeah too late, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, I have to say, I have been really
Speaker 1: doing my best to eat far less meat. Um, not
Speaker 1: for health purposes, for ethical reasons, really sure, but I
Speaker 1: gotta say that does sound kind of good to me.
Speaker 1: Is like, if you put this in front of me
Speaker 1: and say, here's your chance to eat a uh Eastern
Speaker 1: Finland loggers lunch, I would I would take you up
Speaker 1: on it. I think, Yeah, I'm cut down on meat too. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I eat so. I don't mean a lot of red meat.
Speaker 1: Don't eat a ton of pork anymore, can especially especially
Speaker 1: pork from me. I I don't always eat meat, but
Speaker 1: when I do, I try not to. Uh So. Then
Speaker 1: so you've got your high fat diets in Finland. And
Speaker 1: then he said, all right, I need to, like you
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned earlier, I need to choose some some
Speaker 1: opposite in my view, opposite countries of what they eat.
Speaker 1: So where do you go. You go to Japan, of course,
Speaker 1: where they eat a lot of fish, and he went
Speaker 1: to a even a tiny little fishing village where they
Speaker 1: all ate almost all fish. And then again in Greece
Speaker 1: and the Greek islands, uh and in southern Italy also
Speaker 1: where they were obviously eating the Mediterranean diet. Right, So
Speaker 1: he takes all these different cohorts, takes all of their
Speaker 1: different diets and starts just kind of looking at um,
Speaker 1: all sorts of factors. That was one of the other
Speaker 1: reasons you said it was a very robust study. One
Speaker 1: of the other reasons that it was robust is because
Speaker 1: they looked at all sorts of stuff. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: their diet. They looked at things like, um, what they drank,
Speaker 1: and what they smoked, and how much they smoked and
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. It was a big, long study.
Speaker 1: And again they followed these guys for at least twenty
Speaker 1: five years, and some of the stuff that they found
Speaker 1: we're basically this and this is this is the two
Speaker 1: points that the Seven Countries study told the world, and
Speaker 1: they just so happened to be the two points that
Speaker 1: ansel Keys fully expected the seven countries to tell the
Speaker 1: studies to tell the world, and it was that if
Speaker 1: you have a high serum cholesterol, like a high concentration
Speaker 1: of cholesterol in your blood, then there you're there's a
Speaker 1: greater chance that you were going to die from cardiovass
Speaker 1: killer disease. Right and Eastern Finland where those loggers were
Speaker 1: eaten fat breads. That's a great name for a restaurant,
Speaker 1: fat bread Sure. Oh yeah, I think wow, if restaurants
Speaker 1: are still around in a few months, then we should
Speaker 1: open one called fat breads. Um. So, those fat bread
Speaker 1: eating loggers, they had average serum cholesterol levels of more
Speaker 1: than two sixty and there were more than four heart attacks,
Speaker 1: uh four heart attack deaths for every one middle aged
Speaker 1: men five years after the study started. Right, okay, so Chuck,
Speaker 1: I looked it up. They had an average of two sixty.
Speaker 1: The window of normal or acceptable or your your um
Speaker 1: you don't have like viscous blood is two d These
Speaker 1: guys were averaging to sixty. That's a lot. It is
Speaker 1: a lot. So the opposite of that was the former
Speaker 1: Yugoslavian place uh Dalmatia, where they had the Mediterranean diet
Speaker 1: and there men had an average serium cholesterol level and
Speaker 1: had one death per one men over that same period.
Speaker 1: And Dalmatia is where the Dalmatian dog they think is from.
Speaker 1: I kind of assumed that, but you never know, did you?
Speaker 1: It was worth saying anyway, Sure, this is a show
Speaker 1: about facts in trivia. That's right. Um. Did you have
Speaker 1: you ever been to Croatia? No? It is spectacular, man.
Speaker 1: It's on the Adriatic and it is incredibly gorgeous. You
Speaker 1: mean and I went on a cruise once that went
Speaker 1: through there, and it is I've just wanted to go
Speaker 1: back ever since. Was it one of those river cruises? No,
Speaker 1: it was again, it was on the Adriaca. It was
Speaker 1: a cruise all the way around Italy, from one side
Speaker 1: to the down past the boot and then up the other.
Speaker 1: It was love. Yeah, we're not like cruise people or
Speaker 1: anything like that, but we went with Um Shandon the
Speaker 1: Champagne Acre had a cruise that we're like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: this is the one we're gonna take, and uh it
Speaker 1: turned out to be really great because we're not like
Speaker 1: Italy fans. You we have nothing against Italy, but we
Speaker 1: were never like we got to go to Italy never,
Speaker 1: We're never cruise fans. And then after we got off
Speaker 1: of those were like, I want to go on another
Speaker 1: cruise and I want to go back to Italy and
Speaker 1: would a kill you to give me some more shand
Speaker 1: on did you just drink tons of champagne? Yes, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that uh It said was the
Speaker 1: other conclusion was diets higher and saturated fats will correlate
Speaker 1: to more heart attacks. And the data did show a
Speaker 1: big correlation between saturated fat in the regular traditional diet
Speaker 1: and the heart attacks. And I think crete where saturated
Speaker 1: fats equal between eight and nine percent of daily calories,
Speaker 1: the average number of heart attack desper one hundred was
Speaker 1: basically zero over that five years. And in the US,
Speaker 1: where we only had the one cohort, I don't think
Speaker 1: we said they were railroad workers, right, Yeah, in Minnesota,
Speaker 1: Minnesota railroad workers, they had se saturated fats and their
Speaker 1: diet and they had more than three deaths per one
Speaker 1: during that five year period. Right, So all this stuff
Speaker 1: just totally backs up what what um ansel Keys was saying, right,
Speaker 1: and later studies that basically took the seven countries study
Speaker 1: cohorts and drilled down into them a little more. UM.
Speaker 1: There were two particular ones, the zoot Fins study from
Speaker 1: the Netherlands and the Hail Project. UM. Both of them
Speaker 1: looked at um just continued following people beyond the twenty
Speaker 1: five years, so like the Hail study was dedicated to
Speaker 1: looking at healthy aging, that kind of thing, and they
Speaker 1: turned up some other stuff that you UM now basically
Speaker 1: take his gospel as well, Like if you follow a
Speaker 1: Mediterranean diet, your risk of heart attack drops precipitously, I
Speaker 1: think thirt lower risk. UM, if you eat fish, it
Speaker 1: lowers your risk of dying from a heart attack. Like
Speaker 1: even just eating fish once or twice a week can
Speaker 1: drop your risk of a fatal heart attack by Like
Speaker 1: these were things that that came along, not not from
Speaker 1: the seven country study, but from that thing being continued
Speaker 1: on by supplementary studies. Yeah. And two of the big
Speaker 1: ones that people like myself and my wife like to
Speaker 1: spout is that you drink the two glasses of wine
Speaker 1: a day, you're actually healthier than not drinking at all.
Speaker 1: And if you eat that one square of dark chocolate
Speaker 1: a day, you're actually healthier as well. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: eat more than that and drink more than that, then
Speaker 1: it goes the opposite way. But that two glasses of
Speaker 1: wine and one square of chocolate is uh. People really
Speaker 1: like to tout that one who like to drink wine
Speaker 1: and eat chocolate. That's what they call a sweet spot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like seriously think about it, though, if you drink
Speaker 1: less than two wine two glasses of wine a date,
Speaker 1: you're you're likelier to die of heart disease than if
Speaker 1: you drink too. I mean that's what they're saying in
Speaker 1: the study at least, right, And I mean, like, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen anything that says Nope, that's not true, that's
Speaker 1: b s. But the everybody makes that case that you
Speaker 1: said to her, that makes that point that like, once
Speaker 1: you go beyond too, not only does it have the
Speaker 1: opposite effect, it gets really bad, really really fast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what you can't do also is be like, well,
Speaker 1: I haven't had any drinks for three nights, so I'll
Speaker 1: have five glasses of wine tonight and that averages out
Speaker 1: to super healthy. Yeah. Yeah, they say been shrinking is
Speaker 1: way worse for you, but then they also say that
Speaker 1: been shrinking is way better for you. We have no
Speaker 1: handle on what drinking does to you. I just know
Speaker 1: that drinking makes me feel like a S S the
Speaker 1: next day. Uh yeah, I mean older you get, you
Speaker 1: definitely have to pick and choose, dude, Like two beers can.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say wreck me the next day,
Speaker 1: but I am not love in life the next day
Speaker 1: necessarily two beers dude. Yeah, My whole deal is sleep
Speaker 1: Like I haven't had anything to drink for four nights,
Speaker 1: and that was after a pretty big couple of nights
Speaker 1: in a row for various reasons. And uh, I just
Speaker 1: I sleep so much better. I wake up feeling so
Speaker 1: much better. I mean it's irrefutable, you know. Um what
Speaker 1: I do try to do now though in my old
Speaker 1: ages is really drink a ton of water while I'm drinking.
Speaker 1: And uh I use now take these. Uh I don't
Speaker 1: know if I should buzz market the brand, but I
Speaker 1: take a little supplement that is that is you know,
Speaker 1: it's basically like a super vitamin that supposedly will help
Speaker 1: curb a hangover, and like, have you noticed that it
Speaker 1: actually has an effect? And if it does have an effective,
Speaker 1: do you think it's just power suggestion or does it
Speaker 1: really work? No? I think so, But it's not gobbled
Speaker 1: e cook. I mean it's BE twelve and like things
Speaker 1: that we know can probably help with a hangover. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten a BE twelve shot? I haven't,
Speaker 1: Oh man. A lot of times they miss or it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, or it's watered down or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to get a good BE twelve shot.
Speaker 1: When it works, brother, you can tell a difference and
Speaker 1: you feel like a million bucks. You're not high, but
Speaker 1: you're like high on life kind of. You're not not high,
Speaker 1: I guess. Actually it's a really fair way to put it,
Speaker 1: to tell you how long does that last? Like basically
Speaker 1: all day you just feel great, You want to talk
Speaker 1: to strangers. You you're like totally large and in charge.
Speaker 1: You're getting stuff done. You never feel overwhelmed, like you're
Speaker 1: like having you have a sense of humor. It's just
Speaker 1: it just takes like all the best parts of your
Speaker 1: personality and like bulks them up. Not in any kind
Speaker 1: of speedy, manic way, but just you just feel like
Speaker 1: you're running on all cylinders and you just wish to
Speaker 1: God that like you were always like that, but and
Speaker 1: that's what you got hat too, So that's why you're
Speaker 1: not that's why you that's what you get one of
Speaker 1: those hangover next day places, right, like an ivy and
Speaker 1: a BEAT twelve shot. Yeah. Yeah, you could go to
Speaker 1: like a medical clinic or you know, a med spa
Speaker 1: or something like that, and they usually have it. Some
Speaker 1: chiropractors have them. Um have to do that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you have to have some sort of medical degree
Speaker 1: to inject it or whatever. But I've always kind of
Speaker 1: been on the hunt to have B twelve prescribed to
Speaker 1: me so I can inject it myself. So I guess
Speaker 1: that there's any doctor listeners something you should know out there,
Speaker 1: Hit me up because I need a prescription to BE twelve. Please.
Speaker 1: Oh man, where were we? I think we're about to
Speaker 1: take a break. Yeah, let's take a break and we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the criticisms right after this.
Speaker 1: If you want to know, you're in luck. Just to
Speaker 1: exact fusion. Okay. So, I think we've kind of made
Speaker 1: it clear that there are some people out there, uh communists,
Speaker 1: Pinko's who hate the Seven Countries study, can't stand it,
Speaker 1: and they have a lot of very valid points. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest criticisms is that it
Speaker 1: was a very correlative relationship and not a causal relationship. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of the biggest one. That and
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a study. It's a it's called
Speaker 1: an ecological study, which is uh, it's a study that
Speaker 1: at the time it was you know who was this,
Speaker 1: Dr Henry Blackburn, He was one of the original officers,
Speaker 1: said it was state of the art for the time.
Speaker 1: But he's like an ecologic study, and and correlation is
Speaker 1: pretty weak. Uh. If you're talking about trying to find
Speaker 1: a causal uh, I guess a causal inference. Yeah, Because
Speaker 1: the thing is is you're taking all of these people
Speaker 1: from all around the world and you're examining them to
Speaker 1: see you're trying to find out what's the underlying cause
Speaker 1: of their common affliction heart attacks, or what accounts for
Speaker 1: the absence of that affliction again heart attacks. But the
Speaker 1: problem is there's so many differences between somebody who is
Speaker 1: on a Mediterranean diet and lives in Crete and somebody
Speaker 1: who eats the loggers lunch in Finland. Besides just what
Speaker 1: they eat, there's so many other factors, so many different
Speaker 1: things involved that even if you can find a correlation
Speaker 1: like you like, like ansel Keys did between saturated fats
Speaker 1: and heart attacks. It doesn't mean that there's actually not
Speaker 1: something else at play. And that's the biggest, the biggest
Speaker 1: criticism of the study that most people widely level against it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's also an epidemiological study which follows a pop elation,
Speaker 1: uh to something you know not so good for you
Speaker 1: over a length of time. But if you want to
Speaker 1: do that right, you can't, like you said, just they
Speaker 1: have to be the same age, the same sex, they
Speaker 1: have to do the same job, they have to be
Speaker 1: the same ethnicity, they have to be in the same place,
Speaker 1: and the only difference can be what they're eating, basically, right,
Speaker 1: And like, and I get what he was doing. He
Speaker 1: was trying to, you know, compare this type of diet
Speaker 1: to that type of diet in different places around the world.
Speaker 1: But it was just that's that's flawed, that's a flawed
Speaker 1: that's an adventure. That's not a study, right exactly, that's
Speaker 1: that's a that's a travel eating show basically. But it
Speaker 1: was almost like he was trying to cram a dozen
Speaker 1: studies into one rather than break it out and appropriately
Speaker 1: into each different study, Like I'm going to study these
Speaker 1: people and use this as the control. His study lacked
Speaker 1: a control group or control um variable. Yeah, right, and
Speaker 1: that's that's another big thing that's leveled against it as
Speaker 1: as a big flaw and makes you wonder, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: is that correlation between saturated fat and heart disease even real? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean even when they tried to kind of drill
Speaker 1: down to an apples to apples, like in Finland, that
Speaker 1: was one place where they had. All. Right, at least
Speaker 1: we're all in the same country, so that's a good
Speaker 1: place to start. Uh, let's see here the two finished cohorts.
Speaker 1: I still love saying that, Um, they consumed relatively similar,
Speaker 1: similar levels of saturated fat. So in the West they
Speaker 1: had and the not a huge difference. That's so much though.
Speaker 1: What three? Yeah, the railroad workers in nineteen fifties Minnesota,
Speaker 1: we're eating of their diet was saturated fat. Yeah, close
Speaker 1: to a quarter of your diet was saturated fat. But
Speaker 1: the average number of heart attack deaths in the E
Speaker 1: was twice as high versus I think four death per
Speaker 1: one men versus two in the West. Yeah, so like
Speaker 1: that there's something else going on, Yeah, exactly, because their
Speaker 1: fat intake was similar but that you know that shouldn't
Speaker 1: there's what would account for a double the increase? So
Speaker 1: who knows? And they just the answer is they don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't know. We don't know what would account for that. UM.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a lot of other people who've looked
Speaker 1: at this and said, Okay, there's still like a lot
Speaker 1: to be said of this data. There's a lot you
Speaker 1: can extract from it. UM. And some people have come
Speaker 1: along the way and said, hey, you know, like you
Speaker 1: can you can run this stuff through statistical analysis. Apparently
Speaker 1: they did another that and they did when they originally
Speaker 1: looked at the data back in the fifties or sixties
Speaker 1: or seventies, and UM, they did it again for the
Speaker 1: twenty fifth anniversary of this study. UM. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that turned up was that sugar actually seemed
Speaker 1: to orally more strongly. Sugar intake in the diet seemed
Speaker 1: to correlate more strongly with heart disease, and even saturated
Speaker 1: fats did it was almost roughly the same. But the
Speaker 1: thing is that sugar bump. When you factored in saturated fats,
Speaker 1: the sugar bump disappeared. And so they said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's just an anomaly. It's really the saturated fats. From
Speaker 1: what I could tell, if you had a saturated fat
Speaker 1: bump and you factored in sugar, that would disappear as well.
Speaker 1: So some people have come to think, like, if it's
Speaker 1: not sugar, maybe it's a combination of sugar and saturated fats.
Speaker 1: That's actually the real problem. Not saturated fats on its own,
Speaker 1: but that it's not even necessarily sugar on its own,
Speaker 1: but this combination of the two. And that's led a
Speaker 1: lot of people, including one big critic of the Seven
Speaker 1: Countries study, to say, um, like it's processed food. That's
Speaker 1: what kills people. As processed food, this combination of bad
Speaker 1: fats and in sugar, that is really proving to be deadly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's I think that's just so clear
Speaker 1: now that real food is far in a way better
Speaker 1: for you than processed food. Like, you can't, you just
Speaker 1: can't refute that, No, you you can't. I mean even
Speaker 1: if you just base it, and you know, we always
Speaker 1: make fun of anecdotal data, but if you just base
Speaker 1: it on how your body feels after you eat certain
Speaker 1: kinds of food and then after you eat processed food,
Speaker 1: the problem is is we don't know how to feed
Speaker 1: um seven billion people on this planet without processing food.
Speaker 1: You know, where's Norman Borlog, Yeah, I don't know. He's dead,
Speaker 1: dead in the cold ground. God doesn't care about anything now.
Speaker 1: So it hasn't been refuted, not necessarily, it hasn't been
Speaker 1: completely refuted to where they say, just throw this thing
Speaker 1: in the trash. Um. But I think the and hopefully
Speaker 1: we've gotten this point across is the damage that it
Speaker 1: did in the United States was we went all in
Speaker 1: on it and they said fat is is the killer
Speaker 1: and if you just avoid fat and eat these processed
Speaker 1: low fat foods, you're gonna be just fine. Yes, So
Speaker 1: like that, and you can't really lay that at ansel
Speaker 1: Key's feet. That was the Department of Health and Human Services.
Speaker 1: They just took these findings and ran with them. They
Speaker 1: were like, well, we don't have any clinical data yet.
Speaker 1: They're like, I can't hear you. I can't hear you.
Speaker 1: I'm already at the printers getting these posters of the
Speaker 1: food Pyramid Guide printed up UM. And that was definitely
Speaker 1: a huge problem that UM that created this larger problem
Speaker 1: because it led to this demization of all fats that
Speaker 1: food pyramid that showed the little bit at the top
Speaker 1: was like fats and sweets and stuff like that. Like
Speaker 1: it didn't say, you know, just this kind of fat
Speaker 1: or keep away from that kind of fact, it was fats.
Speaker 1: You Americans are too fat and dumb to understand that
Speaker 1: there's different kinds of fats, So just stay away from
Speaker 1: fats all together. And that that's really what led to this,
Speaker 1: because there are plenty of fats that are actually good
Speaker 1: for your heart, like things like fats found in fish,
Speaker 1: fats found in olive oil, and then even even potentially yeah,
Speaker 1: avocados are about as good as it gets and then
Speaker 1: potentially chuck. They're like the kinds of saturated fat that
Speaker 1: people tend to associate, like with a steak, as being
Speaker 1: bad for you. That's not necessarily true either. And again
Speaker 1: it seems to be like we talked about in that
Speaker 1: the peanut butter episode, those chemically processed or um industrially
Speaker 1: processed fats that change things that make peanut butter shelf
Speaker 1: stable and way more delicious, Like, those are the fats
Speaker 1: that are actually really bad for you. Those are the
Speaker 1: ones that you should avoid or eat in moderation, and
Speaker 1: that that kind of nuances needed to actually have a
Speaker 1: healthy diet, because we learned from this experiment that you
Speaker 1: can't just cut fats out all together. We need a
Speaker 1: lot of those fats to survive and be healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the evans as far as um because you would think,
Speaker 1: you know, this started in the nineteen eighties in America,
Speaker 1: so surely we all got a lot healthier, right because
Speaker 1: of the food pyramid and all the low fat food.
Speaker 1: We cut fat anyway you can slice it. We cut
Speaker 1: fat over two decades plus. People still, you know, think
Speaker 1: fat as the demon in a lot of circles, and
Speaker 1: America is as sick as we've ever been. Type two
Speaker 1: diabetes has increased, Oh man, this is crazy, a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty six percent from nineteen eighty to twelve. I
Speaker 1: don't know about twenty twelve till now. Um, I would
Speaker 1: guess more of this. Yeah, I doubt if it reverse course. Uh.
Speaker 1: We have beaten down heart disease some, but we've also
Speaker 1: stopped smoking a lot more, and we've got better emergency
Speaker 1: room care and better drugs like statins and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But it's still, you know, cardiovascular disease still kills people
Speaker 1: more than anything else in the US. Yeah, despite those
Speaker 1: advances in medical treatment, Um, it's still killing people more
Speaker 1: than anything else. And like even exercising hasn't helped. Like
Speaker 1: we exercise basically more than ever, but still a third
Speaker 1: of the country is obese. The third of the United
Speaker 1: States is obese, and all of this, Like, think about this,
Speaker 1: All of those things are happened while we cut fat
Speaker 1: essentially out of our diets. So that just goes to
Speaker 1: show you, like that that didn't work. That's not going
Speaker 1: to help that we have to rethink this whole thing
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, and again we're not poopooing the Mediterranean diet.
Speaker 1: There's also the flip side of this stuff with keto um,
Speaker 1: the Atkins diet and paleo stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 1: I think we've tried to you know, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: tell anyone how to eat, and we're not dietitians, but
Speaker 1: we've tried to preach over the past couple of years.
Speaker 1: You know, eat real foods, eat balanced diets, try and moderation,
Speaker 1: moderation and you know, calorie reasonable, calorie restriction and exercise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I mean portion control. Two is it sucks
Speaker 1: when you first do it. It sucks to get used to,
Speaker 1: but once you get used to it, it's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's easy to maintain it. It's also easy to go
Speaker 1: back on when you're like, I'm gonna eat this whole
Speaker 1: box of Hamburger Helper tonight. I know, but how does
Speaker 1: that make you feel? It makes you feel like garbage? Yeah,
Speaker 1: ultimately emotionally and even if it's hitting a reward center.
Speaker 1: And trust me, there so many reasons that people don't
Speaker 1: eat the right things and eat too much of the
Speaker 1: wrong things, emotional reasons and psychological reasons, and we're not
Speaker 1: all that stuff is valid. But um, even if it's
Speaker 1: hitting that reward center, it will probably also make you
Speaker 1: feel awful emotionally and physically. It's true and like and
Speaker 1: also just to say like, we're definitely on our high
Speaker 1: horses right now, but we're no better than anybody else.
Speaker 1: Like we know, I'm still sixty pound. I mean, we
Speaker 1: had you mean and I split a whole roll of
Speaker 1: Pillsbury cinnamon rolls last Yeah, I know, tough to turn
Speaker 1: those down. Um, I can't even get this stuff. But
Speaker 1: it's just the it's the well, no chucking, you're right
Speaker 1: having it in your house is problem one. Not having
Speaker 1: it in your house actually is helpful. It's crazy, it's weird,
Speaker 1: but it actually works, especially during a quarantine when you
Speaker 1: can't just pop up or you don't feel like you
Speaker 1: should pop up to the store and get that. Ben
Speaker 1: and Jerry's right exactly, like, yeah, yeah for sure, because
Speaker 1: then you're you just your past around your kitchenutil this
Speaker 1: time you go to bed, but you didn't need anything
Speaker 1: get that. You know what I tried the other night?
Speaker 1: What that that peanut butter and whipped cream? Oh? What
Speaker 1: do you think? It's delicious? I'm sorry, I still haven't
Speaker 1: eating a peanut butter and mayo sandwich yet. No, it's
Speaker 1: really good. Emily made. She makes a good homemade whip cream.
Speaker 1: And it was Oh yeah, it was delish. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's hard to turn down. Now I want some,
Speaker 1: but you know, have a little bit of that one night,
Speaker 1: then I won't have any for a little while. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And even I think what I was gonna say earlier
Speaker 1: is walking around with this information is good and helpful,
Speaker 1: and like you're never going to always adhere to it
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be that fun of a life to always
Speaker 1: adhere to it, but they're just knowing it and kind
Speaker 1: of using it as like a general compass or guide
Speaker 1: that will make you healthier and we'll make you feel better.
Speaker 1: And maybe at some point along the line, if you
Speaker 1: already have this info, you're gonna get a kick in
Speaker 1: the pants by something. Um, you're gonna hit like a
Speaker 1: period of growth, and that might be part of it.
Speaker 1: You might like loosen weight, you might get over a
Speaker 1: chronic disease, you might all sorts of things might happen
Speaker 1: because you know what to eat or how to start
Speaker 1: thinking about your food. It's just good to keep in
Speaker 1: your back pocket. At least it is. And uh, in
Speaker 1: the end it what doesn't matter anyway, because it all
Speaker 1: has to do with the health of your grandfather, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Um hey. One other thing I want to say is
Speaker 1: that critic Zoe dr Zoe Harcomb. She pointed out that
Speaker 1: actually the strongest correlation that the seven countries study turned
Speaker 1: up was um, the where the latitude of where the
Speaker 1: person lived sunshine, right yeah, And which is really strange
Speaker 1: until she points out and I'm not sure how much
Speaker 1: she was pointing this out to basically undermine the seven
Speaker 1: country studies, but it does make sense in a way too,
Speaker 1: is she's saying, well, um, we synthesize vitamin D uh
Speaker 1: in our skin from cholesterol in the skin when it's
Speaker 1: exposed to sunshine. Um, and vitamin D has a lot
Speaker 1: of protective qualities for the immune system, so maybe that
Speaker 1: has to do with it. Yeah, I'm glad you pointed
Speaker 1: that out. Yeah, well that's it for nutrition. We'll probably
Speaker 1: never talk about it again. That's not true at all.
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener maiw
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna call this, uh, Jackhammers. Why did
Speaker 1: you do that? I don't know why not people asked me,
Speaker 1: asked on Twitter, They're like, why why I thought you
Speaker 1: guys hated this? And I said, yeah, I think Chuck's
Speaker 1: got some weird self loathing going on trolling and I
Speaker 1: just got caught up unfairly. Yeah. So we we have
Speaker 1: often and long made fun of our Jackhammers episode, and
Speaker 1: I re released it as a stuff you should have
Speaker 1: select just to be cheeky, and this is about that
Speaker 1: because Chris from Massachusetts really appreciated it. Hey, guys, just
Speaker 1: finished listening to stuff you should have select on Jackhammers,
Speaker 1: and I know you call it the most most boring,
Speaker 1: worst one, but I actually enjoyed it. I'm a mechanical engineer.
Speaker 1: In college, took a class on vibrations, which led to
Speaker 1: conducting research on noise. On the noise that a jackhammer makes.
Speaker 1: This is we did that show for this guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: The noise or the ring that you hear when a
Speaker 1: jackhammer strikes is the resonant frequency of the jackhammer Moyl
Speaker 1: point after being struck by the inner pile driver. I
Speaker 1: don't think we said any of that stuff. I was
Speaker 1: working with my professor on developing an inner damper to
Speaker 1: reduce that noise produced for the same reasons that you
Speaker 1: named in your podcast. Some of the concepts he developed
Speaker 1: we're quite amazing. You could take one of the moils
Speaker 1: he designed and drop it on a concrete floor and
Speaker 1: instead of alloud ringing you expect to hear, it would
Speaker 1: land with a soft thud. Unfortunately, the concepts never quite
Speaker 1: panned out, but we call them moils right exactly. Uh,
Speaker 1: but your podcast reminded me of the many nights spent
Speaker 1: in the lab collecting piles of data and the painful
Speaker 1: ringing that you mentioned in the show. Thanks for the
Speaker 1: countless amazing episodes. My girlfriend and I have gotten many
Speaker 1: hours of entertainment from your show and truly appreciate all
Speaker 1: the great content and laughs. Chris from Massachusetts. Chris, thank
Speaker 1: you for getting in touch and thank you for your
Speaker 1: attempted contribution to the world. Had it paid off, that
Speaker 1: really would have been something. But thank you for even trying.
Speaker 1: Um And if you want to be like Chris and
Speaker 1: let us know that you're an unsung hero, we want
Speaker 1: to hear about that. Uh. And if you know an
Speaker 1: unsung hero, let us know about that person too. You
Speaker 1: can send it in an email to Stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H