WEBVTT - The War on Fat: The Seven Countries Study 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.000 Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.880 are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.080 coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff you Should 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:12.160 Know book, Chuck. That's right. What's the cool, super cool 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:15.640 title we came up with. It's Stuff you Should Know colon, 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:20.439 an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:23.560 it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys. 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:28.040 The illustrations are amazing, and there's the look of the book. 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:30.639 It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be. 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:32.440 And we cannot wait for you to get your hands 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:34.720 on it. Yes, we can't. Um, and you don't have 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:36.479 to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:38.400 you don't have to wait to order. You can go 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.440 preorder the book right now everywhere you get books, and 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.840 you will eventually get a special gift for preordering, which 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:49.519 we're working on right now. That's right, So check it 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:53.800 out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, 0:00:54.040 --> 0:01:02.720 a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.400 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.840 Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's here somewhere, 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:13.000 and this makes it stuff you should know, the Heart 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:16.280 Healthy Edition. Yeah, I've been wanting to do for a 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.480 very long time, Chuck. Yeah, and this was one that 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.280 was put together by our buddy Dave Ruse. But back 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.440 in February, and I lost it and thankfully you said, hey, 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:29.720 by the way, you know, we got that seven countries 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:32.600 thing just sitting there gathering dust. Ye, I said, Chuck, 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.840 don't lose it here. I lost it and then I 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.039 found it. I was lost, but now I'm found. And 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.039 fat is good for your body the end, I know. 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:48.760 But that's a that's such like a revolutionary statement these days, 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.080 radical even basically to say fat is good for your 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.440 body the end, especially our we I'll not even our age, 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:59.240 but anyone in America and the eighties and nineties, somebody 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:06.720 in our court. You mean, yeah, I do too. So um. 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:09.200 The reason why it's kind of radical to say that 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:11.920 fat is good for you is because, yeah, everybody, our age, Chuck, 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.320 knows that fat is horrible for you. And even if 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:17.320 you kind of know that fat's not as bad as 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:20.639 we used to think, you probably still don't realize how 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:22.760 much better it is for you than it actually is. 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:25.239 There still some part of you that demonizes it. And 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:29.639 during the eighties and the nineties you couldn't get fat 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:32.839 if you shook it out of a pig, like it 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.680 was nowhere to be found. In the United States, we 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:40.560 had low fat everything. Remember we had uh like potato 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:42.960 chips where they took out the fat and replaced it 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:48.080 with a like a diarrhea creating agent. Right, what were 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.720 those called the did this? But I think they were 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:57.079 like like um las ola. Weren't they called ola chips? 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:02.200 They should have been called oiv as. So yeah, like 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:03.840 we're doing all sorts of things. And one of the 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.680 worst things we did too, even worse than adding olean 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:10.440 or replacing fat with olean, was a takeout fat and 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.200 replace it with high fruit toast corn syrup. Because one 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.120 of the things that fat does is give food flavor, 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:18.600 and we take fat out of food, you still wanted 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.919 to have flavor, and if you're a food processor, one cheap, 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.800 easy way to put flavor back into it is to 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.320 put high fruit toast corn syrup into it. And so 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:30.880 they think that like all of this war on fat 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:33.120 that took place in the eighties and nineties is actually 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:38.240 at least partially, if not fully responsible for the outbreak 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:43.520 of chronic diseases that we're seeing now, including obesity and 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.400 um diabetes that is just epidemic right now in the 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.720 United States. Yeah, it was so ingrained in us that 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.640 even after doing this podcast episode and knowing what we 0:03:55.720 --> 0:04:00.680 now know, it's still like you say things like, you know, boy, 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:02.920 that steak you just feel like like clogging up your 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:05.720 arteries as you know that fat just gets wedged in there. 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:09.960 You just get these mental images of fat just like 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:14.720 breaking off of food and sticking to your blood vessels. Right, Yeah, 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.640 like this is really unhealthier, this is super indulgent or 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.800 something like that, And that just may not necessarily be 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.520 the case, but yeah, we had a number done on us, basically, 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.559 and we're still crawling out from under it. And what's 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:32.280 the most magnificently amazing thing is that basically all of this, 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:36.520 the war on fat, the low fat trend, the possibly 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:41.000 the diabetes, and the obesity that resulted from taking out 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:44.400 faster and placing it with sugar, all of this stuff 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:50.160 came from one study that was conducted back starting back 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.880 in the fifties that some people are like, the study 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:58.400 isn't even legitimate methodologically, yeah, so that is the seven 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:03.640 country study. And uh. The creator of the seven country 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:07.200 study was someone named Dr Ansel keys Um who was 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:12.159 married and published and this is I'm not gonna We'll 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.800 just let this speak for itself. They published a number 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:20.720 of high volume selling books about the Mediterranean diet. That 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:26.280 these cookbooks and um sometimes like the very first one 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.440 was only what like two years after they started doing 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:33.320 this study. So they have been accused of cherry picking 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:40.240 their data and promoting correlation as causation and uh. As 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:43.680 a result of all this, the United States very famously 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.240 came out with the food Pyramid that we was drilled 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:50.480 into our heads in school and said fat is cholesterol 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:55.119 and that is heart disease and eating fatty things will 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:59.280 kill you. Yes, like ipso fact. Though, the problem is 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:02.279 is that it was all based those recommendations. That food 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.640 pyramid was all based on the study and not any 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.640 kind of like clinical data. It was just basically a 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:14.000 study that was set up and designed to support a hypothesis, 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.360 not really test a hypothesis so much as support this 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:24.160 hypothesis by Dr Antel keys that saturated fats uh rose 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.960 cholesterol levels in your blood and that increased cholesterol levels 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.040 in your blood would kill you through heart disease. And 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:36.400 so doctor keys Is been very much demonized over the 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:39.000 years as people have figured out like, no, fats aren't 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:42.279 bad for you and actually you need them. But there's 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.919 also been like an effort to reform him too. And 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:50.920 in his defense, he wasn't just some some psycho narcissist doctor. 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:54.320 From what I could tell, he is. Um. He invented 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:58.599 k rations. K rations are called that after him keys Um. Yeah, 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.240 that that like kept a law of g I S alive. 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.880 And World War two, Um, he was a major part 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:09.920 of the Minnesota's starvation experiment where volunteers conscious just objectors 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.440 and World War two volunteered to be starved um so 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.880 that the scientists could figure out how to refeed people 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.960 without killing them, which became very useful when we liberated 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.920 the pow cants in Germany and some of the occupied areas. 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.240 So he was like a good I don't okay, I 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:29.720 don't know enough about him to say he was a 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:31.600 good person, but I don't think he was like an 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.480 evil person by any stretch of the imagination. And also 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:37.480 the reason that he started conducting the study in the 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.760 first place was because there was an epidemic of middle 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.680 aged men, in particular in America who were just dying 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:46.880 left and right of heart disease, and he wanted to 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:49.400 figure out what the problem was. He also started the 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:56.400 K pop phenomenon, so catchy and great. I don't know 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:58.240 any K pop I know the kids love it, though 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:01.760 they do, they're not for it. That one B twos 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:03.760 band or something like that. I can't I can't remember 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.160 their name, no idea, but if they're called the B 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.000 fifty twos, then they should be sued because that's been taken. 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:13.720 So Dr Ansel Keys as an American from Minnesota, a 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:19.800 physiologist and in the forties when you know, uh, the 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:21.760 Don Drapers, although that was a little later, but the 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.600 Don Drapers of the world were falling over dead from 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.200 smoking cigarettes all the time and eating steak for lunch 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:29.920 and martinis for lunch. He said, you know what, I'm 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.120 gonna figure this out and see what's going on, and 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:37.320 I'm gonna identify some risk factors why men in this 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:40.120 country are developing heart disease and men around the world. 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:42.720 Is what it ended up being. But it started in 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:46.160 Minnesota where he did a little pilot study. And while 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.600 he was doing that, he got a message from a 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:53.000 colleague in Italy who said, in southern Italy we got 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:57.880 to no heart to disease. Everybody's a healthy And he said, really, 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.559 and and he also said, southern Italy is really nice. 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.080 You should come visit. And so he went there in 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:05.800 the nineteen fifties and a bet, I mean, Southern Italy 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:07.319 is still great, but a bet in the early nineteen 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.560 fifties it was just idyllic. And he went down there 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:16.920 and he started these informal studies comparing business business executives 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:22.160 with the working class men of southern Italy, measuring serum 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:26.760 cholesterol levels, talking about what you're eating, getting the data 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.559 on heart disease and heart attacks there from the hospitals, 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:34.560 and he started to form this hypothesis that you know what, dudes, 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:38.760 middle aged dudes that have higher serum cholesterol levels are 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:41.400 more likely to die or at least suffer from a 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:45.320 heart attack. Yes, yes, And that was like the beginning. 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:47.880 That was yeah, And that was his hypothesis. And it's 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.600 pretty sound hypothesis, especially based on some of the data 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:55.040 that he'd seen, because he around this time after his 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:57.760 he was intrigued by his friend in southern Italy and 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:00.320 his trip to southern Italy um, which, by the way, 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.120 he fell in love with Southern Italy so much he 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.800 shot shop there and I believe lived out his life 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:11.240 till age one oh one. Yeah. Um, And that proves it. 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.839 It basically does, because I believe he did adhere pretty 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.400 strictly to the Mediterranean diet he espoused. He was no hypocrite, 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:23.120 but um he uh. He started poking around and getting 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.400 his hands on whatever data he could four things like 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:31.400 fat intake in the diet and incidences of heart disease 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:33.880 and heart attacks wherever he could get it in the world. 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.920 And he compiled um data from twenty two different countries 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.120 and he said, wow, this is really kind of all 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:43.960 over the place. I'll just select six of these countries 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.920 that really proved my point. And he created what's known 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:48.920 as the six country graph, which a lot of people 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.240 confused with the seven country Study, but it pre pre 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:54.880 dated the seven country study. But it was this thing 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:57.800 that was kind of like the transition period between first 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.520 forming this hypothesis and begin the seven country study. The 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:05.640 six country graph was kind of like the connective tissue 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.440 between the two and it also told him where to 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:12.840 look to really find the biggest disparities that might support 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.880 or um undermine his hypothesis. And so we got to 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.640 work looking around and contacting people around the world and said, hey, 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.040 I have zero funding to offer you. I know that 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.000 World War two just ended and everybody is basically trying 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:30.040 to rebuild their economy and their nation in Europe is 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.120 kind of war torn and shattered, and um, Japan has 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.560 had bombs dropped on it. But do you want to 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:40.000 start studying whether eating steak is bad for you and 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:44.880 going to kill you? And actually, astoundingly some country said yes, yeah. 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:51.000 So the countries ended up being Italy, Spain, South Africa, Japan, Finland, 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:54.000 the US. And I guess was that Greece was the 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.720 last one. Did that count Okay, Greece increase counts? Well, 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:04.880 I mean I knew, yeah, I know, grease increases the word. So, um, 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.480 it was time in the in the mid nineteen fifties. 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.320 He had the interested countries and the interested parties, so 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:15.360 in he developed these select populations and you kind of 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.760 teased it earlier calling us cohorts. These populations of men 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:21.800 they referred to as cohorts in the study so when 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:24.600 you hear say cohort, it's not like one guy, it's 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.440 a population of guys. Right. So the seven countries they 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:33.520 would monitor for twenty five years and ideally lead to 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.920 what risk factors would lead to heart disease. And that 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.160 was his goal was, I'm going to find out what 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:45.599 these risk factors are, provide some evidence, and then say 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:50.840 here's what you should be eating. Basically, Yes, so that 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.720 I mean, that's that's exactly what he did. Like you said, 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.079 within two years of starting this um study, which was 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.840 supposed to last and actually did twenty five and some 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:03.960 of the people who were the original participants were studied 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:08.520 for more than forty forty years. But um, within two 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:12.920 years he uh, he turned around and published that cookbook. 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:17.640 That's how certain he was of his hypothesis being correct. Yeah, 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:19.200 and I don't you know, we don't want to poop 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.520 of the Mediterranean diet. I think the idea, I'm sure 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:26.400 the Mediterranean diet is it can be quite healthy. The idea, though, 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:28.600 is is he shouldn't just be like, I'm gonna eat 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:32.760 low fat, because that's what happened in America. Everyone didn't say, hey, 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:36.160 we'll just eat Mediterranean. They said, we'll just eat junk 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.040 food full of sugar and hyproc dose corn syrup but 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:41.480 doesn't have fat. And and that was the other thing too, 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.959 is he is very frequently unfairly accused of demonizing fat. 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:48.120 He didn't do that. He said, you need to be 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:52.439 eating olive oil by the gallonful, just injected daily. Basically 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:57.600 he didn't say that. It's kind of paraphrasing, but he um. 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.760 He didn't leave out things like, um, you know, fats 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.599 from fish or from all of well, it was saturated 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:08.320 fat and particularly that he was convinced was the culprit 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:12.880 for heart disease and deaths from heart disease. Right, and uh, 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:15.439 eat a lot of grains, eat a lot of pasta, 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:17.880 eat a lot of fruit, eat a lot of bread, 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.800 a lot of vegetables. Sure vegetables are good for you. Yeah, 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:24.680 that's true, right. Yeah. And also I think one of 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:27.520 the other things that was so radical about the Mediterranean diet, 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.920 like even now you're like, oh, that sounds kind of exotic. 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:34.080 This is the fifties that this guy first introduced the 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.360 Mediterranean diet. But one of the other things that was 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.040 radical about it, and I should say, um, I didn't 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:41.000 I didn't give credit to his wife, Margaret, who co 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:43.520 wrote the first book with him, at least the first one, 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:48.080 if not more. Um, they wrote it together. But the 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.960 the the thing that was radical about it was that 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:54.960 he said, Hey, those fruits and vegetables and all that 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:58.560 make those the main like make the meat your side dish, like, 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:01.880 flip it over. You're gonna like live a lot longer 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:04.440 than you are just by eating a big steak and 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:08.440 some cream spinach on the side. Hey, I got no 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:10.840 problem with the man. There is definitely a case to 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:15.240 be made about eating what you like and living shorter. 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:17.680 It's tough to argue with in some cases. Hey, what 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:20.120 do we do when we occasionally on the road, We'll 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.960 go to a steakhouse together? We split a cream spinach 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.400 every time. Sure, I mean, how can you go to 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:29.000 a steakhouse and not eat cream spinach? It's the best 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:33.080 It makes you strong, right, Yeah, my forearm is just 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:37.560 a freakishly bulging. Should we take a break, Yes, all right, 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:39.440 go work out those four arms and we'll talk about 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:51.080 the cohorts right after this. If you want to know, 0:15:51.600 --> 0:16:03.760 then you're in luck. Just chuck. Okay, So we're gonna 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:08.800 say it again cohorts cohorts. It's a study population that 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.000 bears some sort of similarity to one another, sort of. 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:15.440 There were sixteen in the seven countries study, and all 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:20.000 sixteen cohorts total twelve thousand, seven hundred and sixty three participants. 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:22.920 So it's a pretty good study. Sixteen different groups of 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:27.440 people more than twelve thousand total in seven different countries. 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:31.640 It's fairly impressive and ambitious study for the time. For sure, 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:35.160 it was. And I think there were at least two 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:37.480 in every country except for the U S which had 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.200 one cohort. And he never said we have to be fair. 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.240 He never said, you know what, this represents all men 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.560 in these countries and sort of all men around the world. 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.400 They never pretended like that was the case. But they 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.840 had to start somewhere and um, and we're not pooping 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:59.280 the whole study. Like the it was very robust. Uh. 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.480 And if you carry out a study in seven countries 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:06.160 with all of these men over twenty five years, it's 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:09.000 you know, they weren't slouches or anything like that. No, 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.600 but the very fact that he went around and said, oh, 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:15.600 these people eat a Mediterranean diet, I'm gonna include them. 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.720 These people eat what I consider the opposite of Mediterranean diet. 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:22.240 Include them, yea, rather than saying like, we'll just pick 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.439 these countries at random and and start studying them and 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.840 see if the their cholesterol intake is low and then 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.600 if so, if that correlates with the lower heart disease. 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.800 He didn't do that, and that is definitely worth criticizing 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.439 for sure. So let's I guess talk about some of 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:43.240 these cohorts and what they who they were, uh, former Yugoslavia. 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:47.159 He studied a couple of small towns um one that 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.280 had the Western European diet and one that was on 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:54.960 the Mediterranean diet largely. Finland was really interesting, I think 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:59.240 out of all these, because he compared two villages in 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:05.000 eastern and western Finland, because East Finlanders were recording a 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:08.080 lot more heart attacks, in fact, supposedly like the highest 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:11.359 record on planet Earth at the time. Yes, and for 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.720 good reason too, you would think, because they would eat 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:19.520 things like so great, this makes me hungry, Yeah, it 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.000 kind of does. Actually, they would eat a fish soup 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.160 that was just loaded with butter for breakfast. They would 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:28.800 he was called the Loggers launch, which was described by 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:33.639 one of the researchers as um, are you ready large 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:37.439 hunks of meat, suspended and congealed fat, enveloped in a 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.320 dark bread loaf, fully permeated by fat. I'm so sorry 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.120 to our being of vegetarian listeners because you're probably turning 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:46.800 it off right about now. Yeah, we should have spoiled 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:50.959 our trigger warning this one yeah too late, which, by 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:53.080 the way, I have to say, I have been really 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:57.639 doing my best to eat far less meat. Um, not 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:02.040 for health purposes, for ethical reasons, really sure, but I 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:04.239 gotta say that does sound kind of good to me. 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:06.879 Is like, if you put this in front of me 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:10.080 and say, here's your chance to eat a uh Eastern 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:13.840 Finland loggers lunch, I would I would take you up 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:18.000 on it. I think, Yeah, I'm cut down on meat too. Yeah, yeah, 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:19.400 I eat so. I don't mean a lot of red meat. 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:24.240 Don't eat a ton of pork anymore, can especially especially 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:26.960 pork from me. I I don't always eat meat, but 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:31.440 when I do, I try not to. Uh So. Then 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.080 so you've got your high fat diets in Finland. And 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:37.159 then he said, all right, I need to, like you 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.680 kind of mentioned earlier, I need to choose some some 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:44.600 opposite in my view, opposite countries of what they eat. 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:47.919 So where do you go. You go to Japan, of course, 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:50.200 where they eat a lot of fish, and he went 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.359 to a even a tiny little fishing village where they 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.639 all ate almost all fish. And then again in Greece 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.160 and the Greek islands, uh and in southern Italy also 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.760 where they were obviously eating the Mediterranean diet. Right, So 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.280 he takes all these different cohorts, takes all of their 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:10.240 different diets and starts just kind of looking at um, 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.120 all sorts of factors. That was one of the other 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.440 reasons you said it was a very robust study. One 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:16.840 of the other reasons that it was robust is because 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:18.919 they looked at all sorts of stuff. It wasn't just 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.680 their diet. They looked at things like, um, what they drank, 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:24.040 and what they smoked, and how much they smoked and 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.640 all this kind of stuff. It was a big, long study. 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:29.520 And again they followed these guys for at least twenty 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:32.640 five years, and some of the stuff that they found 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.160 we're basically this and this is this is the two 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:40.119 points that the Seven Countries study told the world, and 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:42.040 they just so happened to be the two points that 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.720 ansel Keys fully expected the seven countries to tell the 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.360 studies to tell the world, and it was that if 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:52.200 you have a high serum cholesterol, like a high concentration 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:56.040 of cholesterol in your blood, then there you're there's a 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.960 greater chance that you were going to die from cardiovass 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:04.640 killer disease. Right and Eastern Finland where those loggers were 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:10.280 eaten fat breads. That's a great name for a restaurant, 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:15.800 fat bread Sure. Oh yeah, I think wow, if restaurants 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:18.439 are still around in a few months, then we should 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:22.040 open one called fat breads. Um. So, those fat bread 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:25.840 eating loggers, they had average serum cholesterol levels of more 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:29.720 than two sixty and there were more than four heart attacks, 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.640 uh four heart attack deaths for every one middle aged 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:37.880 men five years after the study started. Right, okay, so Chuck, 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:41.040 I looked it up. They had an average of two sixty. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:46.800 The window of normal or acceptable or your your um 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:53.080 you don't have like viscous blood is two d These 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:57.359 guys were averaging to sixty. That's a lot. It is 0:21:57.359 --> 0:22:01.520 a lot. So the opposite of that was the former 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:06.840 Yugoslavian place uh Dalmatia, where they had the Mediterranean diet 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:11.080 and there men had an average serium cholesterol level and 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:14.240 had one death per one men over that same period. 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:18.640 And Dalmatia is where the Dalmatian dog they think is from. 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:21.399 I kind of assumed that, but you never know, did you? 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:23.440 It was worth saying anyway, Sure, this is a show 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:27.240 about facts in trivia. That's right. Um. Did you have 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:32.080 you ever been to Croatia? No? It is spectacular, man. 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:36.919 It's on the Adriatic and it is incredibly gorgeous. You 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:38.760 mean and I went on a cruise once that went 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:41.280 through there, and it is I've just wanted to go 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:44.440 back ever since. Was it one of those river cruises? No, 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:46.480 it was again, it was on the Adriaca. It was 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:49.359 a cruise all the way around Italy, from one side 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:51.680 to the down past the boot and then up the other. 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.840 It was love. Yeah, we're not like cruise people or 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:59.320 anything like that, but we went with Um Shandon the 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:03.159 Champagne Acre had a cruise that we're like, well, okay, 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:06.000 this is the one we're gonna take, and uh it 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:07.919 turned out to be really great because we're not like 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:11.000 Italy fans. You we have nothing against Italy, but we 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:13.280 were never like we got to go to Italy never, 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:15.880 We're never cruise fans. And then after we got off 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:17.280 of those were like, I want to go on another 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:19.359 cruise and I want to go back to Italy and 0:23:19.400 --> 0:23:21.000 would a kill you to give me some more shand 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:25.200 on did you just drink tons of champagne? Yes, that's wonderful. 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:29.760 So the other thing that uh It said was the 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:34.240 other conclusion was diets higher and saturated fats will correlate 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:37.240 to more heart attacks. And the data did show a 0:23:37.280 --> 0:23:42.080 big correlation between saturated fat in the regular traditional diet 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:46.720 and the heart attacks. And I think crete where saturated 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:49.360 fats equal between eight and nine percent of daily calories, 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:54.200 the average number of heart attack desper one hundred was 0:23:54.400 --> 0:23:57.520