Ultra Processed Food and Why We Fall for BS

What if the media you consume affects your mental health as much as the food you eat affects your physical health? Join us on this thought-provoking episode of the Mind Muscle Podcast, where we unravel the complex relationship between social media, ultra-processed foods, and our collective nutritional choices. We dive into why Americans are so easily swayed by dubious nutritional information, and it’s not a matter of intelligence. We also tackle the cultural obsession with raw milk and the importance of understanding its nutritional context before it potentially loses its benefits. Plus, I share my own painful lesson learned from a military press injury, emphasizing the value of flexibility, machines, and mobility work as we age.

Think of your media consumption like your diet—are you filling your mind with the equivalent of junk food? We break down how different types of media, from books to algorithm-driven platforms, affect our mental well-being and consumption habits. We advocate for an "information diet" that prioritizes high-quality content to improve mental health and cognitive function. Learn how to balance your mental intake, aiming for 80-90% high-quality information and allowing for those occasional indulgences. You'll also understand why Americans gravitate towards nutritional fads—not from ignorance, but from a complex interplay of cultural values and the high regard for freedom and liberty.

Ever wonder why quick-fix diets and celebrity endorsements are so compelling? We explore how contemporary diets are a product of a consumer culture filled with anxiety and the allure of instant results. These diets are not just about what we eat but are deeply rooted in societal values and commercial interests. As a busy parent juggling life in a bustling city like Los Angeles, I reflect on the challenges of staying informed and making balanced choices amidst a fast-paced culture. We wrap up by emphasizing community growth through shared knowledge and fitness, reminding you that true gains come from both brainpower and physical effort. Stay tuned for next week's deep dive into the culture war surrounding raw milk. Keep striving, learning, and growing because mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined.

Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant

For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast.
Here's your host, simon DeVere,and welcome back to Mind Muscle
, the place we study the history, science and philosophy behind

(00:25):
everything in health and fitness.
Today, I am Simon Devere andthere's nothing new, except all
that has been forgotten.
All right guys.
So on the docket.
Today I want to talk about aconnection between social media
and ultra-processed food that Icame across in my reading.

(00:47):
I really like it.
I want to take a stab at whyAmericans fall for so much
bullshit, particularly innutrition.
Spoiler alert, I'm not going totalk about lack of intelligence
.
I think that there is a muchbetter explanation than that,

(01:09):
and I think writing everybodyoff as stupid is self-serving
and potentially burying moresalient causes.
Last stop of the day, it seemsthat the culture war has finally
learned about raw milk.
So I think we should have amore nuanced discussion, as this

(01:34):
is going to become highlyavailable on a lot of the
biggest platforms and outlets,and they will probably have
removed all nutritional contentby the time it hits those.
So, anyway, let's try to getahead of one of these and put
out a little bit more of thenuance and the gaps that I am

(01:57):
sure most of these people aregoing to skip.
But anyway, guys, before wedive in, there actually is.
At least I think this is useful.
I think I told you guys about it, but I had a little injury pop
up in one of my Sunday workouts.
I actually had to switch myexercise programming to
accommodate for what was goingon.

(02:18):
So anyway, this isn't going tobe a big spiel on my workout.
I actually think there is ateachable point here and a
takeaway that I'll get to.
But anyway, I did have thisgoal to build strength and I was
working on that and then had aninjury pop up in training.
Never liked that, but it doeshappen.

(02:42):
I kind of knew that with.
Anyway, it was when I wasmilitary pressing.
I don't know exactly whathappened because there was no
pop, but I finished the wholeworkout and then when I was done
, I couldn't turn my neck to theright.
I was completely locked out.
It actually would have beenbetter if I had had a pop or one
of those moments where I couldtell you what had happened.

(03:05):
But whatever happened in theworkout, in terms of the pain as
it was occurring, it didn'tfeel different than any of my
workouts.
So this wasn't the type ofthing that I was able to adjust
in real time and avoid.
It was something that, once theadrenaline and the motivation

(03:26):
of the workout wore off, Irealized, you know exactly, or I
could actually see the extentof the injury a lot clearer.
So, anyway, I knew that it wasgoing to take a long well, not a
long time, but long to me interms of, you know, training
time down, to get back to themovements that I was doing, and

(03:47):
I also didn't have clarity onwhat exactly put me down.
I can make a lot of educatedguesses, but again, I don't
actually know.
So one of the things I could becertain of that that's
something different might behelpful.
So this almost circles back towhen we were talking recently

(04:09):
about the use and utility ofmachines.
This doesn't mean that I don'tlove the barbell basics and my
kettlebells and all of that, butwith the shape my shoulder and
neck were in, I've actuallystarted walking back down to the
neighborhood big box gym.

(04:29):
I go in there at times whenthere aren't many people there,
and so right now I am actuallyusing a fair amount of machines,
particularly ones where I canlike.
If I'm doing rows, I'mtypically going for chest
supported variations, it'sanyway, I think there's a time,

(04:51):
the reason I wanted to bringthis up.
I was walking home from the gymthe other day and I realized
there was many years where Idon't think I could have, you
know, made that move becausemachines were like beneath me in
you know my functional fitnessheight, if you will beneath me
in you know my functionalfitness height, if you will, you
know, had to be dead lifts,front squats, military presses,
barbells.
Anything else was just notfunctional and stupid and a

(05:13):
waste of time.
You know as I am now a lotcloser to 40 and 20, that this
is something, this is a beliefthat is evolving with time, and
I'm seeing the context wheremachines can actually be quite
helpful.
So, anyway, the program rightnow, what it looks like, it is a

(05:34):
push-pull legs program.
I only focus on push on pushingdays, pulling movements, on
pulling days, legs on the legdays, kind of self-explanatory.
What I will say with that,though, is again different from
how I've employed this scheme inthe past.
Right now, I am using a lotmore machines, because I am

(05:56):
technically still rehabbing someissues.
One other piece that I justwant to throw out there.
I have recommended this a lot,but outside of the weight room.
I don't think the weight roomis helping me deal with the
joint issues I have.
I think what helps me with thatTim Anderson Original Strength.

(06:17):
He is on YouTube.
I work a lot of his stuff in,and that is what I consider my
mobility work.
So anti-aging workouts to mewe've talked about this in the
past it looks like somehypertrophy training with some
mobility training, and you'reprobably going to want to throw

(06:38):
in some don't to you know cardiowork as well.
If you knock all those thingsout, these are the types of
things that are going to makeyou feel, look and perform well
over the long run, particularlyif you are over 35.
Teachable moment that I justwant to highlight, though, is we

(07:02):
do have to remain flexible andmalleable, even with our own
ideas In me.
Turning to machines right now,this is going against things
that I once very stronglybelieved, and I was extremely
passionate at the time talkingabout, you know why.
Barbells were the end, all beall.

(07:24):
I don't think any of my factswere wrong about the benefits of
barbells.
What happened to me in thattime is I got so enamored with
those facts that I was willingto ignore lots of other facts
and subtlety and nuance.
And the truth is I had anargument to make.
I was trying to set apart thekind of training I was doing at

(07:47):
that time from from stuff thatother people were doing.
So the reality is, if somebodywas programming machines and I
wasn't you probably didn't viewit this way in real time, but
but it's like a natural threat.
Why are they doing that andyou're not?
You feel this need to have tojustify yourself or set yourself
apart.
And as I am growing as anathlete and, you know, certainly

(08:09):
as a man and a father, I reallydo care less and less about
that.
I kind of feel that, likealmost all ideas and all tools
exist for a reason and it'sincumbent upon me to figure out
what that reason is, what thatcontext is, and then if that
situation were to pop, then Iuse the right tool.

(08:31):
I don't go with the tool that Ilike the most.
I grew up doing construction.
So even if you have like alucky hammer that you keep
around on your tool belt and itmakes you feel better to have it
, if you need to drive a bunchof screws, put your lucky hammer
away and just get out a fuckingscrewdriver.
It's a lot easier than tryingto pound screws in with a hammer

(08:54):
.
So, anyway, I believe that I wasguilty of this in the past.
It is something that I amtrying to root out as time goes
on.
And, anyway, with moments likethat when I can change course
easily and adopt a differentidea, that makes me think that I
have at least made someprogress in that regard.

(09:17):
So, anyway, we're all going tobe faced with a different, you
know, set of decisions.
It's not always going to be aseasy as switching up a strength
program after an injury, but no,I would just say, you know,
strive to to be trulyopen-minded.
And you know, I know, cause,cause people throw this around a
lot today.
It's always other people thatthat aren't thinking and aren't

(09:39):
being open-minded.
I would actually like to pushus more into the self-reflection
bin than pointing our fingers.
So, anyway, one of my favoritequestions to people is when is
the last time that you changedyour mind about something that
you once believed?
Unfortunately, you ask peoplethis question a lot of times.

(10:00):
There's a long pause.
Maybe if I get them started andshow some vulnerability, they
can get going.
I talk about my time with paleo.
I talk about my time goinggluten-free.
I talk about my time buyinghormone supplements like
Tribulus.
I talk about my time buying fatburners.
I try to be really open andhonest about the many mistakes I

(10:23):
have made.
And honest about the manymistakes I have made it helps me
understand one how we all makemistakes, but my own mistakes
are my best tool for learning.
And then again, I've also justexperienced this firsthand that
had I remained beholden to allideas that I once believed, I

(10:45):
would not have progressed as faras I am.
I'm not setting myself up as aguru or a goal to follow.
I'm just simply stating anyprogress I have made has come
from the fact that I have beenwilling to move in and out of
ideas when they no longer arerelevant or are helping me

(11:06):
anymore.
So, anyway, be flexible, betruly open-minded.
I don't know, this comes fromone of my you guys all know my
love of Nietzsche, but there wasa random quote where he says
something to the effect of youknow, a good day is when you
shatter 10 truths.
And so, again, I guess what I'mtrying to push as a thought

(11:29):
game is think of the way thatpeople often attack other
people's ideas, and the thing Iwant to teach or push is attack
your own ideas with that exactsame vitriol, and the reason I
say that is that some stuff isgoing to keep standing and
that's great.
Now you can buy into that stuffand keep rolling, but a lot of

(11:51):
things are going to break andthen you can just disabuse
yourself of that and then nolonger say it anymore.
So, anyway, I do think it's agreat, and that wasn't the other
thing.
You're supposed to laugh 10times a day too, but no, I think
that actually is a really goodgoal.
Every day, you should try tobreak 10 things that you used to

(12:13):
believe.
If you can actually do that,that means that you learned a
lot that day, and then if youwere to actually laugh 10 times,
that also means that you're notjust having some joyless
existence up on the mountaintopby yourself.
But anyway, that has alwaysbeen a lodestar or like a

(12:34):
guiding constellation for me.
Every day, try to shattersomething that you used to
believe and make sure that youhave some fun while you're doing
it.
I think that's a day well lived.
Yeah, if you're not laughingand if you're still believing
all the stuff that you believedwhen you woke up in the morning.
That's called dead in someversions of it.

(12:56):
So, yeah, I wouldn't call thata great life.
It really shouldn't be scary,or?
I guess what I'm getting is weshouldn't feel defensive of
ideas.
Ideas are not you, they areexternal to you.
So this whole concept ofdefending ideas is funny to me,

(13:18):
and one that I've found that, asI have gotten less prone to do
it, it actually helps me, youknow, continue to make gains and
progress at the things that areimportant to me.
So, yeah, I just don't thinkit's a good policy.
Anyway, guys, hope you guyscould learn something from my
little program switch up.

(13:38):
But yeah, I came across thisarticle from Cal Newport.
I don't know if you guys haveread, well, anyway, the book of
his.
I really like DigitalMinimalism.
Admittedly, I think he's tryingto turn that book into a course
.
I don't mind that, it's a goodbook, but anyway, he actually
made an analogy that I reallywish that I had made, but no,

(14:02):
it's a good one, so I want toshare.
We're going to quote CalNewport here.
So ultra processed foods attheir most damaging and extreme
are made by breaking down corestock ingredients, such as corn,
soy, into their basic organicbuilding blocks, then
recombining these elements intohyper palatable combinations
rich in salt, sugar, fat, soakedwith unpronounceable chemical

(14:24):
emulsifiers and preservatives,end quote.
But obviously the problem withultra-processed foods is that
they are engineered to hijackour hunger mechanisms, making
them literally irresistible.
Bet you can't eat just one.
That's damn near a scientificfact.
And the result of ultraprocessed food, and the main

(14:48):
problem with it, contains verylittle of the things people
actually need to get from food.
So I think you see where thisis going.

(15:12):
But Cal Newport, to me, madejust a great analogy from food
to information.
We're going to make the jumpnow to ultra processed content
like food.
This is going to be informationthat has been squeezed, pressed
and formed for the sole purposeof consumption.
The result is often going to bedevoid of any of the beneficial

(15:36):
properties and parts from thebits that were formed to make it
.
So again, I love thisconnection.
I wish I had made it, I didn't,but I do think this is now just
a great way that people canvisualize this.
And once you kind of name andcan see something in your mind,

(15:56):
that is when I think that youcan start to, you know, make
better decisions in real time.
You see it and you say, oh,that's another one of those,
because you have named it andgiven it that type.
That is the power in namingthings.
There's a dark side we'veprobably talked about here as
well, but we'll skip that fornow.

(16:17):
But yeah, so Newport then breaksit down into so obviously we
have different types of foodminimally processed, moderately
processed, ultra processed.
In this paradigm, if you will,minimally processed foods would
be equivalent to, say,text-based, passive media, books
, some articles I hesitate tosay all articles, because so

(16:41):
many are produced for the newscycle, so I guess I'm thinking
articles from like a quarterlyjournal or something that
doesn't have just such a quickturnaround time and isn't being
made to go out onto a socialmedia platform.
So, yeah, some articles, butlet's say mostly books for now.

(17:04):
That's going to be a betterthing.
Most of the articles I thinkpeople are thinking of when I
say that word are probably whatI would consider ultra processed
, um, but anyway, so.
So when we're thinking books um, oh, here's a better way let's
say like passive, text-basedmedia that has survived the test
of time to some extent.
That has survived the test oftime to some extent.

(17:25):
If it's been around for a longtime.
Obviously, then, most peoplehave adapted to it Like Whole
Foods.
You're not going to find a lotof people who have issues
consuming it and I don't know.
We hear a lot of kids thesedays.
These days, as we have for thelast 6,000 plus years.

(17:48):
But you guys know my feelingson that.
Not a buyer, but no, in all ofhistory, like, have we ever
heard concerns of people readingtoo much?
You kind of do have to go backto, like, the advent of the
printing press to find peopleyou know feeling decadent about

(18:08):
reading.
Or or even, you know, maybeeven further back to when we
shifted from, uh, oraltraditions to writing.
I know some people thought thatwas going to downgrade our
memory and, um, you know,obviously human society has come
a long way since then.
So I don't know if those claimsreally played out all that well
, but again, you just don't.
Really.
Do you have any friends thatyou've lost touch with because

(18:32):
they read too much?
I don't think so.
Very, very few people have anyproblems with minimally
processed foods.
Same with text-based passivemedia.
Not a big problem, pretty much.
Everybody is evolved or adaptedif we want to be paleoistas,
but yeah, everybody can prettymuch.

(18:52):
Take down the minimallyprocessed foods, no problem,
moderately processed foods.
We're going to equate these toelectronic mass media radio TV
Now we're probably getting intosome blogs, electronic mass
media, radio TV Now we'reprobably getting into some blogs
, newsletters, podcasts.
Their food analogy, I guess,would be like white breads,
pastas.

(19:13):
The truth is these aren't goodfor everyone.
Some people do have issuesmetabolizing some of these
things.
I don't want to fearmong, fearmonger around that, but it is
true there are percentages ofpeople who just don't metabolize
these foods very well.
Some of it can actually be good, but some of it isn't.

(19:37):
The biggest problem that youget into again isn't me saying
that it's good or bad.
It's bad, rather.
But what you get is aheightened propensity to over
consume.
You probably know many peoplethat maybe watch too much TV or

(19:58):
got a little too into talk radioor even a podcast, dare I say.
But it's entirely possible andI'm sure we all know people who
have succumbed to some form ofmass media addiction.
Versus books, obviously, thislayer is just a lot easier to

(20:23):
consume and again, if we'recomparing it to the level above
it, there is generally going tobe less nutritional value
contained here.
So the last one we're going totalk about is obviously the
ultra processed food, and Ithink the best way I'm going to
slightly change.
You know the way Newport brokeit down he called it social

(20:47):
media.
The reason I don't want to callit social media is there are a
lot of algorithmic platformsthat many people I know use and
then don't call social media.
They'll tell you oh, I don'tuse social media.
You know, popular with that waslike if someone didn't have a
Twitter account but they're onlike Instagram or Pinterest or

(21:08):
something like that.
They might self identify as anon social media user, but
they're actually engaging all oftheir content through
algorithmic platforms.
I just don't like that wordsocial, because I think some
people then make that jump likethat they have to be commenting
and partaking.
For me the mark is more on thealgorithmic discovery of

(21:31):
information, just so I reallydon't come off like the guy on
the mountaintop yelling down ateverybody.
If you grab my phone and youjump onto Instagram, hit that
little search button and you cansee.
You know, obviously, what thealgorithm wants to feed Simon,
it is like exclusively KendrickLamar videos ripping Drake.

(21:57):
My my wife sent me a bunch.
She knows I love it.
No mystery, I'm out here in LA.
So so, yeah, we are absolutelyloving what's going on.
But yeah, you know, okay, Iwatched 30 videos.
I actually don't know.
But again, the algorithm isgoing to keep feeding me what

(22:18):
I've already told it I like Umand I am still loving, you know,
all the jokes and all the memespopping out, but the truth is I
really don't need to consumeanymore.
I love all those memes that Iam seeing.
But again, I'm just trying tobe honest and self-reflective

(22:38):
here.
I don't really need to be doingthat.
It's fun.
If I can keep it to a fewminutes a day, that's cool, but
if I were to startover-consuming this stuff, that
would be a big problem.
Obviously, I'm not going to gotoo hard on my Kendrick
addiction right now, but ingeneral, what I want to say

(22:59):
about ultra-processed foods andI don't think I'm above it is
that the ultra-processed foodsare obviously created by
breaking down cheap stock foodinto their basic elements and
then recombining thoseingredients into something
unnatural but irresistible.
That is exactly whatalgorithmic platforms do.

(23:22):
Not only are we over-consumingfood or information that
probably isn't beneficial to us,but to me.
There's another add-incomponent here, at this level of
processing, where there is afeedback loop going on.
The content that you are seeingis reverse engineered to what
you have already consumed.

(23:42):
So anyway, I really do thinkall of this can actually help us
.
I have talked about this in aroundabout way, but just
equating our information diet toa diet and actually kind of
thinking about how how we breakit down in nutrition, maybe we
think about like macronutrientsand this percent should come
from carbs and fat and whatnot.

(24:02):
But you know, I really do likethis connection between whole
foods because for a long timeyou've heard me argue that you
know we want to be eatingroughly 80 to 90% whole foods.
That's not 100%.
That leaves a little bit ofroom.
So if you really are, you know,consuming 80 to 90% of, let's

(24:24):
say, minimally processedinformation, now at that point,
because you have such a largecritical mass of good
nutrient-dense base, you'veactually built a foundation.
Now for you who consumes 80% to90% minimally processed, it's

(24:46):
okay for you to go and have alittle pasta dish every now and
again.
It's okay for you to go rundown and grab some ice cream
with the kids, but if you aren'tdoing that precondition of 80
to 90% of the time, solidfoundations, you are going to

(25:10):
get a result that you don't likeit's coming, and so, anyway, I
just think that this is a goodway to one try to inject some
sanity back, because we alsodon't need to be, um, have some
joyless, monkish existence.
Um, you can watch some lowbrowTV shows, um, some lowbrow TV

(25:31):
shows.
You can consume some stupidmemes on Instagram, but again,
that's assuming that you'retaking care of the basics.
What I see happening in dietsand in information is actually
it's working in reverse, wherepeople are consuming the ultra
processed the most and they areconsuming the minimally

(25:54):
processed the least, just likein your fitness results.
It shows I know people don'tthink it does, but it does.
It's very, very clear whatpeople's information diets look
like, based on their speech, howthey approach new ideas, et

(26:17):
cetera.
So, anyway, credit to CalNewport.
I really like this idea.
I think having a visual in mindof where our information sits
in this level of process canreally help us determine how
much of it that we should beconsuming.
And then, yeah, I really,really hate the gurus and people

(26:40):
who talk down to everybody.
So I'm in here with you guys,too, trying to carve out what
that looks like for myself, thatthis, for me, feels like a
constant battle.
You get on top of it, you get areally productive bit, and then
you know, like I justreferenced, then a Drake
Kendrick beef pops off, and thenall of a sudden you're back in
the rabbit hole.
So I view this as somethingthat I myself constantly fight

(27:03):
and struggle against, but, again, I really am striving 80 to 90%
of the time.
Keep it minimally processed,that's my goal with my food and
the information To me.
All the topics that I brought uptoday, they all tie together,
and so the next thing that Iwant to jump to is why do

(27:26):
Americans fall for so muchnutritional bullshit?
I think the intuitive answerattritional bullshit.
I think the intuitive answer toquote my behavioral economics
gurus, amos Tversky, danielKahneman the intuitive answer
would be that people are dumb.

(27:46):
I'm not even going to argueagainst that.
Of course they are.
Of course there is a subset ofpeople that are dumb.
The reason I don't think that'san explanation, though, is
there has always been a set ofstupid people in every single
population, so this argument, tome, very quickly takes the form
of a fall from grace or a kidsthese days decadence argument.

(28:11):
You know, what all of thesearguments kind of hinge on is
that bad people are replacinggood people, and now we're
getting these bad resultsbecause the people just aren't
as good as they used to be.
You go back and you look athistory.
It's really hard to findevidence of these.
You know so called good peoplein the past.
People really do seem largelyunchanged.

(28:33):
So again, there's certainlysome dumb people and their
stupidity explains theirmistakes.
Hanlon's razor, though, neverattribute to malice what can be
adequately explained bystupidity or ignorance.
I think it's a better word.
Ignorance invokes more thisidea of just things that you
aren't aware of, where stupidityis a little bit more judgmental

(28:57):
, like you're not capable.
I think most people areignorant and that's fair and
that's kind of to be expectedfor humans.
But again, there have alwaysbeen dumb people and there have
always been fad diets.
So none of this stuff is new.
I'm not really going to wasteany more air on the idea that
Americans are stupid and that'swhy we always fall for these,

(29:22):
you know, fad diets.
I want to introduce just analternate explanation and I
guess you know before we do it.
Last note on the I'm also notinterested in the mistakes of
stupid people because I knowwhat the mistake is they're
stupid, they're ignorant.
I'm interested in the mistakesof intelligent and serious
people.
That is where there issomething to learn and I'm

(29:44):
interested in it, not to makefun of them or raise myself up.
I am trying to learn from thosemistakes so that I don't make
them myself.
Trying to learn from thosemistakes so that I don't make
them myself.
Cool, I feel like I got it okay, but anyway, guys, here's my
alternate explanation that I'vebeen cooking up.

(30:05):
So I was looking at some justopinion polls on Americans'
beliefs, and one of the waysthat we really stand apart from
people around the world isAmericans place a very, very
high value on freedom andliberty.
We believe that we have theright to be unconstrained and do
as we please simultaneously atall times.

(30:25):
I'm going to avoid any of thepolitical ramifications of this,
but well, I guess I won'tbecause I'm going to range
through this one.
But this, to me, is an issueand I'm not taking a side on
this.
It'll be that the gun issue hasa lot to do with this American
belief in just outright libertyand freedom simultaneously Every
time that there is a bigshooting, like a bunch of kids

(30:49):
die at a school, then theparents and people connected to
that.
They want justice for whathappened.
And then there's almost alwaysanother group that you know.
They live maybe a few hundredmiles away and you know like,
like my friends up in Montana,they hunt out in the woods and
this situation has nothing to dowith their life at all.
So they react to the libertycomponent of you can't abridge

(31:12):
my liberty and this, to me, issomething that does make so many
of our debates circular.
Is that all?
I don't think this is aone-sided thing.
I think Americans believe thatthey can have both freedom and
liberty simultaneously.
I remember when I was readingAlbert Camus' the Rebel and I

(31:36):
actually found this part very,very interesting where he points
out that he's using slightlydifferent language, but that
liberty and justice arecontradictions and that liberty
is this outright freedom, andjustice is actually when you
enforce and make something levelor try to write something, and

(31:57):
it literally is baked into ourcultural dogmas that we can have
both liberty and justicemaximized at both times.
This, I think, is a fundamentalerror in the way that all of us
Americans think you can't haveboth of those.
It is like having your cake andeating it too.
And that is again so often whywe Americans find ourselves in

(32:21):
circular debates around freedomand liberty.
We're talking past one anotherand we are not recognizing the
values that the other person isspeaking to, and we're not
recognizing the franklyincoherent belief we all have
that we can have liberty andjustice at the same time.
So anyway, in addition to that,americans are also highly

(32:42):
individualistic, moreindividualistic than just about
any people on the planet.
In opinion polls, we view ourlives as a project of
continually improving the self.
Americans, more so than anyother people on earth, believe

(33:03):
that their success or failure isthe sole result of their own
abilities.
Because the audience, I'massuming, is mostly American,
that probably seems natural.
Because the audience, I'massuming, is mostly American,

(33:25):
that probably seems natural.
But in other countries,particularly Europe, people are
more prone to recognizing thatthere might be some systemic
limits to what you can do.
I'm sorry, man, I can't do thegrowth mindset.
You can be anything you want.
There's a really good chancethat you're not going to be that
guy ever.
There are a lot of things thatare beyond your control that you
got to have in place.
I'm here in LA.

(33:46):
I see countless people who havecome here and they're going to
be the next big standup.
But they're going to be thatand actually, no, you're not.
But when you say things likethat to people up front, it
sounds like you're the negative,nancy, like you're the downer.
But the reality is all thingsare not for all people.
Everybody can't do everythingYou're speaking to, or speaking

(34:09):
as, someone who didn't make theNBA, didn't become an astronaut.
No, I actually think it's alittle bit.
I know what it's meant to do.
It's meant to sound positiveand make us all feel uplifting,
but it's also just a flat outlie that everybody can do
everything.
No, you can't, most people.
If you didn't make the OlympicsI'm not even giving you an out

(34:33):
it was probably never in yourfuture.
It's not like some choices youmade back in kindergarten that
you know pushed you down thewrong way.
Trust me, if you were on thatpath, you would have known it
right around then too.
And so, yeah, just as we'regetting ready for the Olympics
now, I've been watching thetrials every night and yeah, man
, there's no accidents out there.

(34:53):
I know that people are going toget into these athletes and
hear about their psychology andbuy into that.
Oh, that was the missing piece.
But no, you also need the genes, a whole lot of other things,
and all of us who are notpartaking in the Olympic trials
right now.
That probably wasn't in yourdestiny.
I don't think that was just theresult of choices you made or

(35:17):
didn't make.
But anyway, I just want to pointall this out because I really
do generally think that thesethings are considered positive
attributes, and I'm not tryingto say they're not.
I'm just saying that there's aflip side.
You don't get all pros all goodwith anything.
Every choice in life comes withpositives and negatives.
There is a downside tobelieving in freedom and liberty

(35:39):
and having such a strong innerlocus of control, meaning that
we believe that we can controlour destiny.
I think these are mostly viewedas positive attributes, and
they certainly can be.
These are mostly viewed aspositive attributes, and they
certainly can be, but I do thinkthat this actually leads us,
you know, to believing in a lotof bullshit.

(36:00):
Um, you know and I'll wrap up mycultural bit here in a second
but uh, to me, these attributescombine to forming a cultural
belief system that sees the bodyas infinitely malleable, that
makes an individual responsiblefor his or her shape and morally

(36:23):
culpable for whatever positionthey are finding themselves in.
You know, position they arefinding themselves in.
And so I guess what I'm getting, I don't think that it is so
much our intelligence or lackthereof that pushes us to seek
out, you know, fad diets andamendments.
I actually think it is theselarger, you know cultural

(36:48):
assumptions.
Your body is yourresponsibility and if you don't
look the way that you aresupposed to, that is your fault
and you will be judgedaccordingly for it.
So you know, obviously we aregoing to take means and
mechanisms to try to avoid thatum.
And then, all right, we'll pickthis up here in a second um

(37:11):
because, because I think we havea lot of uh.
I was going to use the stanfordmimetic desire.
Let's use the lowbrow.
People just copy people theysee um, but no so.
But why do they do that?
Why do people just copy whatthey see?
Um.
Culture has this ability tomake arbitrary things seem
totally rational and reasonableand natural.

(37:33):
I'm going to read one morequote to you guys, but one of my
favorite David Foster Wallace,when he was giving a speech at
Kenyon College, a commencementspeech.
His opening for this Is Water, Ithink, communicates the point
that I'm trying to get about howculture can make things that
are arbitrary seem totallynatural and reasonable and like

(37:54):
the only way it is.
So here we go.
There's two young fish swimmingalong, and they happen to meet
an older fish swimming the otherway who nods at them and says
morning boys, how's the water?
And the two young fish swim onfor a bit and then eventually
one of them looks over and theother goes what the hell is

(38:14):
water?
This is a standard requirementof US commencement speeches the
deployment of didactic, littleparabolic stories.
The story thing turns out to beone of the better, less
bullshitty conventions of thegenre.
But if you're worried that Iplan to present myself here as
the wise older fish explainingwhat water is to younger fish,

(38:35):
please don't be.
I'm not the wise old fish.
The point of the fish story ismerely that the most obvious,
important realities are oftenthe ones that are hardest to see
and talk about.
Stated as an English sentence,of course, and talk about,
stated as an English sentence,of course, this is just a banal

(38:55):
platitude, but the fact is thatin the day-to-day trenches of
adult existence, banalplatitudes can have life or
death importance.
So I wish to suggest to you onthis dry and lovely morning, so
I guess what I am getting at alot of the diet choices we make,
just like these fish here inDavid Foster Wallace's example,

(39:18):
when you're born into certainconditions, you just don't
question them, never questionedthe environment that they grew
up in.
Um, and so, yeah, this again isfor me just a useful
visualization for for what acultural paradigm can do, for
just what the beliefs that youthink are possible.

(39:40):
And obviously I, I study dietsand I look at this a lot.
Um, I think it's fair to saythat the diets of today are
anxious, celebrity-driven,distracted, full of products and
consumerism, rife withpseudoscience, needlessly tribal
, and I would say that isbecause it is downstream from

(40:03):
our consumer culture.
That's the way that ecosystemworks, that's the water we're
swimming in, that's why thediets look the way they do.
I don't want to just throw outa big thing like that and not
try to support it.
What do I mean by anxious?
I guess I'm looking at all thedetoxing, all of the single
nutrient eliminations, just howso many popular diets are

(40:26):
obsessed with purity, anxious,anxious about what people are
putting in Certainly rightfuland good reasons to do that.
Most of these approaches go wayoverboard.
Celebrity-driven I think that'spretty obvious, that we have

(40:46):
significantly lowered the barfor celebrity wine.
Attention is all that itrequires now, and most of the
popular diets really areperpetuated by somebody who has
merely garnered the attention ofthe intranet.
Most of them don't have thestaying power.
Not everybody can be Joe Roganand Gwyneth Paltrow and keep
that act going for as long asthey have.

(41:07):
Most of them come and go, butobviously that's the way it goes
Distracted, so obviouslydownstream from our favorite
technologies.
But most of the dice are very,very distracted too.
Quick results do this fast,30-day challenges.
This idea of telling people todo things slowly, incrementally,

(41:29):
sticking with it just isn'tattractive in a culture like
this, because we have noreinforcement of doing things in
that fashion.
Get it yesterday or you suck.
Every diet is full of products.
You really have to purchase themerchandise, the food, the

(41:49):
books.
It isn't just about eating foodor thinking about or putting
together a program.
There is this big component ofcommerce that you obviously must
engage in to actually be acard-carrying good member of
whatever diet you want.
To fall into.
Pseudo-scientific, I think.

(42:11):
Every fad diet lays claim to arevelation.
Then they go and they cite theliterature selectively to back
up their own argument.
Then you ignore all evidence tothe contrary.
There's anything that doesn'tmake the case you want to make.
Don't tell anybody about it.
Offer up either a scapegoat, asilver bullet, or both.
People love to have someexternal thing to blame for all

(42:34):
their problems.
And then, whatever you do, don'tever say that most of the
benefits of your so-called dietreally could come from just
eating whole foods andexercising.
You have to make it all aboutthe.
You know your initialrevelation, so, yeah, the I

(42:55):
don't know.
This just drives me crazy,because so many of these diets
get made.
And then you can break thatdown and they'll say oh well,
you know, you got to admit it'ssmart.
Someone always says that.
And if you were thinking ofsaying it, don't fucking say I
want to fucking say actually Iwon't, that's mean, but no, just
for years of having the sameretort, it just gets so annoying
.
Again, it's not aboutintelligence or smarts here.

(43:17):
It's about integrity and values, and anybody promoting a fad
diet in that way simply doesn'thave it.
There are many people, far morepeople than the people
promoting fad diets who are justas intelligent to do what they
have done.
The reason they don't do it isbecause they view it as beneath

(43:38):
their integrity and values.
So many times, if you evenarticulate this as cleanly as I
did, I'm now hating on theseinfluencers.
No, I'm not.
I've had a sales job in the pastand if you want to talk about
hating, I hated myself.
When I looked in the mirror, Ifelt like a fraud.

(43:59):
I felt like a leech.
I was selling security systemsthat sucked.
So no, even when you're doingwell and you don't believe in
your product or at least thiswas me, and this is what this
belief comes from I literallyhated myself.
I'm making money, I'm sellingand I get ready for the day and
I'm looking in the mirror andI'm thinking you are the worst

(44:20):
thing in the world.
You're literally a fucking doorto door salesman.
You come to people's homes, youlie to them, you put in a
system that sucks and then youtake some money.
So, anyway, I worked withplenty of people at that.
Obviously, I wasn't alone.
A lot of people are fine doingthat.
I'm not.
I hated myself.

(44:41):
They don't.
It isn't intelligence.
Selling is actually pretty easy.
The difference there gets intovalues integrity.
Had I been selling a product Ibelieved in, maybe I wouldn't
have felt that way.
But again, give me a product Ibelieve in and I'll fucking sell
it.
But it's kind of the problem,ain't it?
But anyway, circling back to myissue with diets, diets never

(45:04):
become popular in a vacuum.
People aren't readingscientific information.
People aren't analyzing animalsto jump at this.
Diets become popular within acultural context.
They become popular within thefishbowl, so to speak.
Every fad diet you can think oftoday has a sizable online

(45:27):
community.
Sizable online community andallowing people who, or giving
people that forum where they cancommune with one another and
then enforce collective forms ofbehavior, is what makes these
approaches psychologicallyattractive.

(45:49):
In my opinion, many people aregoing to think that they have
chosen the specific diet forreasons that are personal or
individual to them.
I think, in fact, that there'sa set of diets that are actually
available to them and theygravitate towards one based on
social systems and culturalnarratives that they have
accepted in other realms oftheir life.

(46:11):
I don't actually think they arelooking at the nutritional
information on these things.
I would go so far to say notone single American chose keto
or South Beach or paleo or anyother fad diet outside of a
social and informational contextthat promoted it to them and
then, within that context, itfelt natural and it made sense.

(46:35):
But had you lived in adifferent social context and you
don't get to see that becauseyou didn't, it wouldn't seem
natural, it wouldn't make senseto you and you might think it
was silly.
But most people are.
They choose their diets notbased on like intuition or taste
preference, but how they aresocially influenced by people

(46:58):
around them.
Nutritional belief systems aredownstream from culturally
determined narratives that areoften designed to affect, you
know, selfformation, identity orrituals of purification.
I'll try to say that in a lesscomplex way.
What I'm thinking now is Ireally don't think that there

(47:20):
would be carnivores withoutvegans.
There is this social contextwhere veganism comes out and
then you have this reaction togo to the other end comes out
and then you have this reactionto go to the other end.
I don't think people aregravitating to either one of
those camps from doing objectiveresearch on nutritional studies
.
I also don't think it's level.

(47:42):
I'll take a shot.
I think the carnivores are alittle bit silly, but I think
they invented their wholefucking diet as a reaction to
veganism.
But both diets.
Now to throw them both underthe bus.
They both cherry pick thescience to highlight either
people who ate only plants oronly meat, ignoring the vastly
larger body of science showingthat humans are opportunistic

(48:04):
omnivores that are highlyadaptable to whatever food
source is available and areinsanely malleable and can
actually survive on pretty muchany fucking diet.
But if you want to get intoeither one of those camps,
you're going to need to ignorethe vast majority of nutrition
studies that don't prove theargument that you feel inclined

(48:27):
to make.
Most diets similarly, not justbagging on veganism and
carnivore.
But they don't make biologicalsense.
They make cultural sense.
They fulfill psychologicalneeds.
That's why I'm not willing tocall people stupid because
they're not reading thescientific studies and peer

(49:07):
reviewed.
That's not what they want.
Every era is marked by aspecific set of dietary dogmas
or regimes that are around.
It can be helpful to look backand look at older things, so we
don't have an emotionalattachment to any of the
arguments.
Being made was a far greaterproblem than overconsumption.

(49:29):
This was the time thatfortified grains were made.
If you attempt to understandfortified grains outside of the
context in which they appeared,you're probably missing the plot
, and, just like I was evensaying about machines earlier,

(49:54):
things and ideas tend to existfor a reason.
Um, it's worth, you know,diving into the context and
figuring out why that thingexists.
Um, and and again, I think whatyou're going to find is, a lot
of times these are downstreamsfrom problems that people were
facing at a time.
Maybe that problem isn'trelevant anymore, etc.
But there's a lot better waysof engaging, you know, than

(50:14):
simply copying the work ofothers.
But here's why and this is nowgetting back to some of these
cultural influences we're deeplyindividualistic.
That's the positive way ofsaying it.
The negative side of that windsup being alienation, and when
you combine the technology thatmost of us use today, I do think
that is probably what I don'twant to, you know, do any

(50:37):
absolutes.
It's one of the mostinfluential psychological
features that is impacting theway people think about damn near
everything.
You know, I feel this a lot,actually as a parent.
I get my parent gripes in here.
But, yeah, modern parenting ispretty much done in isolation.
You're supposed to learnthrough books and blogs and

(50:59):
experts, and the day to dayreality of parenting is that
you're, you know, isolated from.
You know a lot of the friendsthat you had prior to becoming a
parent.
You wake up, you go to work,you get your kids and you're
just expected to know how to doeverything.
I'm supposed to know how tolike tie a swaddle.
I'm supposed to know how tocook and I'm supposed to know

(51:22):
how to.
And literally nobody teachesyou this stuff.
You just like one day.
You're just supposed to knowhow to do all of this stuff.
Historically, people actuallylearned this from other people.
These were communal activities.
Now every one of these thingshas been financialized and
turned into a commodity.
We're expected to go buy somebooks and take some courses and

(51:44):
learn it on our own.
We also know that nobody does.
I'm guilty of this as well, buthow many guys my age are just
not that handy around the house?
I'm better than most.
My dad was a contractor, butthis is where the generational
thing holds.
Is my dad's way more useful tohave around the house than I am?
This is not traits that camedown the generations.

(52:07):
Fortunately, I actually workedalongside my dad, so I got to
pick some stuff up.
He's just better at it than Iam, except for tile.
I'm better at tile than he is.
Put that one on record, but no,the whole.
The only reason I had to doanything around the house is
that I worked alongside myfather.
That's the way people used tolearn shit.
We would pick up skills likethat from from older people that

(52:33):
were wise, if it wasn't ourfather.
Our consumer-based culturedoesn't do any of that.
We're all these isolatedindividuals out there striving
and competing with one another.
You don't really help peoplebecause that could wind up
knocking you down.
This again is one of mycritiques of transactional

(52:56):
relationships.
Is I genuinely do startdoubting the authenticity of
people that only conduct arelationship with me because
there is capital involved?
A lot of them are great, supernice people, but I really don't
think, if you remove the capital, that they would care about me.
Maybe other people sense that.
Maybe I'm just weird, but no, ahuge part of even my work is

(53:20):
like this fancy Hollywoodtrainer is actually being like
the home economics teacher thatnobody had in high school.
Because they cut that and gotrid of it, shop got cut.
Remember that.
Because they cut that and gotrid of it, shop got cut.
Remember that.
No, I mean like we just don'tteach people how to take care of
themselves on a very, verybasic level.

(53:42):
I don't want to bemoan this,because there are.
There's so many awesome thingsabout living in the culture that
I live in, this individualisticculture.
I love all the freedoms, I loveall the liberties, I love that
I get to choose my own destiny.
Again, I just think all of usare aware of the positive sides.
I don't think you need me totell you that.
I think the part I cancontribute is that there's

(54:02):
actually a dark side to all ofthis.
This is what pushes us totribes is because the dark side
is loneliness and alienation,and when you get into that state
, you become ripe, particularlywith the technology.
We have to be plucked up onpeople who, you know, want to
hijack your attention and yourtime.

(54:23):
But no, you know, I do want tosay that most people really
aren't dumb.
To say that most people reallyaren't dumb.
I do believe that what they seeas natural and reasonable is
just a function of the time andthe social context that they
live in, expecting thesealienated and isolated

(54:47):
individuals to consistently comeup with great decisions all on
their own, when the only waythat they have to engage and get
at information is through techplatforms that are pushing them
things to sell them.
You know, chances are thatthey're going to make bad
choices.
You know, as a parent, I have toadmit that my social context is

(55:10):
limited.
I'm around mostly parents.
I'm around kids I don't exactlyget a representative sample but
at least I'm not around peoplethat are exactly like me.
I'm not in a world like that,and the thing that I see the
most people are working hard.
You know, sometimes I'll hear Igot some friends that are, you
know, back in Dixie and they'rewhining about, oh, people don't

(55:31):
want to work these days.
And I tell them I'm like, wow,I don't.
Maybe this is just my world,but in Los Angeles, as expensive
as things are, I'm like I don'tknow anybody who doesn't work
all the time.
Yeah, at the school I'm at, thenorm is two parents working.
I am constantly surrounded bypeople who are working their

(55:54):
asses off.
I'm doing it myself.
I feel how busy we all are andthe truth is it's pretty damn
hard.
I used to prize myself on beingup on what all my clients were
going to talk about, and I thinkI've admitted as much.
But more and more I'll admit Igenuinely don't know what people
are talking about A lot of thetime.

(56:16):
Um, you, you take a week offthe internet and and it's just,
it's like, you know, wild whenpeople try to catch you up on,
like the outrages you missed andand all of that.
And then again because I am soconsistently coming in behind
this you know some celebritydoes something and then the

(56:37):
whole reaction thing plays out,and then you read up on it like
a week later and everybody'sdone with it and you know
they're all hopped up.
But it's like this was stupid,there was nothing here.
So no, I just say all that,just say we're busy, there's so
much noise, there's so muchgoing on.
I don't think it's fair to saythat we're all stupid.

(56:59):
I know plenty of us are in someregard, but I don't care about
their mistakes.
Easy to explain.
The preponderance of fad dietsand the way we circle through
them to me cannot be adequatelyexplained by just mere ignorance
.
There's too many of us whoaren't.
I do think that it is thesebroader features of our consumer

(57:19):
culture, if you will, ourindividualism, our inner locus
of control and belief that weare, this project of the self
that is to be perfected Normallya good thing, or definitely a
good thing in a lot of stuff,but I actually think that in
this instance, this is one ofthose things that consistently

(57:44):
misleads us.
So anyway, guys, white lie atthe top of the show.
I'm not going to get into theculture war moving into milk
today, because I went a littlelonger than I expected.
So anyway, guys, if I try tocram this thing in, I'm not
going to do it justice.
If I do it, you're going to behere probably for another 30, 40
minutes, so I'm going to savethis one for next week.

(58:06):
Sorry, I ran on a little bitand didn't get to.
You know my full plan today,but I do hope that there was
some bits of value in there,because clearly I rambled on for
a bit.
But yeah, so today, guys, wedid get to cover.
You know, stay flexible withyour workout programming.
With any ideas that come in.

(58:28):
You're going to find ideas thatyou once didn't need.
Maybe later you will Keep yourmind open to those things.
Almost all these ideas existfor a reason.
That was my lesson.
Circling back to some machines,again, I think that Cal
Newport's example ofultra-processed content.

(58:49):
What the real problem with itis.
I'm not interested in sayingit's good or bad.
My main issue is that you aregoing to over consume and, yeah,
sure it has been.
You know squeeze of all youknow nutritional content, but
all that being said doesn't meanyou need to throw it all out
completely.
80 to 90% minimally processed,and then that 10 to 20, whatever
you're doing, you'll be fineand then, yeah, I think this is

(59:14):
where I got bogged down a bit.
But why do Americans fall for somuch diet bullshit?
I don't think it's that we'redumb.
I actually think it comes froma better place.
I think we have cultural valueshere on freedom, liberty,
individualism and self-striving.
That, when combined witheconomics and technology we have

(59:36):
, are what consistently lead usto making these circular bad
choices.
This is why, like we say at thetop of the show or at least I
try to there's nothing newexcept all that's been forgotten
.
That's why this diet space justkeeps going around in circles
the way it does, or at leastthat's my current explanation

(59:57):
for it.
Anyway, guys, you know Iappreciate you spending your
time with me.
I hope that you learnedsomething today.
If you did, make sure that youshare this episode with some
friends.
Let's keep growing thecommunity and, yeah, next week I
will actually start off with myculture war raw milk bit that I

(01:00:18):
teased this week, but yeah, wegot a lot to cover there.
So anyway, see you guys nextweek.
Remember mind and muscle areinseparably intertwined.
There are no gains withoutbrains.
Keep lifting and learning.
I'll do the same.