The Hungry Brain: Stephan Guyenet on Navigating the Complex Relationship Between the Environment, our Habits, and Obesity

Episode Transcript
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Jerry Teixeira (00:00):
In this episode, I speak with Stefan Guine.
Stefan is a neuroscientist whostudies obesity and he also
wrote a book called the HungryBrain.
Now the book is a phenomenaldeep dive into the
neuro-biochemistry of obesityand what drives us to eat.
And over the years, I've beeninvolved in some threads on
Twitter with Stefan and one ofthe things that stood out to me

(00:21):
is he and I both take a similarview of the current obesity or
poor health epidemic and that weboth look at it as an
evolutionary mismatch betweenthe modern food environment and
the environment which we evolveto thrive in.
So we do dig into that in thisconversation.
We talk about Hunter Gather isquite a bit.

(00:42):
We even talk about our newjoint business venture, the
Hodza Cafe, coming soon to amall near you.
So, without further ado, pleaseenjoy my interview with Stefan
Guine.
All right, stefan, I'm happy tointerview you.
I actually read your bookrecently.
I've followed you on Twitter fora while, been engaged in some

(01:05):
online nutrition battles thatyou've been a part of in the
past, and the reason that I wasexcited to have a chance to
interview you is because I thinkthat your work and what you
study is probably as importantas anything anybody studying in
the world today, and that'sgoing to be obesity and

(01:26):
nutrition and the reason.
I think people are very wellaware we've got an obesity
epidemic that is costingbillions of life hours, so
people's lives are beingshortened because of this, but
also huge economic hardships,hardships on families, and
there's all of these differenttheories as to why we're in the

(01:48):
situation that we're in.
But I found your book veryinteresting and I think that it
will help people understand whywe've gotten where we've gotten,
despite all the knowledge thatpeople would need to combat
what's going on.
So, basically, I think thatknowledge is great, but knowing

(02:14):
something and then having a planto actually institute something
effectively are not the samething.
Having support is not the samething, and I know you're well
versed in those areas.
So that's my reason for wantingto interview you, and I'm
excited for you to be here.
But if you could start withexplaining how you got into

(02:34):
science, what drew you to itinitially and how, from there,
you got into studying obesityand doing the work that you're
doing currently, yeah, so firstof all, thanks for having me.

Stephan Guyenet (02:46):
I'm glad to be here.
I have been interested inscience for as long as I can
remember.
Even as a young child I wasinterested in science.
I used to read textbooks likefor fun when I was a kid.
I was a little bit of a weirdkid and I decided at a pretty

(03:08):
young age that I wasparticularly interested in
neuroscience, and the reason isthat it's one of the last
remaining great scientificfrontiers in biology.
So if you look at a tissue likethe liver, we still have things
to learn about it.
But we know a lot more aboutthe liver than we do about the

(03:30):
brain.
There's just so much left tolearn about the brain.
It's, I would say, by far themost complex organ in the body
and furthermore, it is whatmakes us who we are right, I
mean the essence of being human.
A lot of that most of it, Iwould say, is really about our
brains, and so I was veryinterested in neuroscience and I

(03:57):
got my.
I got a degree, my BS, inbiochemistry in college with the
idea that I would use that as afoundation for neuroscience,
and graduates in graduatestudies went to the University
of Washington and got my PhDthere in neuroscience and at the

(04:17):
time I didn't really know whatI wanted to work on, but I was
really interested inneurodegenerative disease and
epilepsy.
I ended up working on a rareneurodegenerative disease called
SCA7 that I used to joke.
There's more people studying itthan there are who actually
have the disease, which I don'tthink is literally true, but

(04:38):
it's probably not that far off.
And I mean the idea was tostudy something that was more
broadly relevant toneurodegenerative diseases in
general.
And you know, I think thatmakes sense.
But on the other hand, I wantedyou know, I was kind of
chomping on the at the bit to dosomething that's more directly

(05:01):
impactful, and I've always beeninterested in health and
nutrition and fitness, alwaysbeen very physically active, and
so I'm interested.
I've always been interested inbody fatness and what determines
it, and I realized at a certainpoint, as I started to learn
about neuroscience, that it hada lot to do with body fatness.

(05:25):
And you know, the reasons maynot be obvious, but if you start
to think about it, I think theybecome obvious.
The first reason is that thebrain is the organ that
generates all of our behavior,and so if you believe that, how

(05:46):
much we eat or what we eat orhow we move our body has
anything to do with body fatness, then you have to believe that
the brain is important.
And the second thing that isless obvious is that the brain
actually contains a regulatorysystem for body fatness, and we
can talk about that more later,but I'll just leave it there for
now.
And you know, I started learningall this stuff and kind of was

(06:09):
you know, one of the things thatstruck me about it first of all
was that it was reallyinformative.
It really kind of helpedexplain what's going on with
with body fatness.
And the second part that reallystruck me was how little this
stuff was getting translated tothe public in any kind of

(06:30):
intelligible way.
And so that's what motivated meto write first my blog and then
my book to try to bring some ofthese findings my own research
was a small slice of it.
Most of you know what I waswriting about was other people's
research and bring those to thepublic, and that culminated

(06:52):
with my book, the Hungry Brain,and then some, you know, just
publish public sciencecommunication that I've been
doing since then.

So when you first started directing your
research into obesity or was itobesity or did you?
I mean, what was it that youfirst?
They got you away from studyingthe rare disorder.

Yeah, sorry I left.
I left a piece out of my story,I left a critical piece out.
I did my post doc with MikeSchwartz at the University of
Washington, studying theneuroscience of obesity.
So we were using animal modelsprimarily, with a little bit of
work with human tissue as well,to try to figure out what's
going wrong with the regulatorysystem that regulates body

(07:39):
fatness.

Yeah, but when you first got into it, I'm sure
it intuitively it kind of makessense because we know, here are
our hormones, our testosteronelevels, all this other stuff,
these things have you havefeedback loops, negative
feedback loops within the brain.
And so you know, like you said,and you're right, and I hadn't
thought about it like this, butyou are, what's in your brain, I
mean, that's the housing,that's you, you know, so

(08:03):
inextricably those things haveto be linked.
I mean intuitively I knowyou've got to prove it, but
intuitively it makes sense Likeit is the liver involved, but
ultimately it would seem thatthe brain is, you know, the
chief organ responsible.

So yeah, absolutely, and you know there
are a lot of things that areregulated by the brain, a lot of
things that are regulated bythe body in general, and a lot
of you know most I'm going tosay most.
I would have to be certainabout this, I'd have to think
about it, but I think this istrue that when you're talking
about most like whole bodyregulatory processes, I think

(08:42):
most of those the brain at leasthas a hand in, and so it's not
surprising that whole bodyenergy status, which is
primarily represented by bodyfatness, would be regulated by
the brain.
Like the brain has a regulatorysystem for body temperature,
for a really really good one forbody temperature, for blood
pressure, for all thesedifferent variables, and so it's

(09:03):
actually really logical that itwould have one for body fatness
, given its really high level ofimportance.
And actually as early as the1950s, people already had a
sketch of how this negativefeedback system works, and we've
only flushed it out since then.

So you mentioned 1950, and it wasn't too too far
after that where we start tosee, well, a couple decades.
But you start to see this shiftin national, like you mentioned
, body fatness.
This shift happens which atfirst I don't think was

(09:41):
identified as an epidemic, butin time it turned out that the
acceleration continued quick andpace and ultimately spiraled
into the obesity epidemic thatwe're left with today.
So when you shifted yourresearch to start studying
obesity, initially in an animalmodel, like you mentioned, at
that point had you alreadystarted to kind of look into

(10:04):
what you thought had caused orwhat the causes for you and I
know it's probablymultifactorial.
But at that point, when youstart getting into this animal
research, I'm sure you'rethinking outside of that and
thinking about humans.
So at that point had you formeda hypothesis as to what you
thought was responsible yet, ordid that come later?

Yeah, I mean I had been thinking about it,
certainly thinking about it andwriting about it.
I think I've refined my ideasover time and I have a little
more confidence in my ideas thanI used to, not to say that I
know exactly what happened thatcaused the obesity epidemic.

(10:45):
We don't have 100 versions ofUS history that we can run in a
randomized way to figure outexactly what caused what.
So the best we can do is guessbased on things that make the
most sense, based on theresearch we do have.
But yeah, I was thinking aboutit at the time, certainly.
I mean, one obvious thing thatstands out is that diet has a

(11:11):
huge impact on body fatness.
So we have these animal modelsof obesity and it's clear that
the most effective way to make amouse or rat fat is to feed
them a fattening diet.

(11:32):
There's nothing that you can doother than genetic
manipulations.
There's nothing in theenvironment that you can change
that is more fattening thancertain types of food are.
Physical activity does impactit.
So if you put a running wheelin their cage, typically they'll
use it liberally and that willreduce the amount of fat that

(11:54):
they would gain on a fatteningdiet.
And actually, if you give thema healthy diet, they'll stay
lean their entire lives, asopposed to slowly, very slowly,
gaining weight if you give thema running wheel.
So the exercise component doesmatter in that setting, but the
diet is really the main one.
Let's see what I was going tosay.

(12:22):
Lost my train of thought there,but anyway.
Yeah, basically, if you feedthem calorie-dense, refined food
, they will get fat really fast.
And especially, the mostfattening thing you can give
them is a variety ofcalorie-dense, tasty human foods

(12:44):
.
That is literally the mostfattening thing you can give to
a mouse or rat is calorie-dense,tasty human foods rich in
carbohydrate and fat.
And the interesting thing yougive them one kind of food, like
cookies, they'll get fatter.
You give them a different kindof food, like salami, they'll
get fatter.
You give them both and they'llget even fatter.

(13:04):
So the variety per se is partof the equation.
Basically, if you give them abuffet of really delicious,
refined, calorie-dense foods,you can even in the same cage,
you can give them unlimitedaccess to healthy, unrefined
food.
That would keep them relativelyhealthy and lean for their
entire lives, and they willignore it in favor of eating

(13:28):
this buffet of delicious humanjunk foods.
And so I mean to me that's apretty general conclusion to
come to that food has somethingto do with it, but I think
that's an important first step.

Yeah, the thing that's interesting to me when
you said that is nutritionistsand overall people, as they
promote health, recommend eatinga wide variety of foods, and
obviously they're insinuatingyou eat a wide variety of
quote-unquote healthy foods.
I mean they're not saying, yeah,roll a bunch of junk food in
there.
But when you look at theresearch or at least when I've
looked at the research ondietary variety, the more varied

(14:10):
a diet becomes, the strongerthere seems to be a correlation
with weight gain, and so thatseems to kind of go along with
what you're saying.
And the corollary of that isthe more at least in my
experience and with my own dietwhen you hone in on a group of
meals or foods that you enjoyeating, that that support a

(14:33):
healthy body weight, and you eatthose things frequently, it
tends to be easier to regulateyour weight.
So when I'm preparing food athome and we don't eat out very
often, I'm leaner than when weeat out more frequently, and I
think that's partly because youneed good at restaurant.
You got all this great stuff tochoose from, so that
intuitively, that makes sense.
But also, like I mentioned,those data that I've seen where

(14:54):
they show that great variety islinked to weight gain.
That's actually reallyinteresting.

Yeah, and it's been very clearly demonstrated
in animals and in humans.
The limited evidence we havesupports that as well.
I mean, certainly there's nodoubt that at a single meal, if
you sit somebody down and offerthem a wide variety of foods,
they'll tend to eat more than ifyou just offer them a couple

(15:22):
foods.
And this is anecdotal.
But one thing that I find kindof interesting is if you look at
the bodybuilder guys,especially when they're going
into a cut, they'll often justeat just a few really repetitive
, really simple meals.
It'll be like rice and chickenand broccoli or something like
that, just over and over andover again.

Yeah, totally White potatoes man.
I don't know how they do it.
That's supposed to be likewhite fish and potatoes are
supposed to be.
It's funny because you look,there's research on satiety
right, different foods andindividually or combined, and
then you rate them on how theyimpact satiety or feelings of
fullness, and white fish andpotatoes, if I'm not mistaken,

(16:03):
are either two of the highest orthe highest foods.

Yeah, that's correct.

Right, but I mean, they're pretty boring.
I don't know if it's becausethey are directly stimulating
you to not want to eat more orif you're just like dude, I'm
over this, I don't want to eatthis.

I think it's all part of the same thing.
One of the things that we'velearned about neuroscience is
that everything is connected toeverything.
So, basically, when the brainis trying to figure out what
behavior to generate how muchyou're going to eat, for example

(16:38):
it's going to take a widevariety of things into account
on that.
It's going to take into accounthow much food you already have
in your digestive tract.
It's going to take into accountyour subjective, how much you
enjoy those particular foods.
It's going to take into accountall this other stuff, like
what's going on in yourenvironment.

(16:58):
So I think that, and in thatcontext, what I'm coming around
to is that one of thedeterminants of satiety or
fullness that you experiencewith the food is how good it
tastes.
So palatability is one of thethings that determines satiety,
and so I think that isabsolutely right.

(17:19):
And if you look at thesestudies that and it's not the
only thing, by the way, it's afactor just to clarify but if
you look at these studies thatfeed people a variety of foods
and measure how full they feelafterwards, you see a negative
correlation with palatability.
So, basically, foods that tastereally good, your brain is

(17:41):
willing to take the breaks off alittle bit is kind of the way I
think about it Because thatfood tasting good to you.
What that means is that, on anintuitive level, your brain
highly values those foods.
And when your brain highlyvalues a food, it will often be
happy to find ways to allow youto eat more of it.

Now this is kind of interesting because one of
the things that I see brought upand I've researched myself and
I do find very interesting isthe idea of hunter-gatherer
populations or pre-industrialpopulations, and they tend to
exhibit robust metabolic health.
But part of that is they tendto also have a simplified diet.

(18:27):
They may eat a highcarbohydrate diet, some are
higher in animal foods and itvaries across the spectrum
depending on where they are, butI'm not aware of any of them
where they have this widevariety of ingredients and foods
available year-round, and so Iwonder how much that plays into
their ability to regulate energyhomeostasis and their body

(18:52):
fatness.
I know physical activitythey're very active and that
plays a role as a protectivemechanism, but I wonder how much
of it or, if you want tospeculate, how much of it do you
think is not having access toall the variety that we have?

I think it probably plays a role.
I mean, our eating drive isdetermined by a lot of things
and that's one of them.
So you know, if you look at whathunter-gatherers actually eat
and just to emphasize this pointthat we've left unsaid so far
is that this is how humans livedfor almost the entire time that

(19:27):
humans have existed.
So you could argue that this ismore what we're adapted to than
the modern world.
If you look at whathunter-gatherers actually eat,
it's somewhere between tolerableto disgusting to a modern

(19:51):
person Like, I think, mostpeople living in the modern
world, where we expect basicallyour palate to be entertained
with every meal, would have areally hard time living in this
environment.
So you know, you talk about thehodza.
I think you mentioned the hodza.
That's one of the best-studiedhunter-gatherer groups.
You look at what they eat.
First of all, they don't haveany salt, no added salt.

(20:14):
The only salt they get is fromthe foods they eat.
They don't have fat sittingaround that they can add to
things.
They don't have sugar sittingaround that they can add to
things.
They do eat honey, but theyliterally just straight up eat
it.
They don't like sprinkle it onthings and make you know, toast

(20:35):
with butter and honey, and sothat's first of all.
And second of all, you look atthe foods they eat.
Some of them are tasty, so likethey eat some nuts that are
described as tasting likealmonds, like so you could think
of unsalted roasted almonds.
They have honey, they havecertain types of fruits that are

(20:57):
probably pretty tasty, but alot of the other foods that they
eat are not that tasty.
So you talk about baobab fruit.
That's one of their main,that's one of their main calorie
sources.
It's really fibrous, it's notvery sweet, it's kind of tart.
You talk about the tubers theyeat.

(21:18):
The tubers they eat are sofibrous that they cook these
things.
They look like long sweetpotatoes, at least some of them,
and they cook these things andthen they chew them and they're
so fibrous that they have tospit out this wad of fiber and
just kind of like swallow thejuice and those are described as

(21:41):
not tasting very good.
And then the meat they eat.
I mean it's meat.
I'm sure it tastes fine, butyou know they're not eating
wagyu beef.
It's like super lean muscletissue that's probably pretty
gamey.
And how do you cook it?
You're not even putting salt onit, you're basically throwing
it on the fire, or bearing itnext to the fire with coals,

(22:03):
scraping off the burn parts,hoping that there's not a lot of
raw on the inside, and eatingit.
Or you know another example theywill fight prides of lions for
carcasses that the lions havebeen chewing on.
They will eat meat that's beensitting around that to us would
be like hopelessly rotten, likestraight up rotten.

(22:25):
They will eat, and so, likethis is the kind of stuff that
I'm talking about, like some ofthe stuff they eat would be
stuff that we could eat and feelokay about, and some of it we
would just be like utterlydisgusted by, and most of it, I
think we would find pretty bland.
And that's how humans ate foralmost our entire existence.
So, yeah, I think that's onereason.

(22:45):
I think also, though you knowyou mentioned the exercise, so
there's like the physiologicalaspects of physical activity,
which might help regulate ourappetite, might to a small
extent increase our metabolicrate, and then, but there's

(23:06):
another aspect to it that Ithink is really important, and
that's that the physicalactivity that they're doing is
in service of trying to get foodright.
I mean, that's basically theirfull-time job is trying to get
food, and so it creates thistremendous effort barrier to
obtaining food.
So you know, if you think aboutlike what if the Hadza ate or

(23:30):
had access to exact same foodsthat we do?
So on this, you know savanna,there's like pizza, there's ice
cream, there's, you know, whitebread and bologna sandwiches,
there's everything.
But they still have to walkeight miles and climb trees and
get stung by bees and whateverto get that food.
I bet you they wouldn't.
I bet you they would not benearly as fat as most people in

(23:55):
affluent countries, simplybecause there's that enormous
effort barrier.
So you're not going to casuallydrink a Pepsi, you're not going
to casually reach over and grab, you know, a snack If you have
to walk three miles and climb atree for it.
So I think that's part of it is.
There's just much more of aneffort barrier historically to

(24:17):
eating.
That has been almost completelyremoved in the modern world.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in light of, you
know, technological advanceshave happened in every aspect of
our lives and that just keepsaccelerating.
And on the one hand we've lostbasic, you know, day to day
energy expenditure, and it's notnot so much just calories
burned.
But I think people don'trealize that movement plays a

(24:45):
key role in keeping your bodymetabolically fit and healthy.
Like we didn't evolve to besedentary, right?
So you know, walking yourcalves are contracting, helping
recirculate blood, and in recentresearch they've even found
that if you're sedentary all daybut you exercise a 45 minutes,
even if you go hard for that 45minutes, you're probably more
likely to get injured if you'resedentary the rest of the day.

(25:06):
But from a longevity standpoint, or when I look at all cause
mortality, it doesn't reallyhelp that much, if at all,
depending on the research thatyou're looking at.
And so it's important torecognize that the technological
displacement of movementthroughout our day, where
cultures such as the Haas, otherhunter gather societies, they

(25:26):
are physically active, andthat's one of the arguments I
hear is like well, it's not likethey go to the gym, they're not
running sprints or whatever.
No, they're not.
And I think, and my thinking onthis has evolved because when I
was younger I was more, you know, strength training and some
explosive cardio, no lowintensity work.
But humans have this incrediblecapacity for endurance and you

(25:49):
know we evolve that way.
And so when you look at thesehunter gather tribes, it's a lot
of walking, bending over,picking tubers, gathering food.
The Chimani and Bolivia it'srowing boats, walking, you know,
vast distances.
So I don't think it's aboutdoing all this high intensity
exercise Well, that has aspecific purpose and it's great.
I definitely think that justthe displacement of physical

(26:12):
activity even if that's not theprimary reason that we've gained
the weight I think that plays asignificant role in the decline
of our metabolic health.

Yeah, absolutely.
I mean there's no question thatphysical activity plays a huge
role in health and I think youknow, I think it could have
played a role in the rise inobesity over a long time scale.
I think there's a fair amountof disagreement over how much
physical activity has changed inthe US in more recent years,

(26:43):
like since 1980, when obesityrates really have soared.
But I mean, if you look over alonger historical timeline,
absolutely physical activitieshave declined a lot.
I mean you think about justwhat it was like to live a
normal life 100 years ago wherethere was no washing machine,
there was no clothes dryer, youdidn't have a motor vehicle.

(27:05):
You know, if you were lucky,maybe you had a horse to ride
around to get from place toplace.
So you know, and many, many,many more people were engaged in
physical labor, farming orworking in factories and
whatever.
And actually it's interestingyou look at, yeah, something
like 70% of people were engagedin physical occupations, like a

(27:32):
century ago or something, if I'mremembering the numbers
correctly.
So there's been absolutely hugechanges in occupational
physical activity and just totalphysical activity if we look on
it over a long time scale.
And, interestingly, if you lookat, you know hunter-gatherer
groups like the HADZA.
You mentioned that they walk alot, for example, hadza males if

(27:53):
I'm remembering correctly,hadza men they walk about eight
miles a day on average and butactually their energy
expenditure is lower, or sorry,not their energy expenditure,
their physical activity level islower than subsistence farmers.

(28:15):
So if you look at farmers whoare working the land to feed
themselves and their familiesand are not doing it in a
mechanized way but doing it howwe would have done hundreds of
years ago, those people worktheir butts off.
I mean, they're working evenharder.
And that's what we're comingfrom in the United States as a

(28:36):
society.
As we went throughindustrialization, we went from
that kind of an agriculturalsociety where most people were
growing crops, to one today whenmost people are not required to
do physical activity andwhatever physical activity they

(28:58):
do is mostly elective.
In other words, they do it justto stay fit.

Yeah, my grandparents owned a dairy and
so when I was in my youngeryears, growing up, my dad worked
on it, my grandfather worked onit, and they would wake up in
the morning, sometimes justcoffee, or they'd eat and then
go out and they were working forthe vast majority of the
daylight hours.
You know so definitely, I thinkphysical activity in that

(29:27):
protective role, you know, evenif you are eating hypercaloric,
even if you are under thatassault of excess energy, when
you're also expending moreenergy, I think that there's
probably a I think number oneyou have the energy balance
portion of it.
But then you look at it inathletes, right, when you are

(29:47):
healthier and you haveespecially and I don't want to
get too technical with it butyou have metabolic flexibility
in your body.
Actually, your mitochondriawork better when you're
physically active.
Things on a cellular level theyjust function better, regardless
of how you eat, which is whyphysical activity and one of the
things I try to preach onsocial media is physical
activity correlates withimproved health outcomes, no

(30:11):
matter what your bodycomposition is to a certain
point, once you pass I can'tremember off the top of my head,
but there is a certain level ofBMI, a certain level of obesity
where, while physical activitystill would show positive
changes in labs and things likethat, it doesn't reduce all

(30:33):
cause mortality.
So I think that's important andthat is protective, but to a
point.
I mean, at some point you losethat protective ability.
But before we move on from theHodza, so I'm assuming right now
you don't want to partner upwith me in a Hodza Cafe.

Is that like we make people eat scraped like
charred parts off of animalchunks of animal meat that were
thrown in the fire?

Yeah, yeah, we can start in a food court
somewhere and see how it goes.

Baobab and burned slash raw meat sounds
good.

Can I get a side of honey?
No, not on the meat.
They don't put that on the meat.

Yeah, you just have to drink it straight up.
Yeah, just spoonfuls orhandfuls rather.

So one other, mentioning Hunter Gathers just
as I think, maybe an example ofhow this plays out the Chamani
in Bolivia.
If I said that properlyrecently, I think about the last
decade they've had mechanizedboats where some of the
tribesmen have gotten thesemechanized boats and now they

(31:37):
travel upstream to cities andthe members of the tribe who are
on these boats.
Now they've gotten access tohighly processed foods, the
Chamani.
For people who don't know oraren't familiar, they have, as
far as I'm aware, the lowestatherosclerosis rates in the
world and they up until recentlywhere, as domestication or

(32:03):
whatever the right term for itis, industrialization has hit
members of the tribe.
That has changed now.
All of a sudden theircholesterol levels are going up
and they're starting to haveprediabetes in certain tribes
members.
And I think it's hard to teaseif it's food versus the boat,
because the people that this ishappening to are the ones that
no longer have to row the boats,they're no longer doing the

(32:24):
physical activity.
So it's almost like they wentfrom this highly active, limited
diet, hunter Gathers situationand almost overnight got stuck
into something more akin to aWestern style processed food or
high availability of processedfood and then lack of physical
activity.
So it's just really interestingto see these people.

(32:45):
That not over generations, butit was like all of a sudden in a
matter of a few years this wasintroduced for us in America.
It was like this this wasbuilding for a while.
It wasn't like I understand.
You have the obesity epidemic,where it seems like all of a
sudden it just took off, but thefoundations, it seems, were
being put in place with theadvance of technology.

(33:05):
So it's just, on the one hand,kind of sad to see it happen to
these people, because they don'tknow, they don't understand,
and then we bring them oh look,here's technology, here's all
this great stuff, and it's likehere's a heart attack as well.

Yeah, it's tough.
You look at the United Statesand we have, in some ways, our
health is incredible compared toHunter Gatherers.
We've basically conquered thiswide variety of infectious
diseases.
We, on average, we live waylonger, we have way less infant
mortality, our lives are saferin many ways, but, yeah, we have

(33:46):
these new epidemics ofcardiovascular disease and type
2 diabetes and certain types ofcancers and, of course, obesity
very widespread.
As far as the Trimani data youmentioned, I haven't seen those
specifically, but I mean, that'sa story that has happened many
times all around the world andthis was one of the things that

(34:11):
I was really passionate aboutwhen I first started getting
into this is there are all ofthese studies of cultures all
around the world, non-industrialcultures, documenting
incredible metabolic andcardiovascular health and
absence of obesity, so entirecultures where you can't

(34:32):
identify a single person who hasobesity, where you can't
identify a single person who haselevated blood glucose levels.
You can't identify, you know,people who have cardiovascular
abnormalities that suggest thatthey had previous subclinical
heart attacks, which those arevery common in populations like

(34:54):
Americans or Europeans, andthere were actually these huge
autopsy studies that were donein Africa and China and the US.
So not China, sorry, korea andJapan and the US, where they
looked at literally thousands ofpeople's hearts and coronary

(35:16):
arteries in different culturesin the 1960s I believe it was
and what they show is that thereare certain places, the least
industrialized places, whichwere Uganda and Nigeria, if I
remember correctly, rural Ugandaand Nigeria these people, even

(35:37):
at older ages, just simply didnot have heart attacks, like
there was no evidence that anyof them had had a heart attack
even at older ages, whereas inpopulations either you could
look at white people or blackpeople in the United States and
you would find that like a thirdof them in the same age

(35:57):
categories had either died of aheart attack and that was their
cause of death, or they hadevidence of a previous non-fatal
heart attack that had kind ofscarred over.
So there's virtually none ofthat in these populations.
And then if you look at culturesthat were kind of that were
industrialized but maybe to alesser degree, like the Korean

(36:20):
and Japanese populations, yousee lower rates of heart attacks
but they still have some.
And then in the Americanpopulations you see just very,
very high rates of heart attacksand they noted that.
You know, in conjunction withthis lack of heart attacks.

(36:42):
These people had lessatherosclerosis.
They had less buildup of plaqueinside their arteries.
So, yeah, I think a lot ofpeople aren't aware of how much
actual evidence there is on this, that our current, like the way
that we currently suffer fromhigh rates of cardiovascular

(37:04):
disease and obesity and type 2diabetes is very, very, very
atypical when you're thinkingabout it in terms of the
historical norm, the long-termhistorical norm for human beings
.

Yeah, I think that's what led me initially or
kind of helped shape my thinkinglooking at ancestral
populations and not beingdogmatic about it, because I
think you have the naturalisticfallacy which, for people that
are not aware, it's assumingeverything's always better, that
just because it's the way we'vealways done it.
Obviously it's not necessarilythe case, right, but I do think

(37:41):
that when you think about itintuitively, you've got I mean
billions or hundreds of millionsif you go all the way back, but
you've got millions of years ofevolution and you've got this
shaping.
You know we evolve in responseto our environment.
So we've got this long-termsubsistence and adaptations to
an environment, and then all ofa sudden that environment starts

(38:03):
to radically change with theIndustrial Revolution.
And well, I mean you knowdomestication of light and
things like that first, or fireprobably, but that was still a
very gradual advance.
And then all of a sudden youhave this, you know, drastic
acceleration of theproliferation of technology and
changing of our environment.
I mean, even in the last, Idon't know if it's 15 years or,

(38:27):
but you know, people used tohave ATV or maybe a few TVs or
whatever in the house, but it'slike now you've got and they
weren't the behemoths.
I mean, now you've got 65 inch,75 inch screens, we've got
screens in our pockets, we'vegot screens in our cars.
So I know that the data arevery preliminary as far as this
goes.
But I also think, you know youhave to look at circadian

(38:52):
biology, disruption of thatstuff.
You know, I think people try tomake too concrete or, you know,
too sweeping of recommendationswith some of that stuff.
But I do think it makes senselike hey, we're sleeping less
than ever, and not just are wesleeping less than ever, we're
staying up later than ever, orthe cycles are disrupted, like

(39:12):
these are conserved mechanismsfor millions, many millions of
years and all of a sudden we'vevastly disrupted those things.
So I think it's important forpeople to think about that, you
know, and look at their currentenvironment and hey, what little
changes can I make?
You know, some people are allred light bulbs in their house

(39:33):
and like going super far into it, which is cool, that's what you
want to do, but that's notrealistic for most people.
I don't do that, but I do thinkthat a lot of this when you just
look at it and you look at,even when you look at the
longevity studies that they didon long-lived populations around
the world, so-called blue zones, and everybody zeros in on diet

(39:56):
.
It's all I ever seen anybodytalk about with blue zones like
just plant-based people arguingwith.
You know, it's all based onwhat they eat.
But when you look at thepillars or the things that are
associated with longevity, it'slike they live, they feel like
they're more and more integratedinto their society.
You look at their circadianrhythms, they're living more in

(40:17):
tune with those things.
They walk everywhere.
I mean, they hardly drive carsin most of those places.
It's like, yeah, food's a partof it, for sure, and probably a
super important part.
I'm not downplaying it, I justthink that it's what?
When we really stop and thinkand kind of you and I've gone
back to this technologicaladvancement, it's like, okay,
this is not in line with what weevolved for.

(40:38):
How do we kind of I don't knowwhat's like the 20% of the
things that I can do to help memitigate most of the negative
impact of the world that we livein?
You know, and to me I thinkthat's what I try to help most
people shoot toward doing thosethings because you know you get
to the like hardcore biohackingand you're gonna lose almost
everyone.

Also probably a lot of it's not effective.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, at a certain point and
I think even if something iseffective, there's always the
point the law of diminishingreturns applies.
You know it's the same way withexercise.
Like you could be exercising 12hours a week and it's probably
minimally more effective orpotentially maybe even worse, or
you know, depending on the datayou look at.
But you can get the lion'sshare of the benefits from a

(41:24):
small amount of effort.
In fact, if you go fromsedentary to lightly physically
active, there are, I think younet like 50% of the total
reductions in all causemortality.
So just getting up and movingaround without structured
exercise is being lightlyphysically active as like
massively important.
So I think it's.
You know, if you're somebodythat's constantly stand up till

(41:46):
one in the morning and sleep infive, six hours, if you just
improve that a little bit andcut the lights off a little
earlier, get an extra half anhour of sleep, doing it's a
small things like thatconsistently, you're probably
getting most of the benefits.
Like I see people taping theirmouth shut and all this
elaborate sleep hygiene.
Yeah, I don't know if you'veseen you probably seen that?

No, I haven't seen that.

No, yeah there's like the bio hackers that they
start getting ready for bed anhour before they go to sleep.
Oh, geez, and it's like mouthtape and like all this crazy
stuff.

So it seems psychologically unhealthy.

Yeah.

I'm just gonna say that the funny thing is
stress.

I see it with diet or with exercise.
I haven't learned as I'vegotten older to, you know, do
the best you can within reasonand then try not to let it
consume you.
You know some people and I'msuper interested in what we can
do to impact longevity.
I've got kids and want to bearound for them, so like I'm
highly interested in all thisstuff.
But there's lots of, you know,recommendations I see floating

(42:48):
around.
I'm like I don't do a lot ofthat stuff just because I think
that it's probably not making abig impact.
But even on top of that, what'sthe opportunity cost?
You know, if you're likespending three or four hours a
day online just reading incircles about nutrition and
about all this like it's cool ifit's your hobby I mean health
is a hobby is great.
But it's like your kids aregetting older, your wife is,

(43:11):
you're getting like, at somepoint, how many hours did you
invest in researching and and Iknow I get everyone puts time
into hobbies, so I'm notknocking it, I'm just saying
that and I was guilty thismyself in the past At some point
you're taking hours away fromliving to focus on living better
and there's a trade-off.
You have to do that.

But at some point like Well, I think the
other thing is at what pointdoes it become psychologically
unhealthy, like?
At what point are you actuallyjust obsessing over it and
creating fear for yourself?
I think that's another question, because I think this is
something that is actuallypretty common, especially with
people around dieting and weightloss, like people will kind of

(43:53):
become obsessed with it and itwill consume their life and
create a lot of kind ofunhealthy thought patterns and
behavior patterns for them andsometimes create roadblocks with
relationships.
So, yeah, I think there's thatside of it too.

(44:13):
Is that, if taken too far forand, by the way, I think it's
totally healthy for people tothink about nutrition and modify
their diet for health I thinkthat's totally psychologically
healthy.
I'm not saying that that is abad thing to do.
All I'm saying is that can betaken too far and particularly
people who have a certain kindof obsessive or worrying

(44:35):
personality I think can besusceptible to being
psychologically harmed from it.

Yeah, and the societies that are not obese and
are healthy.
They're not thinking about notbeing obese, they're not even
thinking about being healthy,they just, interestingly,
they're just existing in theenvironment around them and
going through life andprospering.
In America and a lot ofcountries in the West or

(45:04):
countries that have had thistechnological advancements,
post-industrialized countrieswe're just going through life
the same way that these otherpopulations are just going
through life, yet weremetabolically sick or overweight
.
So to me, that's the thing.
In my younger years, coming outof the military, I was super
lean.
I ended up ultimately becomingobese myself and having to fight

(45:28):
that.
But during that transitionperiod I thought, like a lot of
people well, you just got to eatless, you just got to move more
.
You're just lazy, you know, toyour fault, you're fat.
Sorry, you know, I had this andthat's kind of what my
mentality was, which I'm ashamedto admit that now, which is
probably why fate made me fat.

(45:49):
But the reason I mentioned thatis it's you know, people today
like we're waking up, we'retaking care of our families,
we're doing our jobs, we'redoing the same things that we
did 50 years ago, like peopleweren't special back then, they
weren't like getting off workand rolling over to the gym and
going and running marathons andstuff.
I mean, you know a few people.
But I realized like no, it's nota moral failing that we're

(46:13):
overweight, it's not, it's not.
You know, in a way it's not afault that we're obese as a
population or that we'reunhealthy as a population.
It's like we're just a speciesexisting in the environment,
just like in your labs.
When you give the mice anobesogenic environment.
It's not their fault.
They're just being mice,they're just trying to live and

(46:33):
so you know, that's kind ofwhere we're at.
And so when people areoverweight or they're not happy
with their health or whateverthe case is like to me it's I
realized it's not really theirfault.
Yes, they're they.
No one can take action for them, Like they've got to.
They've got to figure out howto navigate this environment
that we're stuck in, which canbe, I mean, the biggest battle

(46:58):
of some people's lives.
So, with being a neuroscientistand with the research you've
done and we've talked about howthese populations who don't live
in our environment, so now,with us being stuck in the
environment that we're in, withall these you know traps around
us, what are the like what, what, what are the mechanisms that

(47:21):
we need to understand, like whatdrives us to to respond the way
we do to this environment?
And then, in your experience,what can we do to navigate this
environment successfully?

Yeah.
So the first thing I wantpeople to really understand is
that a lot of the brain activitythat underlies our eating
behavior is not under ourconscious control and is is not
conscious in the sense that wecan't even really observe what

(47:56):
it's doing.
So there's a lot ofnon-conscious brain activity
that goes into influencing oureating behavior I won't say
determining, because we do haveconscious control, but strongly
influencing our eating behavior.
So if you think about toillustrate this If you think
about when you feel hungry, didyou decide that you wanted to

(48:20):
feel hungry and then generatethat feeling, or is it just
something that arose from partsof your brain that are outside
of your control?
It's the latter, and there's awhole system that is there to
decide whether you feel hungryor not, and you're not the one
who turns it on.
You're not the one who turns itoff.
It just turns on and turns offwhen it's received certain

(48:44):
signals from the body and fromthe environment.
Do you decide when you want tofeel a craving?
When you smell the smell ofbrownies wafting out of the oven
, do you say, okay, I think I'llstart having a craving now to
eat those brownies?
No, that is a conditionedreaction that your brain
produces in response to thatsensory cue the smell of the

(49:06):
brownies and again, there's awhole brain system that
regulates that process, and it'snot under your conscious
control, and the only part of itthat you're consciously aware
of is that final end product ofall that computation, which is
feeling the craving, and sothere's a lot of things like
this.
That's just two examples ofnon-conscious brain systems that

(49:29):
impact our eating behavior, andthat's what my book is all
about.
Basically, the main thesis isthat we have all these
non-conscious systems in ourbrain that are guiding our
eating behavior, and the bookexplains how they are, how they
work and how we can work withthem, and so I'll talk about a

(49:52):
couple of these just reallybriefly to answer the second
part of your question.
One of them is the satietysystem, which is found primarily
in the brain stem, which is theoldest part of the brain that
connects the brain to the brainstem, and that is a part of the
brain.
At least part of the brain stemis dedicated to receiving

(50:13):
signals from your digestivetract that tell the brain how
much and what kind of foodyou've been eating, and so you
eat food.
It goes into your mouth andyour stomach and your small
intestine, and there's all thesesignals coming up through your
nerves and through hormones thatare converging on the brain
stem to tell it the nutritionalcomposition of what you ate.

(50:39):
And basically what happens is,as you continue to take bites of
whatever you're eating at ameal, those signals going up to
your brain they build up, andthey build up and they build up
until your brain stem says, hey,I think we've had enough here,
and then you feel full.

(51:00):
People tend to assume that thefeeling of fullness is basically
their stomach filling up, likethere's no more room in my
stomach.
But in fact, your stomach canhold, usually like twice as much
at least as what your typicalmeal would be.
The human stomach is huge andso it's not literally filling up
most of the time.
Usually, what's happening isyour brain has just decided well

(51:24):
, that's all we needed.
So I'm going to generate thisfeeling of fullness that makes
your stomach feel full, it makesyou lose interest in food, it
makes you, you know, maybe getmore interested in doing
something else, pushing awayfrom the table, and.
But the interesting thing aboutthis that we can exploit is

(51:45):
that this feeling of fullness isnot very well, it's not very
tightly correlated to the numberof calories that's in the food
that you're eating.
So certain types of food cantrigger more or less of a
feeling of fullness per unitcalorie that they deliver, and
so you see that foods withhigher calorie density so in

(52:07):
other words more calories pergram or per volume those foods
are less filling per calorie.
So if you think about, forexample, the difference between
crackers and a bowl of oatmeal,the oatmeal is mostly water and
so that has a lower caloriedensity and it's going to fill
up your stomach more per unitcalorie.

(52:31):
Or fresh meat versus jerkysimilar situation you're going
to feel more full with the freshmeat than the jerky per calorie
that you consume.
So you have to eat morecalories to feel the same
fullness, and so higher fibercreates more fullness per
calorie, higher protein createsmore fullness per calorie and

(52:57):
lower palatability creates morefullness per calorie.
We talked about that a littlebit in the context of the
potatoes and the whitefish.
So if so, I mean you add thisall together and it's like what
is a food?
What do foods look like thatare higher calorie density,
lower in protein, low in fiberand highly palatable?

(53:17):
That describes junk foodbasically like candy bars, pizza
, ice cream, soda, like this is.
It kind of makes sense when youadd it all together and then
you look at the opposite of thatand you see the things that are
high satiety per calorie andthey're more unrefined,
ancestral types of foods likefresh fruit, fish, meat, eggs,

(53:43):
root vegetables, whole grains,things like that that most
people would intuitivelyrecognize as healthy.
So I think it kind of adds upto something that makes sense,
and so that's that system.
And then another system is thereward system, which is the part

(54:06):
of our brain that revolvesaround a part of the brain
called the basal ganglia andthat regulates our learning and
motivation and pleasure aroundcertain basic goals.
So it's like you're kind oflike gut feelings of craving

(54:27):
things like food or sex or otherkind of basic.
You know human cravings and thepleasure that's associated with
those, as well as the way thatwe can learn to be motivated by
being exposed to certain things.
And so that system basicallyit's kind of similar in that

(54:53):
your gut sends a signal to yourbrain but instead of going to
your brainstem and causing youto feel full, it causes dopamine
to be released in your basalganglia and that causes you, for
certain types of foods that arehigh in fat, high in
carbohydrate.
Particularly the combination ofcarbs and fat together and

(55:16):
certain other properties, causesyou to become highly motivated
to eat those foods and to cravethem in the future, so that
dopamine motivates you to goafter those foods that your
brain is wired to prefer, and italso causes you to learn
sensory cues that are associatedwith that.
So if you eat brownies, youknow 10 times as a kid, your

(55:40):
brain's going to stamp in thesmell of those brownies and as
soon as it smells that smell, itknows immediately that there's
an opportunity to get thiscalorie dense food rich in
carbohydrate and fat, and soit's going to get the dopamine
spiking.
It's going to generate thatmotivational state that we
recognize as a craving, and atthat point you might have a hard

(56:02):
time controlling your eatingbehavior once that is activated.
And so that's another systemthat I think is really relevant,
and I think a key way toregulate that system is to
control your food environmentBecause, as I described, the
thing that activates it is foodcues.
So the smell of things, thesight of things, the, even a

(56:26):
location, a scenario that hasbeen associated with certain
types of food repeatedly in thepast.
Those are all things that willstart getting your dopamine
spiking and will get a cravinggoing.
So you know, just an example,like if you always have an
alcoholic drink in a certainsituation, like a certain friend

(56:47):
you know an old friend or acertain like holiday party or
something your brain remembersthat and when you go into that
situation you might develop acraving to have alcohol in that
situation.
So the same kind of idea.
So if you can control your foodenvironment so that food cues
are not, you're not interactingwith food cues throughout the

(57:09):
day, you're not providing thetrigger that activates those
systems and activates thecraving that then could be that
then you might have to wrestlewith and so making sure that
your food environment, to theextent that you can, at home and
at work, doesn't have food cues, except at times where you want

(57:32):
to eat, like mealtimes.

And that actually, I think is really
important because, like wetalked about, we're just
responding to the environmentaround us, and so I've had
people where I've advised them.
You know, hey look, you work inan office.
The break room is an absolutedisaster for most people that
work in office.
I've worked in finance.
At one point I've worked inconstruction management and,

(57:57):
like you, go in there to getwater because there's like the
water cooler and there's justall this crap from Costco and
doughnuts and all kinds of stuff.
Pizza, yeah, yeah you're likewell, I'm not even hungry, but
those muffins, you know.
So I definitely agree, and thehard part, I think, for a lot of
people is that, for better forworse, humans are social

(58:17):
creatures, right, and I thinkthat that probably played a very
important role in our evolutionfood sharing and making sure
that members of our tribe didn'tgo without.

Yeah, and it's a way for people to show that
they care about others.
So it's yeah, it's a toughsituation.

Yeah, I often advise people if you frequent
certain restaurants.
So, like you know, I mean I,this is what I do myself.
So my wife, she actually eatswell.
I mean she's not, but she's,her family is genetically thin
Like they.
Even when they didn't eat well,or, you know, in her past she
still wasn't overweight, so shegot lucky in that regard.

(58:56):
But and I did not have thosegenes, so we started dating,
ultimately got serious and, youknow, we started having a family
.
But when I started eating likeher, I started getting, you know
, gaining weight and it happenedpretty quickly and so I
realized, like you know, 50pounds later, oh, I guess I
can't eat like her, you knowthere is a difference in in you

(59:20):
know what the assault one personcan withstand versus another.
So what I do now is, you know,like most people, we go to a
handful of restaurants or ahandful of places, and so I just
know when I go somewhere, okay,this is what I, either this or
this.
When I go to this place, Iorder a or B, and when I go to
that place, I order a or B, andso I just kind of have this and

(59:42):
and I'm you know, I when I go toa restaurant, I'm going to
spend a lot of money to eat out.
I don't want to go order bland,boring food, right, and then
pay a ton of money for it.
I want to enjoy what I eat.
I think you don't.
You don't have to necessarilyeat nothing but boring food to
to be successful, and you know,stay lean or lose weight.

(01:00:03):
But to your point, I think youdo need to have some kind of a
plan.
And when you're going to avoidtemptation, avoid scenarios
where temptation is high, to thebest of your ability.
And if you do get into asituation, a social situation,
something like that, if you gointo it with a plan, we all, we
all fail.
But I think if you have, youknow these things identified in

(01:00:27):
advance, it makes it a littlebit easier.
What have you found to besuccessful?
I mean personally, like withyou, how do you navigate that,
that type of stuff?
I'm sure at home you have acertain way that you eat.
You kind of feel like, okay,I've got my, I've got my stuff
in order.
But when you, when you go outwith colleagues, when you have
things like that come up likewhat, how do you generally

(01:00:47):
approach that stuff?

Stephan Guyenet (01:00:50):
Yeah.
So let me say first of all thatI'm not very I don't seem to be
very susceptible to obesity.
So I've always eaten a prettyhealthy diet and especially in
the last like since I've been anadult, I've I have tried to eat
very healthy and I've beenphysically active.
So I don't know what I wouldlook like if I wasn't doing any

(01:01:11):
of those things, but I thinkit's pretty clear that I'm not
highly susceptible to obesity,like I've never gained a lot of
fat, so it's not something thatI'm like hyper optimizing for in
my own life is just the pointI'm trying to make.
But I do.
I do optimize it to some, tosome degree, because I don't I

(01:01:31):
don't think I'm immune.
If I look at my family, I'mprobably not totally immune, and
so I'll just tell you a fewthings that I do, not just for
myself but for my family as well.
I control my food environmentvery rigorously.
So the things I was telling youabout not having food cues

(01:01:54):
hanging around, I do that.
That's one of my mainstrategies.
There's usually there's not alot that you can just grab and
eat in my house at all Like, andif there is something, it's
usually something that's got alittle effort barrier associated
with it.
So if you're really hungry, youcan peel and eat an orange.
If you're really hungry, youcan, you know, crack some

(01:02:16):
pistachios.
But there's not things that youcan just like reach in and grab
a handful and stuff in yourmouth and anything.
Any food that is available isgoing to require usually some
amount of effort.
And yeah, like people are kindof like shocked at how little is
in my fridge.
There's really just like a fewstaple things, most of which you

(01:02:40):
would have to prepare if youwanted to eat them.
I cook all my food, almost allof it from scratch, and I just
don't keep things in the housethat I'm that I can't control my
eating behavior around.
And there are things so you know, I you put me in front of pizza
and I can just really go crazyice cream Like.

(01:03:00):
There are things where, like,ice cream is almost drug like
for me Like how amazing ittastes, so, but those are just
things that I don't keep aroundthe house.
But for that reason, and mostof the time, most of the time.
So you know.
Another thing I want toemphasize is that I'm flexible

(01:03:22):
about the way I eat.
So I don't I don't really haverigid rules.
I know rigid rules can workwell for some people.
I'm not saying that is noteffective or that it doesn't
have its place, but that's nothow I structure my diet.
So for me, like sometimes I doeat foods that I would consider
unhealthy, like I'll have.
I love to eat pizza, I love toeat ice cream.

(01:03:44):
You know, if it's somethingthat I really enjoy, I'll make
exceptions sometimes and andI'll enjoy them.
One of my goals for myself is toallow myself and to be able to

(01:04:06):
actually fully enjoy eatingfoods that I know are unhealthy
sometimes.
To me, that's a healthy part ofmy own eating pattern.
For me and again, I think thereare some people where just
complete abstinence from certainfoods is the right path.
For me, that is the path thatis best.

(01:04:27):
Yeah, so those are just somegeneral principles and also so
that's the food environmentaspect.
But the food itself.
Usually what I'm cooking isbased on unrefined or minimally
refined ingredients cooked fromscratch.

(01:04:48):
Ie, yeah, a wide variety ofthings.
Omnivorous, it's likeomnivorous, whole food based
diet.
For the most part, I try tokeep the calorie density on the
lower side.
So not a lot of add-fats, not alot of refined carbs and

(01:05:10):
sweeteners.

Jerry Teixeira (01:05:12):
So that's a general picture.
So when you mentioned not havingpackages to eat, really
accessible foods, where theywould trigger you or set off a
queue, it made me think about,for better or for worse, our
society is basically money makeseverything go forward.

(01:05:35):
So we're a capitalist country,and so there's a big financial
incentive or a big financialreward for food companies that
produce food to get you to eatas much food as possible.
And so it's almost like becauseyou've got researchers like

(01:05:56):
yourself or other people who arescientists, who are, on the one
hand, studying obesity andtrying to elucidate why this
epidemic's happened, what we cando to protect ourselves against
the environment, but then, onthe opposite side, you've got
literal scientists formulatingfood to be as uncontrollably

(01:06:18):
edible as possible.
So it's almost like on the onehand you've got the good Jedi or
whatever.
On the other side.

You've got the Sith.

Like seriously, could you imagine being one?
Like, what do you do for aliving?
Oh, I formulate, for an abyssal.
My job is to keep the obesityepidemic going.
But I mean, you know youroffice looks like Mordor.
But I think most people don'trealize that I didn't think
about that, you know, until Igot fat myself and had to lose

(01:06:49):
weight and started researchingand went down the rabbit hole
and started really getting intonutrition and diet and all these
things.
So when I left the superficialwhen I was younger, I was like
working out to look good, right,I mean, I was in my early 20s
and as I got older you startrealizing it becomes more about
health and taking care ofyourself.
But when I realized thatthere's literally teams of

(01:07:10):
scientists who neuroscientists,whatever, who study like how can
we formulate this chip toliterally be irresistible, like
once somebody?

eats one.

we want them to destroy the entire bag Like they
do this.
So it kind of.
That's the kind of something Irealized.
I'm like dude, regular Joe, wholike, went to the office all
day, doesn't stand a chanceagainst a team of scientists
that are literally like usingyour brain against you.
So yeah, I think that kind ofto your point.

(01:07:44):
You have a set of rules, a setof guidelines that works for you
and I've come to realize fromearly on, thinking like, oh, the
problem's carbs, it's all thesecarbs.
And then realizing, well, carbsmostly taste like crap, don't
get me wrong gummy bears,whatever, but fruit is, but most
carbs.

I like how gummy bears are what you're
citing as the pinnacle of carbfoods.

You know what I mean.
Like a carb is by itself.
I mean it's soda's evil.

At least he didn't say candy corn.

Oh, the candy corn's terrible, that's not even
funny.

Anyway, go ahead.

I had an argument with my seven-year-old
because he was like oh, dad, Ilike those and I'm like you like
these.
I'm like how are you my kids?
Things are disgusting, you know, you're not my son.
But I mean, when you think aboutI think that's why soda is so
bad, or high sugar drinks likethat, because I'm partial and
thirsty.
I would normally drink water,but no, I'm going to drink this.

(01:08:34):
You know, sweet tea or you knowwhich?
I would consider sweet teaprobably nutritionally a little
bit better than a soda, butstill not drastically different.
You know, they're still bothgoing to be if the sugar
content's similar.
But outside of drinks, I mean,I was obese.
I ate gummy bears.
I ate that.
I got Skittles.
They're good, but I'm not goingto eat the king-size bag of

(01:08:55):
Skittles.
At some point your teeth startto hurt just too much, you know.
But then you, like youmentioned, you take that and you
flip it to ice cream.
So now we've got a lot of sugar, a lot of carbs, but we've also
got a lot of fat and you putthose two things together and
it's like man, this is likeserendipitous.
You know this is amazing yeah.
So I think you've got to likeknow yourself, and it takes

(01:09:19):
trial and error, because when Ifirst started out I did the from
being, you know, 50 somethingpounds overweight, just
bordering on obesity by BMIscale.
I wasn't super muscly at thetime, so it was mostly fat.
But I started out with abodybuilding style diet, so it
was like chicken and rice,oatmeal, egg whites, and it
worked.
For a time I lost like 20something pounds.

(01:09:41):
The problem was the food was sobland it was not sustainable.
Like I could not have eaten,like that for the rest of my
life.
That led me into realizing, likeI started gaining weight back,
I couldn't handle those mealsall the time anymore and that
kind of led me intoexperimentation with, I found,
intermittent fasting andketogenic diet.
It's ultimately transition overto more low carb, but I think

(01:10:04):
figuring out the foods for youthat help you when you do eat,
so when you do sit down to eat ameal, eating a meal that
doesn't do satiety so you arefull, you know, these days if I
eat breakfast I could be too inthe afternoon I'm still not very
hungry.
It's like, oh, I'm vaguelyhungry, I should probably eat
lunch.
You know, I think it'simportant to find the foods that

(01:10:28):
keep you full for a long enoughperiod to get you through to
the next meal and avoid snacking.
I know I this is just mypersonal preference.
I understand that there aresnacks you can have and at the
end of the day, as long as youdon't overeat total energy,
total calories you're okay, butto me at least, I've found that

(01:10:48):
if I have a snack, I'm justhungry.
I don't want a snack, I want ameal.
Right, like I kind of look atit like dude, I'm a grown man,
like I'm eating, I want toactually eat and I want to feel
satiety.
So to me snacking does not work.
It's a disaster.
But again, I know that's notfor everybody so I don't want to
extrapolate that.
But the things that work for meis if I eat a meal it's high
protein, or I don't eat it.
It's not excessive protein.

(01:11:09):
I mean, I know some people areeating these, you know, two
pounds of steak at a time orwhatever.
So I try to target like 40 to50 grams of protein three times
a day and that's pretty much it.
There are times I'll skip themidday meal just because I'm not
really that hungry and I'm busy.
But I've found that if I stickto three meals a day, if I focus
on protein with each of thosemeals and kind of to your point,

(01:11:32):
I cook all my food.
If I'm busy I'll do Greekyogurt with berries and maybe a
small amount of nuts or somecacao nibs on it and I'll just
you know, literally takes lessthan one minute to prepare that
and it gets the job done.
It tastes good.
So the thing for me that I thinkhelped me find a sustainable
avenue was learning to preparefoods I actually truly enjoy.

(01:11:55):
Like I never eat a meal I don'tlike.
If I don't like it, I might eatit.
So if you're and that's whatcaused me to fail the first time
where I did lose the weight andstarted to come back on is is
never.
I could kind of white-knuckleit for a time, but getting to a
point where I no longer enjoyedeating, it ultimately backfired
because I wasn't just going tokeep eating the non-enjoyable

(01:12:16):
food forever.
It backfired and where I wasjust like, okay, I can't do this
anymore and I went back toalmost a sad diet not entirely
but and I realized, okay, thisis going to get bad quick and so
that's just kind of my system,like you said.
Similarly, I have young kids andthere is some food in my house.
That's probably not ideal.
I mean, my kids aremetabolically healthy, they're

(01:12:39):
active.
My daughter was an athlete for13 years, not anymore.
So there are some pitfalls inmy house and I do.
I've gone to a point now whereI can avoid them.
Before I would not have beenable to.
But but yeah, I think thatknowing yourself and figuring
out how to set your environmentup and then how to find meals
that for you are not not justeat to satiety, because I

(01:13:01):
challenge anyone to just eattilapia and and white potatoes
right.
It's not going to work, you'regoing to go crazy, so so that's
kind of what worked for me.
The question I wanted to askwas in a laboratory setting,
there seem to be any time theytake two diets and they compare

(01:13:24):
them with three diets orwhatever the case is, as long as
they equate the dietary energy,so the calories in the diet are
the same, then what ends uphappening is, over the study
period, the weight loss is thesame.
Now, this is this is an inclinic or in the metabolic ward
or in a controlled environment.
So they know there's nothingelse sneaking in.
People aren't self reporting toeating food given to them.
The weight loss is the same.

(01:13:45):
So I guess, actually in somethere's been a few, one I can
think of, but there's been somelow carb diets or maybe there's
a slight metabolic advantage.
I don't know how much that evenmatters or if you, if you know,
get your thoughts on that.
But but what I'm more wantingto know is in a controlled
environment, it doesn't seemlike altering macronutrients

(01:14:07):
really matters If the caloriesare what determines the success
when it comes to weight loss.
Now, in diets that are not in acontrolled setting, higher
protein diets oftentimes show anadvantage.
So in the real world, not in alaboratory setting, what are
their general guidelines thatyou've seen or you believe to be

(01:14:30):
successful when it comes tomeal composition?
So I don't care if they'replant based or animal based or
whatever you know, but whenlooking at more macronutrient
composition, do you, do youthink outside of a clinical
setting?
That makes a big difference?

Yeah, I do so if you, so we can start with
animal models and then we'll go,we'll move it into humans is if
you look at animal models whereyou can really tightly control
the diet.
That's the advantage of animalmodels.
You can do really tightlycontrolled experiments that last

(01:15:04):
a substantial portion of thatanimals lifespan.
What you see is that the mostfattening macronutrient
composition is lots of fat, lotsof carbs and a moderate amount
of protein, not high protein,not very low protein.

(01:15:24):
Those both lead to a leaner orphenotype moderate protein and
abundant fat and carbohydrate ina calorie dense package.
So that's really so.
If you look at one study thatwas done the most comprehensive
study that was done on fatversus carb and body fat, and
what you see is if you start ona high carb, very high carb,

(01:15:48):
very low fat diet, the mice tendto be pretty lean.
You start increasing the fat atthe expense of carbs.
They get fatter, fatter, fatter, fatter, fatter, until you get
up to about 70%, 60%, maybe with60% fat and you're really
starting to slim down thatcarbohydrate and then they start

(01:16:11):
getting leaner again and soit's basically in the middle
part where you've got lots offat and lots of carbohydrate,
where the animals are thefattest, and you see this in
human randomized controlledtrials too, right?
So if you look in the generalUS public, if you look at

(01:16:31):
average macronutrient intakeright now in the US, it's pretty
balanced.
If you subtract the protein out, the remainder is pretty
balanced between carbohydrateand fat.
I think probably a little morecarbs than fat, but it's pretty
close to 50-50.
It's in the ballpark of halfand half.
And then if you look at thestudies that have been done

(01:16:55):
where they put people on dietsthat restrict one or the other,
either way you do it, peoplelose weight.
So you can restrict the fat,people will lose weight.
You can restrict the carbs,people will lose weight.
And so again, I think that'sconsistent with the idea that in
humans too, being in the middleis really the fat, is the most
fattening place.

(01:17:15):
So you can either increaseprotein, just like it works in
mice, or you can decrease thecarbohydrate, or you can
decrease the fat, and those areall scenarios that in the
average person will cause weightloss.
And it's interesting in mice,you know, I've heard people
argue that mice are not goodmodels for human obesity, but

(01:17:39):
there's a lot of things in miceand rats that really parallel
humans a lot.
Like I said before, if you feedthem junk food, they get real
fat real fast.
If you put them on a ketogenicdiet when they have obesity,
they will lose weight andthey'll get healthier.
If you put them on a low-fatdiet, they will lose weight, and

(01:18:04):
if you feed them a diet that'sa mix of fat and carbs, that's
like the fattiest, the mostobesity-producing diet.
So I think all of that isactually quite consistent with
what we see in humans, at leastbroadly speaking.
So, yeah, that's it formacronutrients, and

(01:18:25):
macronutrients is that's onelever.
Of course, there are otherlevers that you can pull to
impact body fatness.
Macronutrients is one of them.
So, yeah, the most fatteningplace to be is lots of fat plus
carbs, moderate protein and Ithink I was just going to add

(01:18:46):
there's this like eternal debateof does low-carb work better or
low-fat work better?
And you look at the studies andyou know there's been lots of
studies done on this and itseems like low-carb causes more
weight loss in the like three tosix month range.
And then you look at it a yearand the weight losses are pretty

(01:19:07):
similar after people havestarted to rebound, and I think
you could make the argument thatlike if you could get people to
adhere perfectly, maybe youwould actually see better
long-term weight loss onlow-carb diet.
I think that's at leastplausible.
But the problem is like livingin the real world.

(01:19:30):
People just have a hard timesticking to these things in the
long run, at least the averageperson.
And again it's like you'resaying it's not any cause for
blame, it's just the human brainkind of in our environment
throwing up roadblocks for us.

Yeah, I always tell people that I mean I have
been on the lower end of thecarbohydrate spectrum.
It's like going on 13 years nowand that's been from zero-carb
experiment to ketogenic, whichis, you know, 50 grams of carbs
a day, roughly or less up to 125grams of carbs.
I feel good along that wholespectrum.
But what I find not difficultto adhere to may be very

(01:20:18):
difficult for someone else toadhere to.
So the thing I tell people is alow-carb diet is easy to adhere
to for the people for who it'seasy to adhere to, right Like a
counting calories.
Like I know, people get reallypassionate about counting
calories.
It's just information, if youlike counting calories and that
data are meaningful to you andit helps you make better

(01:20:39):
decisions, it's a great thing.
So what I always say iscounting calories works really
well for the person for who itworks really well for.
If you've got that mindset andyou're analytical and you like
data awesome there's no reasonnot to do it right.
So the thing that's frustratingon online with nutrition is
like people feel very passionateabout it, and I totally get it,
because we're not healthy.

(01:21:00):
It's impacting society, so wefind the thing that works for us
and then we get.
It's kind of like religion.
Maybe you had, you know lifewasn't going well for you and
then you got saved by whateverreligion and it made a big
impact in a positive way for youand so you're really passionate
about it.
So you go like trying toconvert everybody and you lose

(01:21:21):
nuance with people and I seethat a lot in nutrition where
it's like, hey, this is the way,like this is what people should
do, and it's true for somepeople that probably is a great
way, but for every person that aspecific diet is the way for
there's probably five that triedand failed, and so that's where
I think like letting peopleknow there's going to be an

(01:21:42):
experimentation period.
You're going to need to trydifferent things and figure out
what works for you, with an eyeon sustainability, because that,
to me, that's the biggest thing, like with whatever you try.
And to me, the reallyinteresting thing and actually
since you're a neuroscientist,I'll bring this up In recent
years there's been some studieson ketogenic diets and on beta

(01:22:03):
hydroxybutyrate, which is aketone body, showing that it
reduces appetite.
They've done exogenous ketoneexperiments with it and in my
own experience, if I do get intoa state of like a pretty deep
ketosis, if I'm doing a very lowcarbohydrate diet, I'm almost
I'm not never.
I mean, I eat, but I'm rarelyhungry Like I have to tell

(01:22:25):
myself oh, it's lunch, I got tomake sure I eat something.
Or it's dinner, because I also.
For some people it's probablyfine to skip the meal, but I do
also consider my bodycomposition and athletic
pursuits and things like that.
So I don't want to skip a lotof meals, but in my experience I
can focus on eating like alarge sweet potato and a big

(01:22:47):
lean piece of steak, or, youknow, I can eat higher carb and
higher protein and lower fat andI satiated pretty well, like I
can do that.
I just I have strong cravingsfor fatty foods.
I'm not a sweets personnecessarily.
I mean I love ice cream, butfor most sweets I don't have a
deal for me.

Got to make an exception for ice cream.

Yeah, but I'm dude, like when I was obese, it
really wasn't for eating sweetsI would lasagna.
I will dust the whole tray LikeI would just eat and eat.
It was crazy how my appetitewas voracious.
I would amaze my wife evenstayed with me.
You know, like we would go todinner.
We would go to dinner and we'dorder an appetizer and I would
eat most of the appetizer, myentire plate.

(01:23:27):
She would eat like half herplate.
Pick at the appetizer.
I would clean her plate.
I would eat so much food.
Wow, and it wasn't until later.
Going back, I'm like, oh, now Iunderstand.
Right, everybody's brain isdifferent, but I kind of get it.
I'm like all those foods werelike professionally made with
the highest possiblepalatability.

And your brain is wired a little different than
hers, probably from you knowpartially genetics and whatever
else.

So with, but with beta hydroxybutyrate?
Have you researched that muchwith its role in regulating
appetite?
Like, do you find?
I mean, when we're fastingwe're like super hungry for a
day and a half or so, two days.
Then all of a sudden like, oh,I'm not hungry anymore.
Yeah, the.
Hb levels are vastly elevated.

So no, I haven't really looked into this
very much.
I think it's, I'll tell you.
I'll tell you one of thereasons why is because you know
exogenous ketones, that you'reyou're ingesting energy right,
and any kind of energy youingest is going to create some

(01:24:34):
level of satiety.
But I think it's hard.
You know whether you're you'reingesting fat or protein or
glucose or ketones, you're goingto get some kind of satiety
response.
So I think, or whether you'reinjecting it into the brain.
Those are other things thathave been done where in, like
mice, they'll inject ketonesinto the brain and show that

(01:24:55):
they eat less.
Well, you can do that withglucose too, and you'll see the
same thing.
So I think it's my questionthere is is this something
unique that's happening withketones, that's not happening
with other energy substrates?
And I don't know the answer tothat.
I'm not saying it's not unique,I just I'm just saying I don't
know the answer to that.
But I do think.

(01:25:17):
You know, I've eaten a lowcarbohydrate diet before and it
was interesting.
I did find it interesting thatmy eating drive was not as tied
to specific meal times so, likewhen I was low carb, I could
skip a meal and it wasn't a bigdeal I could even.

(01:25:39):
I was fasting more often too.
I was fasting once a week for24 hours and it was not a big
deal, right, and when I startedeating a high carb diet, again
it became a big deal.
Skipping a meal I can stillskip a meal and I'm okay, but
I'll feel it Whereas when I wason a low carb diet it was like
no big deal, and fasting for 24hours, I'm like wrecked now that

(01:26:03):
I'm eating a higher carb diet,so that actually has become a
much more big deal.
It's funny because physically,my energy level is totally fine.
I can work out, I can dowhatever I mean.
I'm sure if I pushed it hard Iwould, I would hit a wall, but
just normal exercising strengthtraining, totally fine, but I
get really bad brain fog is whathappens, and so I can't.

(01:26:26):
I can't do it on a work day, Iwould just be totally
ineffective, and so I don't knowexactly why.
That is physiologically, butthe way I think about it this is
just me speculating, but theway I think about it is you know
, when you're, when you're on alow carb diet, your body's
running on fat and so you'rewithdrawing and depositing into

(01:26:49):
the bank account.
That is your body fat.
When you eat the meal you'redepositing, and then between
meals you're withdrawing, andalmost all of your energy is
just deposits and withdrawalfrom your, your adipose tissue,
your fat tissue.
And your fat tissue is huge,right.
I mean, even if you're lean,there's a lot of energy in there
.
You could eat nothing for anentire month and survive even as

(01:27:13):
a lean person.
There's so much energy in yourfat tissue.

Well, there was one guy that fasted.
They medically supervised, theyfasted him for a year.
It's a 600 pound guy, Did yousee?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like a year long
fast it's crazy.

They gave him essential nutrients, like you
know minerals and vitamins andthings like that but yeah, no
food for a year and the guy lostall the weight.

That's crazy.
And then, but if you're eatinga high carbohydrate diet, a high
carb, low fat diet, you're, thebank account that you're
depositing and withdrawing fromis predominantly glycogen.
So you're, you're burning, yourbody is using glycogen
predominantly and when you eat ameal it's replenishing that

(01:27:55):
glycogen, and so you arewithdrawing and depositing from
body fat, but to a much lesserextent.
Your primary withdrawals anddeposits are from muscle and
liver glycogen, which, by theway sorry for anyone who isn't
familiar with that term, that'sa.
That's your body's carbohydratestore in your muscles and liver
, and your glycogen stores aremuch smaller than your fat

(01:28:18):
stores in terms of their energycontent.
So you're, you have about twodays worth of glycogen in your,
in your muscles and liver,whereas you have like 30 days
worth of fat and in your adipose.
And so you're like, if your bodyis accustomed to running on
carb, you're burning through alot of that, even just between

(01:28:42):
your meals and while you'resleeping at night.
And you're like getting to thepoint where you you know if you
don't eat a meal, you you'regoing to be digging pretty deep
into your body's primary energyreserve.
So my way of thinking about itis your body just says hey, our
primary energy reserve is isbeing depleted.
I don't want this to happen, soI'm going to motivate you to

(01:29:03):
eat your meal at your you knownormal eating time, whereas when
you're on a low carb diet, yourbody's like eh, you know, our
total bank account justdecreased by 1%.
You know who cares, it's not abig deal.
You don't have to eat right now, we'll just catch up later.
That's kind of how I thinkabout it.

Yeah, the trick I think there and I've ran into
this with people is if you'regoing to embark on a ketogenic
diet and you think, okay, I'mgoing to do this, it's really
it's important that you maintainthose ratios, because you get
into a position assuming youstay in ketogenic ratios for
multiple days, you get into apoint where now you are switched
over to burning.

(01:29:44):
You know more of an oxidativemetabolism, so you're relying
primarily on oxidizing fattyacids at a higher rate than you
normally would.
So you get into this situationwhere, like to your point, you
maybe have this reduced, maybeyou do have a reduced appetite,
or whatever the case is, and so,as long as you maintain those

(01:30:05):
ratios, that state continues.
So if you're someone who feelsgreat on a low carb diet and you
maintain that diet, then you'regoing to be in that
physiological state is going tocontinue.
The problem is, if you're aperson who strays a lot, so
you're like, cool, I'm ketoratios for two days, but now I'm
going to go have this regularmeal, it's not that that's

(01:30:27):
necessarily bad.
The problem is, whatever thebeneficial effect you were
getting from that being in thatstate is going to be disrupted
for a certain time period.
So the reason I bring this up isif you're eating a high-fat,
ketogenic diet and now what Isee most often is people that

(01:30:48):
are eating a high-fat, ketogenicdiet when they do have, they
stray off the.
You know, we don't have to callit a cheat meal or whatever
it's, just when they eatsomething that contains
carbohydrate, it's usually notlike well, I'm on a ketogenic
diet, but I just ate a chickenbreast and a sweet potato with
no butter, right, because we'reon a high-fat diet?
It's no, I just had my rib eyeor whatever, which is fine, but
I also had a sweet potato withtwo tablespoons of butter.

(01:31:09):
So now you had this veryhigh-fat and high-carbohydrate,
high-energy meal.
So the majority of the timesand I'm not the reason I want to
be careful with this you don'thave to necessarily never mix
fat and carbohydrate.
I don't want people to beparanoid about, you know, mixing
macronutrients.
But when the majority of yourmeals are very low-carbohydrate,

(01:31:30):
high-fat, then all of a suddenyou start mixing in some
higher-carbohydrate meals.
If those meals arehigher-carbohydrate and
higher-fat, then your dietaryenergy is going to go up
significantly versus that otherbaseline you're maintaining, and
then, whatever the benefitswere that you were getting from
maintaining a ketogenic state.
You're disrupting that andmaybe it varies a lot person to

(01:31:52):
person.
In my case, maybe due toactivity level and I'm not that
active, but I mean I do work outdaily and you know, maintaining
higher muscle mass.
I can actually and I've testedwith ketone strips, blood ketone
strips I can eat 100 grams ofcarbs in a day and I'll wake up
right back in ketosis if I eatthem around dinner time.
So, like I said, it's all ofour physiology a little bit

(01:32:14):
different.
What works for us is going tobe a little bit different.
So I didn't want to scareanybody away from mixing
macronutrients, but that's justsomething to consider.
Like in your case, youexperience this phenomenon on a
low-carbohydrate diet, but thatmay only apply as long as you
maintain the low-carbohydratediet.

Yeah, it's definitely easier to eat a mix
of carbs and fat.
It's kind of funny the way thebrain works.
Like you know, I'll look at itfrom the other side of the
spectrum.
Something that would be moretypical of a meal that I might
have.
I'll have, you know, on myplate I have some kind of
protein and then I have potatoeslike just microwave or baked,

(01:32:54):
just plain.
I don't usually put anything onthem Sometimes.
You know, whatever meal I mademight have some sauce and I'll
put that on the potatoes, but Idon't like put butter or cheese
or stuff.
But if I do, on the occasionsevery now and then, when I do
put butter on the potatoes, notonly you know you would think
your brain would be like, okay,this calorie-dense substance got

(01:33:16):
added, let's eat less of this,right.
But it works the opposite way.
Your brain is like let's eateven more, even more than we
would have before in terms ofvolume of, you know, potato plus
butter.
So your brain is just like thisis Awesome, I'm going to crush
this.

Oh, butter Butter's funny because I mean I
do eat it.
I'm not just for anybodylistening.
Like my, my lipids, my bloodwork is always good, so I don't
worry about it.
I have kids.
I understand that there'sdifferent schools of thought
toward LDL cholesterol and howmuch it impacts heart disease.

(01:33:56):
I'm open to wherever thescience may happen to lead.
I do care what my personally,what my LDL is, and if it were
to start to move upward, I wouldactually make dietary changes,
even though there are peoplethat feel very strongly that's
not warranted, being that I'mmetabolically healthy and all
these things.
Just because I take a littlebit more of a precautionary

(01:34:17):
principle, like yeah, maybethey're right but maybe they're
wrong, you know.
And if they are wrong and Ienjoy my diet anyways, it's not
like I'm missing out on anything, so I'm so I just wanted to
preface that with you knowthat's that's just my take on on
on, because butter, butter doesconsistently, across studies,
raise LDL.
So you know, if you're eatinglots of it, that's a side effect

(01:34:39):
you're probably going to run to.
But you can add butter to almostany food and it completely
transforms the experience, Imean like yeah take a steak and
do a butter bath I mean likeseared and literally a bath of
butter than poor butter.
You can't stop eating it.
It's ridiculous.
You know, I mean assuming youeat steak, but you know, add it
to add it to a baked potato, toa sweet potato.

(01:35:00):
Butter and salt on almostanything is like.
I mean, I can't even like putinto words how delicious food
becomes when you, when you startswiping butter.

Somebody brought cookies over to my house
the other day and I looked atthem and I was like these don't
look tempting at all.
They're like no chocolate chipsFirst of all.
They're like the kind of likeChristmas cookies with sprinkles
and stuff on them.
I was like, yeah, this, I'm noteven.
This doesn't even look worth it.

(01:35:32):
And then and then one day I waslike okay, I'm going to take a
bite.
And I took a bite and it tastedlike butter and I ate the rest
of the cookie and it was reallygood.
So yeah, it'll do a lot.
Butter will do a lot.

Yeah, I think dairy like I love dairy man.
I'm not mine a lot, you know Ieat it regularly.
Interestingly, I don't think wehave enough data to like
clearly tease this all the wayout, but I do eat full fat dairy
.
I don't go crazy, but I'm goingto put a little cream in my
espresso every day.
I melt cheddar on my eggs oftenand I'm a little.

(01:36:11):
I eat Greek yogurt every day.

I'm a little whole dairy doesn't affect your
lipids as much as butter.

Exactly there's.
There's something unique withbutter where it does have a
different effect, so I do,because of that, use butter a
little more sparingly, even whenI want.
When I'm low carb for anybodythat cares when I am low
carbohydrate, very lowcarbohydrate, and I need more
dietary energy just because I'mphysically active, instead of
just throwing more butter onthere for fat calories, I'll

(01:36:39):
tend to either go more avocadoor I'll use like C8 and CT oil
just because it's it's aketogenic and CT oil and it.
I do notice a little mentalenergy with it, so I'll do that.
But yeah, when I was overweight, a baked potato or a sweet
potato with butter and salt Iliterally cannot stop eating
like I'm going to eat it untilit's gone.
So if I bake a big one, I'mtoast, you got to bake a small

(01:37:02):
one purpose because you got togo into it knowing okay, I'm not
going to stop eating this thing.

Yeah, I mean, you could even use cream as an
alternative to butter, and it'sit's counterintuitive, but from
the studies that have been done,it appears that cream does not
affect LDL in the same way asbutter.
Cream is, though, in terms ofthe flavor, for me is also like
crack.

(01:37:28):
I love the taste of cream, so Idon't have it very often, but I
mean, the other thing to keepin mind is you can just monitor
your blood lipids.
So if your diet is raising yourblood lipids, then it's raising
your blood lipids, and if it'snot, then you don't have to
worry about it.
If it is, you can adjust or seea doctor.

(01:37:50):
If it's not, it's not a problem.
So you have guys thatsupposedly, sean Baker's LDL
cholesterol is within thehealthy range.

Yeah, he's posted his blood work before.
I mean, unless somebody did anelaborate Photoshop job, it was
you know.

His blood lipids look pretty good right.

Yeah, so I think that's his diet is basically
steak and egg.

So, yeah, it's like just see what it's like,
see what your lipids are like,and if there's no problem,
there's no problem.
If there is, then you canadjust.

Yeah, I think that goes back to, like you
mentioned, you've got toexperiment and find the
strategies for navigating thefood environment that work for
you, setting your environment upfor success.
It's to me it's similar withexercise, and the reason that I
think a lot of people gravitatedtoward some of my content is
for the last eight years now,I've just worked out at home and
I applied, you know, the triedand true basic principles of

(01:38:45):
strength training tocalisthenics and you can get
great results.
It doesn't matter if you lift aweight or if you know barbell,
dumbbell, kettlebell, exercisebands or your body.
It's all providing tension.
Hypertrophy and strengthadaptations happen the same way.
So for a lot of people and I'veran polls just with my
followers or you know somethinglike 60% of people say, oh, I

(01:39:07):
prefer working out at home, butthey get this messaging in their
head that well, that's noteffective.
I have people that are like,well, when I really want to get
results, I got to start going tothe gym.

It's like no, you can really get results at
home.

If you prefer the gym, by all means go like.
Find the, find the thing that'ssustainable for you.
If you're the person that needsto get out of the house and go
out of your home environment towork out consistently, then by
all means go do that.
It's amazing, but for the busymom or the or you know the guy
that's got three kids and theonly time you can get it into
five in the morning, not havingthe commute time back and forth

(01:39:39):
can be a lifesaver.
So I think it's the same waywith diet.
It's that there's there's lotsof things you can do, and it's
going to take an experimentationperiod to figure out what is
sustainable for you.
And what works for you may notwork for the next person, and
too often we we get made to feellike the thing that works for
us is wrong.

(01:40:00):
I get people that give me a hardtime because they're like oh,
I'll post a meal once a month.
Say, hey, rate my meal, I'minterested to see what people
think, you know.
So I'm like hey, go ahead, ratemy meal, I can take it, you
know.
And they're like oh, my God,there's so many oxalates in that
.
And I'm like I don't eat thisevery day, Like you know.
But there's always a criticismof some type.
And I think to your point, likeif you're, if your objective

(01:40:22):
health markers are good, onwhatever the heck it is, you're
eating and you're and you're,you're, your waist and your,
your body fat levels are stayingin a healthy range, Like if
you're healthy and your bloodwork tells you you're healthy,
and I get the argument.
There's an argument that well,our population in general is
less healthy today.
Therefore, the averages inblood work are not ideal, you

(01:40:43):
know which.
I understand that because inblood work they're taking like
what's normal across at apopulation level.
But what I'm getting at is, forme, my LDL has always been in
the 80s.
My highest ever reading was 91.
It's been in the 70s.
I'm comfortable with that, Idon't care if it's lower
personally.
So it's like why, why would Itake out foods I enjoy, Dairy,

(01:41:07):
things like that, when I'muncomfortable to where my blood
works at and nobody can makethat determination for you.
That's something you've got todecide with your doctor.
But I think we conflate, likepopulation level recommendations
where we think, okay, this iswhat's probably ideal to
recommend at large.
We forget that people areindividuals.
Responses to food areindividualized and so the diet

(01:41:30):
that's acceptable for you, basedon risk.
I mean, you have to try to makethat, those types of
determinations, but it's goingto vary person to person and so
you know, if you go on socialmedia and you just start posting
what you're eating and whatyou're doing, you're going to
get heat all over the placebased on population level
recommendations which, by andlarge, may be good, but those
things may not apply to you.

(01:41:50):
So, yeah, I think that's a goodpoint, you good, Okay?
So, before we wrap up, becauseI know your time is valuable,
you also are, are you?
Did you start Red Pin Reviews?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I started it with the help
of other people, but I was thekind of central motivating force
.
Let's put it that way.
I call myself the founder anddirector.

Okay, so what Red Pin Reviews is?
It's a website where you canread a review of health diet
related books and, you know,hopefully it gets support so
that these reviews can happenmore frequently.
But what you're what you'reessentially getting is a review
by someone who has a sciencebackground of a certain level,

(01:42:40):
who is actually qualified tointerpret the data in the book
and give you their opinion on it.
So do you want to kind ofexpand on that a little bit so
people know what the point ofthe website is and also if they
want to support it?
Last I checked, you guys weretaking donations and that type
of thing, so I definitely wantto.

Yeah, thanks.
So Red Pin Reviews publishesthe most informative, consistent
and unbiased reviews of popularnutrition books available, and
the way we operate is we have astructured expert review method
that we apply the same method toeach book and it yields

(01:43:20):
numerical scores for scientificaccuracy, reference accuracy and
healthfulness, and then, if yougo visit one of our review
pages, at the top of the pageyou see score bars for those
three things as well as anoverall score.
That's just the average, and soin like five seconds, you can
get a really good sense of theinformation quality of a book.

(01:43:43):
Underneath those score bars youcan find our summary of how we
scored the book and thenunderneath that, you can find
the full review where we explainexactly how we gave the scores
we gave.
We have page numbers, quotes,citations to scientific
literature.
So we're really trying toempower consumers as well as

(01:44:05):
create incentives for authors inthe publishing industry to
produce higher quality books.

And your book is called the Hungry Brain, right?
Yeah, so you know I thought itwas a great book on audiobook,
but people can get that it'savailable pretty much everywhere
, correct?

Yeah.

And then your website is.

My website is stephenginaorg, that's
S-T-E-P-H-A-N-G-U-Y-E-N-E-T.
I haven't been publishing theremuch lately, so I'm most active
on Twitter and my handle iss-gina, or at s-gina.

Yeah, I highly recommend, if people are
interested in health, followingand you know, I find that
following people such asyourself or researchers in the
field it's a great way becauseyou will give your opinion and
your thoughts on various things,which is awesome.
But you tend to get exposed toa lot of new research as it
comes out that maybe there's somany publications.

(01:45:16):
Right For a layperson I mean, Iconsider myself a layperson I
love health and fitnessnutrition, but I'm certainly not
a scientist.
There's no way to follow it all.
There's no aggregation service.
There's nothing that I'm awareof without subscribing to all
these different journals.
So one of the things I've foundvery useful is following people
like you so that when you guysdo share some research in your
field, oftentimes you get shared.

(01:45:38):
But the thing that's cool isyou guys will share, or you will
share maybe, a study and you'llalso talk about, hey, a new
study on X or Y.
I noticed this weakness orthere was a flaw.
I would have questions about Xor Y.
So I've learned to kind of whatto look for in studies.
And again, I'm a layperson, nota scientist.
I'm not qualified to, you know,like I'm openly admit, hey, I'm

(01:45:58):
not an expert in this field,but over the years of reading,
research and seeing, you knoweither you or someone like
yourself, offer a constructivecriticism or question something
in a study.
it's helped me realize now, whenI see a study, I'm like, oh,
what about this, what about that?
And so I think for people thatare interested in getting better

(01:46:19):
at you know, just at a highlevel understanding when studies
come out, where they might haveshortfalls following you,
following people like yourself,even if they're not necessarily
in your diet camp, right, like Ifollow I actually follow quite
a few, even vegan researchers,because I still care what they
have to say, even if I'm anomnivore, and I feel that,
unless you're going to gothrough some very elaborate

(01:46:39):
steps dietarily, like mostpeople should be omnivores,
right, and I think that's a goodquestion.
But I do think following youhas helped me learn.
So I do appreciate when you dopost, when you do give your
opinion on things, when you doadd color, commentary and things
like that or analysis to thingsthat you put out.
So I definitely appreciate it.
I think people that follow youwill find you definitely a

(01:47:01):
worthy follow.
I think they'll love the book.
Yeah, I'm happy that you wereon the podcast, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having me.
Well, I follow you on Twitterand I also enjoy your Twitter
feed.

Oh, I appreciate that.

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The Hungry Brain: Stephan Guyenet on Navigating the Complex Relationship Between the Environment, our Habits, and Obesity

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