Transcription
Today, I'm going to review this video by Nutrition Made Simple where he says he studied nutrition for 30 years. He's going to break down everything he knows in 20 minutes. I'll see you where I disagree. I know I'm going to disagree with him. Let's go.
Have you noticed you can watch 10 videos on nutrition and get all kinds of contradictory advice and come away more confused than you went in? And scared of every food and frustrated and you just feel like giving up. Truth is, most nutrition content on social media is not that helpful. It misses the point entirely. What's worse, it
Also, one thing, I am I am actually responsible. I used to put out, I think, very bad nutrition content back in my carnivore days, like a year ago, when I was critiquing Paul Saladino, spewing the random cycle glycation. I was a I didn't know how any of that stuff worked and I was wrong. And it was reductionism and it was fear-mongering. And I don't know how many people actually took me seriously. I mean, there were I was parroting carnivore arguments, which some of them are actually pretty good, but I was wrong, like 100%. Even if the carnivore diet is ideal, let's say, my reasonings were not good. So, I was a problem back then, for sure.
It trains your mind to ask the wrong questions. And this is really tragic because nutrition applied correctly is unbelievably powerful. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, even dementia are massively impacted by your diet. So, getting the wrong advice isn't just a complete waste of your time, it also deprives you of life-saving information. I've spent the last 30 years studying medicine, biology, and nutrition. I published my own scientific studies and I've had the privilege of interviewing some of the top researchers on the planet.
Hold on there. And I've had the privilege of interviewing some of the top researchers on This guy is I know this guy is a vegan uh from my understanding, a very plant-based and he misinterprets the blue zone data very brutally. So, that's not a good sign. I think this guy's name is like Michael Gardner.
On the planet. And in this video, I'll share with you exactly what my family and I do and eat to achieve and maintain exceptional health.
He doesn't look healthy at all. Like, that's something we need to get out of the gate.
I'll give you every do and eat to
He doesn't look healthy. Not that looks like, okay, we can we can go to markers, all right? Like, we have a lot of health markers that are pretty good. But, even just visually, this guy does not particularly look healthy to me at all.
Achieve and maintain exceptional health.
He actually looks unhealthy to me.
I'll give you every tool you need so you can build delicious, healthy meals for your family, and you can also spot bad nutrition advice, and you can finally stop wasting time with stuff that just doesn't matter. I was recently writing this long article answering every frequently asked question on nutrition that you guys ask, and I'll link that below for you, but I realized it all boils down to five really simple principles. And they're so incredibly powerful because they give you peace of mind, and we can cover them in minutes, as you'll see. And by the end, you'll be able to judge nutrition claims immediately if it's something serious or if it's just fear-mongering. So, here's the first principle. A food is a combination of many different pieces, of many different nutrients and components, packed together in a specific structure. And each of those building blocks can have a separate specific effect on your health. For example, when you eat an avocado, you're not just eating fat. You're also eating all kinds of vitamins and minerals, and
All kinds of vitamins and minerals? I mean, it has some vitamin E, which, again, that's going to largely be used for the polyunsaturated fats in the avocado. It's an antioxidant. The polyunsaturated fats are very prone to oxidation. We see the more polyunsaturated fats you consume, it's depleting your vitamin E. So, it's a good thing he's mentioning there's lots nuance because we have the fats in the avocado and then many of these types of fats will deplete some of the vitamins like the vitamin E which it's so renowned for. Yet, it's you know, 15% polyunsaturated fats. So, and of course the mono-unsaturated fats are very very non-prone to oxidation. You know, the omega-6s for example are around 160 times more prone to oxidation than a mono-unsaturated fat. So, it's like saturated mono and then we have poly up here. So, that's the only concern. And then it has some K1 and not uh K2 in the MK4 version which there are many reasons to believe is the ideal K that we want. Are there lots of vitamins? Not particularly. And again, when we look at the nuance, the the vitamin E is just going to be used to protect the fats you're actually getting from the avocado which is why they're there. There are some minerals though.
Something called zeaxanthin which promotes eye health and scopolitin which has anti-cancer activity. And the
It's very hard to establish anti-cancer. You know, are they doing this in like a petri dish? Uh not, you know, in a human body and they're saying it's anti-cancer. We don't have obviously have any literature that could prove that eating avocados will actually reduce your risk of cancer. It's not possible to conduct that type of experiment, but
This goes on and on. An apple, a simple apple is not just carbs. You're also eating quercetin which fights inflammation and anthocyanins which promote heart health and all kinds of different vitamins and different
When you say promotes heart health, you know, I get it's just for the video, but if you do want to make that claim, you'd have to establish what mechanism and then you you need very robust literature to show that people who eat apples and not, you know, that's the whole problem with the all the epidemiology is people who say they eat apples and you have healthy user bias, you have all these confounding variables. The signal is very noisy. It's not even a robust epidemiological finding with anything in food generally. So, it's like, can we really say this promotes heart health? That this fights inflammation? It's a worse look than even the broad like people who say they eat apples have a better lifespan in general. Uh it's very hard to say these components are are coming out with an outcome. It's impossible to say that for for sure.
It's a fiber. Even a food like olive oil where most people think, "No, that's just purified pure fat, right? That's all." No, it has a plethora of vitamins and carotenoids.
You should list the vitamins, you know. Because again, any plant is generally very deficient vitamins. The main benefits we're getting from plants like the fruits and our vegetables, we are getting minerals, which is great. We can get things like manganese, magnesium, which are hard to find in animal foods. We can also get folate, B9, pretty nice in plants, many fruits. We can get B1, B2, B3, B5. All all the plant versions, of course, many of them have to be converted like B6, you only have can get the plant version in plants, it must be converted to the animal version. You can't get B12, you can't get DHA and EPA, generally speaking. You can't get vitamin D3, you can't get retinol, you can't get K2, generally. If you want to get a lot of these nutrients that we need like the full array of B vitamins and uh things like DHA and EPA, things like choline, things like creatine, carnitine, taurine, we need animal products. So, when you're looking for a complete source of micronutrients, you're generally looking at things like egg yolks, fatty meat, fatty fish, you know, organs, raw dairy, those are things that are actually replete of all the nutrients you need essentially. When you just say vitamins, it's like, "Yeah, there's a few vitamins like some vitamin E." But, it's not complete. There's an opportunity cost to eating this as opposed to a high-quality raw egg yolk that has way more micronutrients for the same amount of calories and better fats in my opinion than olive oil. All right, guys, I'm in post-production. I want to show you. So, this is 100 calories of an egg yolk versus 100 calories of olive oil, right? With all the nutrients you require as a human, like look at the comparison, right? B1, B2, B3, B5, there's just nothing in the olive oil versus the egg yolk. So, it's like, do you think that if both of these are positively associated with good outcomes, but then we can go beyond that, we can say, "Well, wait, the egg yolk has almost every micronutrient I require, the olive oil has basically nothing." What's healthier for me? Hmm. There are choices to be made among, "good foods." So, it's like, logically, why would you not choose this one? Yeah, just food for thought. Like, there's an opportunity cost to getting 100 calories of this instead of 100 calories of that. You can only eat so much food. Why would you go for this over that? You guys get my point. So, just just hopefully I want to illustrate that this is not packed full of vitamins, relatively speaking.
And other phytonutrients, oleocanthal is formed in olive oil and has an anti-inflammatory activity. And so, it's a long list, it goes on and
Mechanism? You know, it's like immunosuppressive, like there's so many It matters how it's doing so and if it's even a good thing to begin with.
And so, the realization here, the bottom line, is that the health effect of the whole food is the combination of the specific effects of each of these molecules. And trying to guess the health effect of a food from one isolated nutrient in a vacuum gets things wrong all the time. This is like the blind men and the elephant. You've heard that story, you've all heard it. One blind man grabbed the leg of the elephant and goes, "An elephant is basically like a tree, it's a cylinder."
He's What he's leading to is he's about to say, "We know what produces the best health effects. We have the science." That's what's coming.
The other blind man grabbed the ears and goes, "No, no, no, an elephant is this flexible, round leaf." Almost the other guy grabs the trunk and says, "No, guys, an elephant is basically like a hose, it's a long, bendy tube." They all have a kernel of truth, but they're all missing the big picture. None of them grasp what an elephant is. This is such a simple principle. You can find the switch
This is true. Mechanistic speculation like looking at one thing in a food, that's a horrible way to determine if a food is good. That's why like from my perspective, I'm looking at many different mechanisms of a food. I'm looking at anthropology. And among those mechanisms, we have things like nutrients, anti-nutrients, the type of fats. Then we have all these different angles we can see what type of fats do we want, what nutrients do we need, what are humans biologically adapted to be eating? Are we adapted to be eating mostly fiber with our actual hard science like our actual organ systems? It's sort of like how much literature would you require to say that a lion shouldn't be eating lots of fiber, you know? We can actually look at their intestinal their digestive tracts, their organs systems, what they need. We can say, "Okay, a lion shouldn't be eating a ton of fiber." So, looking at like the actual human physiology is a great insight to what we should eat as well. The nutrients we require, you know, what we've been eating, looking at Weston Dr. Weston Price's work. What What were the people who were healthy in isolated primitive tribes, what were they eating? Lots of raw dairy, meat, organs, fermented vegetables. If they had beans, they were soaked and sprouted. You know, sourdough bread, honey. Those are generally the foods every single population had animal foods without exception. Then the most robust societies had raw dairy like in the Scandinavian countries. That's a good insight into looking what actually Those are health outcomes. People without any acne, 0% acne, almost no heart disease, no obesity. What were they eating, right? As opposed to what he's about to lead to, which is epidemiology among what people say they eat in the modern day.
I invite you to and yet it's so powerful. You grasp this and so many dilemmas that puzzle millions of people online every day, they just dissipate away. Should we all avoid beans and be scared of beans because they contain lectins? Well, beans also contain minerals and different types of fiber and phytonutrients. So, what's the actual health effect of eating beans in human beings? We have piles of studies documenting this. We see better control of blood sugar. We see lower cholesterol. We see weight loss.
Well, you're begging the question, lower cholesterol is good, but
We see less heart disease. We see longer lives in people who eat more beans.
And people who say they eat more beans. And again, we can only with epidemiology, we can see somewhat a some sort of insight into people who say they eat more beans do better than the average person. All you can gather is that beans are better than an average person's general food intake, if that makes sense. You take an average person, you replace something of what they're eating with beans, they'll probably do better. And I would agree with that. Obviously, if you're replacing Pop-Tarts or even bread with beans, you'll probably have a better outcome. But, for someone who's actually trying to form an ideal diet, this is the worst way to form that perspective. You're just going to get an above-average diet if you just go by everything from that epidemiology dictates is good. Then you'd have a a whole foods diet. That's what you'd have, and that's pretty good. It's better than the average person. But, if we want to be optimal, this is not the way to go.
So, I eat them all the time.
That's his like that's his logic, right? So, like we could look at beans and say they have fibers, which are not even required. Phytonutrients, those aren't required either. Maybe they have some benefit, sure. Has decent minerals, sure. They also have an antinutrient, lectins. And let's say we want to eat beans. That has taken a certain amount of our daily food intake, our daily calories. That's an opportunity cost. Let's say those beans could have been meat with way better micronutrients, all the B vitamins, which are missing in the beans, things like creatine, carnitine, taurine, anserine, DHA, EPA, choline, vitamin D3, K2, vitamin A. All these micronutrients that you'd find in the meat with a better amino acid profile ratio in the meat that would that would be better than the beans if we actually were to use our logic and look at it from different angles. But if we're just going to say, "Well, beans were associated with this, therefore I eat beans." That's just doing better than average. That's not what we're looking for. We want to be at optimal. So, very poor logic, I would say.
We have piles of studies documenting this. We see better control, less heart disease, we see longer lives in beans. So, I eat them all the time. I eat them daily, beans and lentils and legumes like that, and I give them to my family because we actually know what the documented health effect is.
Not effect. That requires causal evidence. This is just epidemiology. This is a somewhat weak association. This is not cause and effect. This is not if you eat beans, you will have X outcome. We we need a a level of control we don't exert on humans due to moral reasons. That's why with rats, we know exactly what they should eat. We have rats, identical twin rats locked in labs. We make one intervention and we observe. Then we see this rat lived longer when we gave him beans instead of cheese. That wouldn't happen. We redo the experiment, we see it again, we can say, "Okay, adding in 50 g of beans instead of 50 g of cheese for a rat makes it live longer, cause and effect." Right? We can we can get almost 100% certainty. The way he looks at nutrition is as I've said, he's just finding things that are a little bit of better than average. If something's associated with positive health outcomes, again, that it's confounded, the data is then fabricated based on the other variables, based on what people say they did. It's so close to causal evidence, it will just give you a peek into what will probably be pretty good. Eating a whole food diet. Of fish, dairy, eggs, vegetables, fruits, root vegetables, honey. Yeah, it's pretty good. But then we're we're not so brain dead that we're only left with the positive association foods. we can look among those foods and say, "Well, are the people who are doing better that are eating salads, are they doing better because the salad is causing that or because they're filling themselves up with fiber in an obese population that's making them less obese and that they have a healthy user bias because they're aiming to eat salad in the first place?" Perhaps that's why they're living longer. Maybe the salad that we're not even digesting, maybe that's not actually delivering us nutrients. It's just making someone abstain from overeating in an obese society. That could be why. Right? We have to look a little deeper than this.
In spite of all the speculation, in reality, some lectins can cause issues. They can cause gastrointestinal distress, but the heat wipes them out. So, the
Again, yeah, we have a food we can neutralize a toxin in the food or we could eat a food with way more micronutrients, better protein, better minerals, better digestibility without a toxin for the same amount of calories. What about that? They're just They're not looking to be optimal. They're just looking at, "Well, we can neutralize the toxins." Like, why are you trying to eat that food to begin with, though? You know?
Normal processing of the beans, the cooking of the beans, always solve the problem. So, theory versus reality, should we avoid oats and all whole grains because they contain phytates? They contain glyphosate. They contain avenanthramides. They also contain a thousand other things, viscous fiber and phytonutrients and minerals.
Again, these are not required, the fiber nor the phytonutrients. And a lot of the phytonutrients, there's actually very noisy data around them. Are they actually good? Minerals, sure, but again, so you can never actually get rid of all the phytic acid in oats that will bind to a lot of the minerals. When we're eating a breakfast, okay, why why oats, though? Why is this the best breakfast? Why is that what you want to go strive to eat? It's micronutrient profile is very deficient. It's just carbs, which are fine. They're starches, as well. So, you're not getting the benefits you get from fructose from a whole source, like refilling liver glycogen, displacing phosphate in the cell. You don't have those benefits. Lower glycemic index when it's simple sugar split between fructose and glucose. You don't get all the the vitamins you're going to get in the animal foods. Like, this is not an argument saying this is the best, this is optimal. This is just an argument saying, "Well, people who say that you know, it's still a little bit better, so I eat them, you know."
What's the actual health effect?
We don't know for sure for sure. We And we only know the health effect relative to the average person, not the optimal person. You know, like come on.
In a human being eating them. We have hundreds of studies doing this, giving people oats. We see lower blood pressure.
And what were they eating before? Like, come on, man. Seriously.
Lower cholesterol, less body fat, lower risk of developing diabetes. I eat oats all the time.
Yeah, but I'll only say one more time, all of this is just saying that a food is better than the median person. Literally, that's all what they eat. You give them an average American any whole food, you're going to see a positive health effect, and that's generally what we see. But, then you have the people tapped in on like, let's say a raw or bioenergetic approach, you know, eating lots of saturated fats, eating coconut oil to speed up the metabolism, getting lots of animal protein, lots of simple good sugars from good sources like fruits and honey, maple syrup, and root vegetables, speeding up their metabolism, they have high hormones, high sex drive, high libido, high energy levels, good sleep, they're lean, they can eat a ton of food and stay lean. And And any of these people are actually dialed in eating three meals a day to keep the hormones in check. Doing all these interventions, and then they're like, "Well, a fat ass got served oats and they did better." That's not convincing to me. I I don't have that problem of being a fat ass, and I'm don't have that problem of being an average person. I'm seeking something far better than this.
Every day, I give it to my family, the children
I wouldn't do that.
eat oats all the time, because the health effects we see are overwhelmingly positive.
Compared to the average person, garbage.
Overnight oats with berries. I just had
They look quite low quality. You can actually see that.
the other day. I didn't stress over the bad molecule that might be in there. I just enjoyed it because I know what the overall health effect is. Should you
That's good he didn't stress, but you do not know the overall health effect in reality. And you definitely don't know the you know, all that data is not telling you what you should eat to live the longest possible out of any human. That that will never exist.
you cut carbs or fat from your diet?
Neither.
Which one is good and which one is bad? Is carb poison or fats good for you? Are fats bad for you? These are the wrong questions, guys. It completely misses the point of nutrition. A whole macronutrient like carbohydrate or lipid or protein is neither good nor bad. It depends on the food it comes in. Sources of
I really disagree I agree with that, but I really disagree with his the way he was led there.
Whole carbohydrates like fruit or vegetables or legumes, we consistently see good health effects of those foods. Sources of highly refined carbohydrates like soda or gummy bears or muffins, we consistently see not so good health effects of those foods because these foods are about much more than just the carbs that
Could it be that the people who eat soda and then they say they eat soda, could it be that they don't care about their health in general and that therefore when we're tracking the people that say they eat soda, that's also going to be associated with all the fried foods they're going to eat with the soda cuz it's normally at restaurants and then they die sooner. You know, it's like bro, looking at just like he he's so deep into the science, but even from the objective scientific framework it doesn't even can't even report on cause and effect. And he's so like that's his ideology. He doesn't have other pieces to form a perspective, which is what we have to do in an unproven field. That's why this debate goes on cuz there's no actual causal evidence on what will make you live the longest. So then you can look at it in the sense of like why are polyunsaturated fats varying based on latitude? That's a huge That's a very interesting thing. Why is that? He would say, "I don't care. Health effect relative to average population." It's like well, let's look at other like interesting things we can actually know. You know, why are coconuts 98% saturated fat? Or you know, very 2% polyunsaturated fat on the equator. Why do we see high polyunsaturated fat in this Scandinavian regions? Okay, because heat oxidizes PUFA, therefore it strays in that sense. Okay. This will let the membrane stay more fluid up there. This will speed up the metabolism down here. What do we want to imitate? You know, oh, what's more prone to lipid peroxidation? What are the fat-soluble vitamins? What are we adapted to eating? All these pieces can convergently say saturated fats are superior to seed oils, for example. At least my from my perspective, the things I value. Micronutrients, physiology, biological adaptation, metabolic rate, hormones. All those things point to saturated fats. But then he would just say eat whatever's associated. You're never going to get an ideal approach. You're just going to have a mediocrely above average approach.
They contain. It's a whole package, the types of fiber and the resistant starches and the phytonutrients and the minerals and the vitamins in there. A lot of these components are stripped away by the refinement process and these building parts have a fundamental effect
Are Those are all speculations according to you, bro. Don't even worry about it. Don't even try to explain it. It's just what's associated, right?
On how the food is processed in your body, how it's absorbed and digested and ultimately what health effect it has on you. So, when someone insists that you look at one molecule
It cannot report on how it will affect your health as an individual, as well. It's contextual.
Always make sure to step back and look at the whole elephant. And you can still eat a lower carb or a lower fat diet if you prefer, if you Well, it's endless because this simple concept is usually absent. It's usually not understood. Saturated fat. The rivers of ink that have flown debating saturated fat. Is saturated fat good or bad for you? This is the wrong question entirely. Completely misses the point. Salmon, yogurt, kefir, dark chocolate, olive oil, even. These are foods that contain some saturated fat and yet we consistently see positive health effects of these foods. Butter, tallow, coconut oil in large amounts. We're not talking about eating them here and there. We consistently see concerning effects. So saturated fat is neither
I'd like to see the literature he's going off of cuz there's actually very conflicting evidence even with those foods. But again, it's not the proper thing to look at to begin with.
Good nor bad. This is cartoonish. It depends on a lot of different factors. The types of saturated fats and the package, the food it comes in. So you want to look at the whole
So the yogurt is positively associated with the dairy fat, but then the isolated dairy fat is then bad. See how that doesn't even make sense? So dairy fat, dairy fat.
Saturated fat and yet we consistently see positive health effects of these foods. Butter, tallow, coconut
Dairy fat. Okay, so the other foods maybe they were paired with protein, so then the person ate less overall and then were skinnier then they lived longer. See, it's just ah it's so noisy. I apologize for my dog. It's so noisy. It's like do you see how flawed this is? It's dairy fat and dairy fat. It's the same molecule, the same component. One's bad, one's good. It just doesn't make sense.
Oil in large amounts. We're not talking about eating them here and there.
He's saying coconut oil like these things are
There. We consistently see
Lard I could see an argument for.
Concerning effects. So saturated fat is neither good nor bad. This is cartoonish. It depends on a lot of different factors. The types of saturated fats and the package, the food it comes in. So you want to look at the whole elephant. Seed oils. People losing their minds, pulling their hair out over seed oils. They have omega-6s. They have hexane. They have double bonds. Canola oil is poison for you because it has erucic acid in it. What's the actual health effect that we observe in human beings consuming canola oil? We have a 30
Have a control group.
Minute video where we systematically went over every study we could find, dozens of studies, in human beings you see better blood
Just let's say there is an absence of evidence, that does not mean that the it's not true. I forget the saying, lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, right? So, yeah, the average person consumes already like 20% of their calories from omega-6. So, it's like there's no control group of humans without omega-6 built up in their tissues. So, there's literally not even a control group. So, you couldn't even have literature on this topic.
Blood work, lower cholesterol, triglycerides when they change is in a positive direction you see
Bangs the question lower cholesterol is inherently good.
Less liver fat, you see lower risk of dying of heart disease, lower risk of
That cannot be reported on. We don't have any literature to do so.
Dying of cancer, lower mor-
Nope, no literature.
Mortality overall
Nope, no literature.
Even in people cooking with canola oil, even after you adjust for obvious confounders
You cannot adjust
Uh and exercise
And have it remain scientific. You're guessing, it's estimations. The whole thing it's just epistemology. He believes this is this is the best way to determine what is good and bad, so
Or smoking. So, I buy canola oil, I give it to my family. It's one of the many fats that we eat. Nobody has to eat it, but I'm not worried because
But, is it doing you well? It's funny, he's probably so into the science. He's like the type of person where For example, I remember in high school I would have oats and I would have such bad digestive issues. I was like, oh my god. And he would be the type of a guy to say, well, oats, they've been associated with positive outcome. Even though I feel bad, my body is telling me it's bad. I literally am feeling the digestive discomfort of what I just ate. But then he would be in his head, he'd think, well, they said it was good for me, so I'm going to ignore my digestive issues, I'm going to keep eating it cuz it had a positive association. And that's when you're too far gone in like an unproven field like this. For me, when I felt digestive issues from oats, I said, "This is not good for me." I was intuitive. I said, "I feel bad physically after eating this." And it's a seed and we understand it has phytic acid. It has these gut-disruptive molecules. It's deficient in micronutrients and it's starch. Has some minerals. This isn't the best food. Then I started eating eggs and fruit and dairy for breakfast. I felt so much better. My skin got better. Right? That's That's all That's all you need to know as well as self-experimentation. I would put above any of this as well. Put it above my opinion. Eat some Eat some fruit and some eggs cooked in butter for breakfast, then eat oatmeal. See how you feel. See how you digest the food.
The health effects are there. Even the endless protein debates often miss this point. Should we eat 0.8 or 1.1 or 1.45 g of per kilo body weight? 99% of people have no idea how many grams of protein they're eating. And we have videos going over all those controversies
Oh, so then you understand that what they'd report on what they're eating and then their outcome. We wouldn't even know that.
As most western
That applies to everything, by the way.
Eaters are already getting plenty of protein. They're getting all the protein they need even without counting grams of protein.
Let's say they're getting all the protein they need. Are they getting the amount of micronutrients that are in that protein? Like in the flesh of meat is protein. It's also creatine, carnitine, all the B vitamins, heme iron. CoQ10, like all these micronutrients are in the protein because protein is not just protein. Like when you're getting a protein shake, you're not getting all the micronutrients you'd find in the meat protein. So are they getting all the associated micronutrients even if they are getting enough of the amino acids themselves? It's more nuanced than that.
There's a lot of issues with the standard western diet and lack of protein is not one of them. And these endless fights the plant protein
Really interesting.
Versus the animal protein, all this UFC style battle. You watch this stuff all day long, you come away thinking that nutrition is about choosing a side, choosing a team. We consistently see good health effects of fatty fish like salmon, fermented dairy like kefir for example, great health effects, legumes like beans and lentils, nuts also.
Relative to average, this is boring, dude.
Better blood work, less heart disease, less inflammation on these foods. And some are from plants and some are from animals. So, that doesn't explain it. When I sit down to eat, I'm not stressing out and losing sleep over the amount of protein in my diet. I know I eat a diverse diet that includes a number of protein-rich sources and they're health-promoting. That's the main thing for me.
But then you look at it, it's like, okay, humans have been eating 80% or more of their protein from animals for all of time, essentially, for about 4 and 1/2 million years, throughout, you know, Homo sapiens, hominids, just Neanderthals, like everything. We've been eating about 80 to 100% of our protein from animals. We've been eating the associated nutrition from animals. There are better ratios of the amino acids. We get all the associated micronutrients that you don't find in any plant protein. You don't have any B12 in any plant protein. The active form of B6. You don't have heme iron. You don't have CoQ10. You don't have DHA and EPA, which that's in the fat, but still it's going to be next to none. You don't have retinol. You don't have creatine, like you get in the red meat protein. You don't don't have that in a single plant. And we know the benefits of that, for example. The picture is very clear we should be eating animal protein, not eating plants that we have to soak and get rid of the toxins from. It's so patently clear. But he is just all about what's associated compared to average. It's that's all he'll ever be, I guess.
Even fiber, which the evidence for health benefits of fiber is one of the strongest evidence bases in nutrition. We see less heart disease, less cancer, less diabetes. What really is the foods that the fiber comes in, that natural package, right? That's what we're talking about. It's the health effect of those foods, not in
Compared to the average person, the average person puts in foods with fiber, they'll have better health outcomes cuz they're obese. Literally, the average person's overweight, they eat things that fill them up without calories, then they live longer. That does not mean we should strive to eat those foods as a healthy lean individual caring after our diet.
Necessarily the effect of any food with fiber. Cuz if you forget this whole alpha concept, then we get gamed by the food industry selling us their sugary foods saying, "Hey, you can taste fiber we threw fiber in there." All of this All of this principle doesn't mean that nutrients don't matter, right? I have that humongous article I wrote goes over dozens of nutrients one by one and best sources and how to make sure you're getting enough. But the bottom line is at the end of the day, don't forget step back, look at the whole health. The beautiful thing is how simple this principle is, how easy to grasp. You don't need to be a scientist. And it's so powerful. We constantly hear from viewers saying how they reverse diseases and maintain fantastic blood work, and they have peace of mind eating and they don't get swept away by the fear mongering on social media anymore. I remember one viewer who messaged me
You definitely shouldn't be scared. I agree.
I'll never forget that she was terrified of her lunch. She was literally petrified of every food cuz one influencer told her carbs are poison. And the other one said fats are bad for you. The other said dairy's made up fool. That doesn't necessarily videos by tonight. They're very legit conditions like celiac that apply to all of humanity. Conditions and specific in people. Second fundamental principle, some people have specific conditions and specific intolerances and they need to personalize their diet. That doesn't necessarily apply to all of humanity. You'd be blown away by how much fear mongering and confusion on social media depends on you not understanding this. Some people are intolerant to gluten that are legit conditions like celiac and others. We have videos Okay, so gluten has the possibility to have that bad of reaction of celiac. But in general, gluten is a lectin which mechanistically will always cause gap junctions in your gut. And in short, it can always cause leaky gut. Not that it always will, but there's always a mechanism of action of lectins weakening your gut lining like gluten which is a lectin in all people. Some people will have it so bad that they have to avoid it. But it's again, it's looking at this upside down. What if you looked at it as if Well, wait a minute. We have this compound that is not going to kill everyone, but for some people will basically kill them over time. Should we strive to be eating this? Like why don't I look at it like that? Okay, meat. Okay, you know, it's sort of like breast milk. Every baby on Earth will not have a problem with breast milk. Every human can tolerate it because they're designed for it. Then we have this food made of some seeds with these anti-nutrients. It's just starch. It can, you know, cultivate some endotoxin. Overgrowth of bacteria as well in general. With a toxin that some people are very reactive to. Should Why should anyone eat it in that sense if we're trying to be optimal? What What if we ate a food with more nutrients, less toxins that's actually indicated for our physiology?
Covering that, how to diagnose and how to navigate that for people who have those conditions. But that
Point is it's always the personalized diet in the sense that oh, some people, they the toxins are so bad for them, they can't tolerate them. For other people, they can tolerate them. Not looking at what's optimal, looking at what's survivable.
So it apply to 99% of humans. Some people
So should they eat that then?
Form kidney stones. And a subset of those form kidney stones made up of oxalates.
Not a subset, most. About 80%.
For those individuals, there are very specific strategies. We've covered all those before. But this doesn't apply to the vast majority of humans.
You know what's great? Really, he's just showing that some people are very sensitive to the toxins in these plants. And then they have to avoid them. But it only applies to them. Well, why would we then strive to eat the toxins if we aren't that sensitive anyways? Oh, some people, you know, in 45 almonds, you have your beyond your daily limit of cyanide, right? From 45 almonds. Some people, they might do worse with that. But it's like, why are we trying to have cyanide to begin with? You know what I mean?
Do you know how much I worry about oxalates when I sit down to eat? Zero. Never think about them cuz I'm not a stone former.
It's good you don't think about them.
And my family, we're not stone formers. So that's one thing we don't need to worry about.
Yeah, the oxalates are still depleting your minerals to an extent.
Here's a beet salad with walnuts and greens I had the other day. Did I measure the
Well, and and is this the most optimal meal you could have had? There's an opportunity cost. You filled your stomach up with this. If we break down the micronutrients
Yeah, oxalates. That's one thing we You need to worry about. That. Beet salad with walnuts and greens.
There's no B12 in this meal, no active form B6, no retinol, no D3, no K2, no creatine. Where's the protein? Yeah, maybe you'd have oh, a big steak in another meal, but you won't. So, it's like he's just picking random foods that are associated with positive outcomes in a mixed diet, but then he's on a restricted plant-based diet. And if you actually break down like what is in these foods versus what you need, it's garbage, right? And that's real physical reality. These have oxalates deficient micronutrients. But and then look at him. He doesn't look healthy at all. It's like wow, this is like a sense of like he's literally brainwashed beyond belief.
I had the other day. Did I mention the oxalates in this? Didn't think about it once, just enjoyed it. Some people have GI conditions
You didn't.
IBS, irritable bowel, or IBD, inflammatory bowel. Those people need to personalize it. Strategies people are very salt sensitive. They eat more sodium and they're constant motion. There's going to be your bloodstream, your blood sugar goes up. These are examples of temporary changes. We call them oil. You see less heart times. We've known this for many years. Potato chips
But yeah, so to summarize, he looks at it this way. We have obese, the average person's obese and sick. They live, let's say, 75 years. Then we look at the people who live 85 years. We ask them, "What did you generally eat?" They fill out questionnaires. They say, "I eat spinach. I eat beef. I eat uh vegetables and fruits and nuts." Then those foods are associated with positive outcomes, associated to varying degrees. He says, "I'll eat any of the foods that are associated with positive outcomes." That's his final take. No no If a food is if the people that happened to live longer said they did something, he would do it. So, let's say the people, you know, like red wine, a glass a day has been associated with longevity in France. Then his logic, drinking a glass of wine a day is healthy. But then we can say, "Hold on, wait a minute. Maybe the people who drank wine, they were richer and they also ate cheese, they also ate meat, they also had less extraneous strenuous activity, they had better health care cuz they could afford wine, and that's why they lived longer. It wasn't the wine itself." Cuz there's so much more nuance and consideration with epidemiological findings. We have to look at that, but he doesn't do that. He just says, "Anything associated above the median, okay, eat it." And that's why I don't stress when I'm eating a a meal with no protein, no animal fats with all those associated nutrients missing a meal that's missing over 15 micronutrients that only found in animal products. And he's not stressing one with oxalates as well, cuz well, I'm not predisposed to the worst outcome of oxalates, therefore, I'll eat them. It's just the most reductionist like you're not going to heal your health problems if you follow this advice. I promise you won't. The amount of people in my community that needed interventions that required thought and speculation, but they work. Cuz when you know a lot, your speculation can be on the dot. I apologize for this noise in the background. This will not lead you to health. And And look at him. Is Does he have the result you want? Does he look healthy? That's the question. I would say no. Yeah, hopefully I've got my point across. We need more than just this epidemiology when we're trying to eat optimally. And we need a lot more nuance and depth than how he's gathered. You know, he he believes, yeah, making these speculations bad, but that's why you can look at so many things like anthropology, human physiology, biochemistry, our nutrient requirements, what is toxic for us, what we're biologically adapted to eat, what tastes good to our body, trusting our own body. We have so many things that can converge to form a picture as opposed to any one model. Which is what he's He's in the one model of, you know, Godus is in the one model of what tastes good to you among natural foods, which is I actually think is quite good compared to this. He's in the model of epidemiology. Then there's the mixed model, which I think is the right approach. Hopefully you guys learned something. Hopefully you enjoyed. Let me know what you think down below. See you guys next time.