May 15, 2014 • 43 mins
You may have heard of the Paleo Diet, also known as the Caveman Diet, but do you know the science it's based on? And did you know that the saturated fat it and other diets avoid may be healthier than you were taught in school?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Welcome to you, Stuff you should know from house stuff
works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
(00:27):
Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Chuck Bryant and Jerry
and this is stuff you should know the podcast. Hm. Hey,
congratulations to Jerry. Oh yeah, she's got married. Congratulations Jerry,
way to go. She just gave a thumbs up. She
has the right. Germain silent. Yeah, So congratulations to Jerry
(00:49):
and Anna and uh sadly Jerry had to go to
a different state to get married, but she did it, yes,
because they have initiative. That's right, don't you, Jerry. Yeah.
Some of the nice yeah congratulations chairs were very happy
for you guys. Um so happy in fact that we
(01:09):
have a podcast. I just realized I said I'm very
happy for you guys, and its sounded not at all
happy for them. I'm very happy for you. I'm really
happy for you guys. Yeah, but I think everybody bought that.
You're happy for him. Everybody knows you, they know me. Well,
Jerry bought it, and that's what counts. Jerry, did you
buy it? Think interesting? I like your French chuck thanks
(01:33):
to something I know how to say. Uh is it? No?
I mean I've got the bonjour down and Frosch fries,
Frosch bread, France dressing, fross dressing. Uh. So you say
all those things, French dressing, French bread, French fries, and
(01:54):
I can tell you that none of them were around
years ago. Nice segue, my friend. It wasn't. It was
pretty clumsy. It felt clumsy, but thank you. Yeah. Are
you talking about the Paleo diet? Yeah, which, by the way,
short for Paleolithic diet. And um, this thing's been around
(02:16):
longer than I thought. The book was written by a
guy named Dr Lauren Cordain, the creator of the Paleo
Diet back in two thousand two, and um, Dr Cordain
is no slouch. He is a celebrated PhD in Health
and Health sciences UM, and he started looking at the
(02:40):
massive chronic health problems that face Westerners and Americans in particular,
I think we might be the most chronically unhealthy country
in the world. Um, as far as like beats, obesity,
heart disease, all of these things go uh, and Dr
Cordin is like, there's out to be a better way.
(03:01):
And what he focused on was the idea that the
Western diet is also a very modern diet, full full
of processed foods, foods that are pre prepared, prepackaged, boxed.
Even a lot of the pictures of the food are
on the box laden with chemicals, vaive, stuff you're not
(03:22):
gonna do at home, and um, stuff that tastes really good,
mainly because it's been designed to taste really good. Um.
The problem is Dr Cordain believes this stuff is really
bad for us because of those preservatives as chemicals, and
a lot of the good stuff that was present in
and at one point has been worked out removed. So
(03:44):
his idea was, well, let's create a diet that's the
opposite of modern, that's prehistoric even. And what he came
up with was the paleo or Paleolithic diet. And the
Paleolithic era um ended at about the advent of agriculture.
So the premise of the diet is like all of
(04:05):
this stuff would be the same diet that a hunter
gatherer would eat. Yeah, And the idea is, and this
is there's a lot of controversy. Not everyone believes us
any there's controversy with every diet, with every diet, But
if you subscribe to this, the idea is that our
body chemistry and physiology has not changed. Like if you
(04:25):
look at a if you think of it like a
hundred yard football field, we went ninety nine yards as
hunter gatherers, and then the last yard is since agriculture
has come around, that's the longest yard. So are so
our bodies have not changed genetically and they're the same
(04:45):
way they were back then. So to eat how they
were back then and they did for thousands and thousands
of years, makes more sense with that analogy with what
happens when we succore a touchdown, like is at the
end of vanity. I don't know, Um, but the dude
you mentioned he wasn't the first. That was actually a
guy in the seventies that wrote a book. Um Walter
(05:09):
Voting wrote a self published book in seventy five called
The Stone Age Diet. Oh, I didn't know that based
on in depth studies of human ecology and the diet
of man. But like I said, it was self published
and he didn't like it didn't blow up. It definitely
took till the two thousands to gain traction. Has Cordaine
like given this guy credit and he said, like he's
(05:29):
based his ideas on this guy or what. I don't know,
but I think he was the first guy to actually
coin that term. But um, yeah, these are people who
subscribed to that notion that since we haven't changed physiologically
and how we're supposed to eat, then we shouldn't be
eating how we're eating, right, we should eat how we
used to eat. I would suggest that that's not necessarily true.
And part of the problem with saying things like that,
(05:52):
or saying like, you know this is this is how
paleolithic body human body um absorbed nutrients or these are
the nutrients that could absorbed. You're you're making a pretty
broad and unsubstantiated claim in and of itself, like they did. Okay, Well, also,
you don't have a paleolithic body to dissect to study. Um.
(06:16):
All you have are modern bodies and assumptions about what
paleolithic diets were like. Now, I mean, there are still
hunter gatherer tribes currently, but I haven't seen anybody say, well,
we study these hunter gatherer tribes specifically for a very
long time, and we've concluded that this paleo diet is
(06:37):
is totally supported by this. It's basically people saying, no,
this is what Paleolithic people would have eaten, so this
is how how their body would have been. And when
they make a step to that second sentence, you're you're
making a jump into an unsubstantiated claim. Just keep that
in mind. That's all. And like you said, every every
(07:00):
diet on earth is you're gonna find studies that say
they're great and studies that say they're not so great.
You're going to find people who say the food pyramid
is what you should look at, and other people to
say the food pyramids out of whack and we shouldn't
be eating that many grains. Pyramid is out of whack. Yeah.
But like you know, there is no definitive right or wrong.
(07:22):
I think because every time there's a study done, it
seems like there's another study that can refute it. You
just hit the nail on the head. There is no
right or wrong because we don't understand our body, our
bodies and our bodies metabolic processes enough to say this
one's right and this one's wrong for everybody. Yeah, you know,
(07:44):
there's no there's no baseline that's been established. We don't
know quite enough yet. And so the problem has been
as we've set ourselves back decade after decade by basically
picking a study whichever one got the media play and
seemed the most sensible, and going with that, throwing lots
(08:04):
of money and education, time and effort at bolstering that
the findings of that study, even though it may or
may not have been the case, rather than just saying, like,
we're still figuring it out in the meantime, we think
maybe don't eat so much of this or whatever. Yeah,
And I think that that's set us back quite a bit,
which we'll talk about more later. Yeah. And I think
(08:27):
just personally, like, if you're if you're doing it healthily,
then find something that works for you. If that's Sugar Busters, great,
if that's Atkins, or if that's Weight Watchers or Jenny
Craig or super Calorie Restriction or whatever. Not everything is
gonna work for everyone, you know, or or paleo you
know what are the other names, the warrior diet or
(08:48):
the caveman diet. They're you know, they're fads, but that
doesn't mean there can't be something to some of them
for some people. Well, the other thing I think about
diets that makes each one so controversial two is that
they do end up ultimately being fats. But every single
one of the diets aspires to be that one diet
(09:09):
that works for everybody. They all kind of claim that,
and that's to sell books, you know, let's get real,
But there are It's not like these things are are
necessarily just totally made up out of the whole cloth.
Like we'll talk about the paleo diet and and and
the basis of it. Right. So the whole idea is
(09:30):
is that, like I said, the modern diet has a
lot of foods involved in it that are not good
for you. And by cutting those things out, that's step one, Yeah,
basically eating cleaner. Right. But step two isn't just like, okay,
so anything that you can find growing on a tree
or you know that that has a face and you
(09:52):
and you can eat it, um besides humans is healthy
for you. Um, there's if you take it a little
bit further, Uh, there's some things that you really shouldn't
eat according to the Paleo diet. One of the things
that it's centered around are foods that if you have
to cook them to gain nutrients from them, Like beans
(10:13):
are a really good example. Uh, you can't eat them.
You don't want them. In the case of the Paleo diet,
the reason is they affect gut health supposedly, right, what else, welch,
I mean, should we just go ahead and talk about
what is on the good list and the bad list?
Just so if you, I mean you've probably heard of
the diet before, especially lately, but generally very high in protein. Yeah,
(10:38):
And a lot of people make the mistake of saying like, oh,
it's just like eating huge steaks all the time, and
and you know, pulling pulling women by their hair like
it's like that. It's actually now they say proteins like
fifteen or nineteen of the diet, right, whereas um protein
for the average diet here in the West is about
(11:00):
so more protein. Um. And when we say protein, we
mean poultry and pork and fish and eggs, and uh,
you know, even red meat is on there of course. Uh,
then lower carbohydrates, like a lower amount of carbohydrates and
different kinds of carbohydrates. That's right, Um, The carbs you
(11:22):
want are slow burning carbs. UM. And the idea behind
this extends beyond just the paleo diet. There's a lot
of diets, including Atkins, that believe in lowering carbs, and
they based it on But it's not no carbs. You
do want some carbs because your body does need some energy.
But you you do want some carbs, but you want
(11:43):
carbs from things like an apple, or from celery or
black olives, things that are slow burning carbs that will
give you energy without raising your blood sugar. Something with
them low on the glycemic index. Yeah, that's how it's scored.
So something that has about fifty five or lower on
the glycemic index is considered low. And that's what you
(12:06):
want as far as the carbohydrate is concerned, because it
is going to give you energy without raising your blood sugar.
When you raise your blood sugar, as I think we've
talked about recently, UM, the insulin comes out to stabilize
your blood sugar well, insulince and is a signal to
your liver to start producing fat for storage and that's
why you tend to gain weight when you eat carbohydrates,
(12:31):
because your blood sugar spikes and your insulin comes out. Yeah.
And the difference, like, that's the difference between eating a
sweet potato or a regular baked potato. Sweet potato, good,
baked potato not so good. Yeah, And it's glycemic index
both carbohydrates though, right. The problem is also is the
glycemic index is extraordinarily unproven. Still it's a I don't
know that it's a relatively new thing, but it's been
(12:53):
used much more frequently recently. But if you start really
looking into the glycemic index, any uh reasonable source will say, like,
here's the glycemic index. This is a pretty good understanding
of it. But the difference between a tart apple in
a very ripe sweet apple. You can't just say apples
(13:14):
have a glycemic index of whatever, like one that's ripened
more than another that's just the same exact apple from
the same tree. You're going to have radically different glycemic induseries.
That's interesting. So I mean, like a solid point too,
because it seems like there are too many definitive statements
about diet when there shouldn't be. Absolutely the one that
(13:35):
I think keeps coming up again and again. That's the
most sensible is Well, we'll get too later, but it
involves it's moderation basically. You know, paying attention to your
food is very important, but but moderation, you know, like
eating a bunch of Twinkies over the course of your lifetime,
it's not gonna kill you. But if you have to
box of twinkies a day, like that's that's kill you.
(13:58):
And that's a moderate moderate ration. Is is I think
the key to health. I agree, man, And that's sort
of the key to I think most things in life. Yeah,
I mean it pops up everywhere like moderation. Our moderation
is the spice of life. No, I don't think that's
the phrase, but uh so. Fiber fiber is a big
part of the paleo diet. Um fiber is super great
(14:21):
for your health. And people are getting too much fiber
from um grains, or at least the thought is that
you're getting too much fiber from your grains, whereas you
should get it um and things like fruits maybe or
whole grains instead of refined grains, non starchy vegetables. Uh yeah.
(14:45):
And you if you're if you're counting carbs to um
on like a low carb or no carb restricted diet
like say Atkins or something. You actually look at the
total carbohydrates and then some act dietary fiber to come
up with what's called net carbohydrates, and those are the
ones that you actually count because apparently fiber is counted
(15:09):
toward carbohydrates, which is why it shows up in things
like non starchy vegetables and things like that. But um
it doesn't raise your blood sugar, which is what we
come back to again and again and again. Okay, as
far as weight loss is concerned, right, another part of
the paleo diet is um fat intake, higher fat intake,
(15:31):
but the what they call the right kinds of fats
um oh make it three and o maga six fats mainly,
so you want to get into that, Yeah, I think
it's time. So this is a well before we do, man,
let's pull back from the precipice here and take a
message breaks so quickly to recap things that you're gonna
(15:54):
be eating on the paleo diet or lots of protein,
lots of protein, um to vegetables, slow burning carbohydrates, fruits, nuts,
things that you might have hunted and gathered, but not today.
Not beans, not legumes, not modern processed foods. Yeah, not
salt and refined sugar is a really big no no. Yeah,
(16:15):
and we got too fat and um, this is extremely controversial.
I thought this super interesting. The well, the paleo diet,
like pretty much any any typical diet these days, recommends
that you really take it easy on the animal fats um.
And the idea that the reason why pretty much everybody
(16:37):
recommends you take it easy on animal fats saturated fats,
which are steeric acid, palmitic acid, and louric acid. Um.
Those are the three biggest saturated fats found in animal fats.
The idea that that everybody has for um steering clear
of them is because they will give you heart disease,
(16:58):
heart attacks, coronary disease. Yeah, if you eat too many
saturated fats, you're gonna die of a heart attack exactly.
This idea gave rise to a complete change in diet
among Americans and Westerners in general. The whole concept of
a low fat diet, which your is everywhere you go
(17:22):
to any store. It's like fat free, low fat, fat free,
low fat. Everything is low fat now there's a version
of its low fat came from an initial study from
the fifties by a guy named Ansel Keys who carried
out what's called the Six Countries study, and he basically
was the first to link animal fat intake too heart disease. Yeah,
(17:46):
and it's uh, what do they call it? The diet
heart hypothesis, And um, what stinks about that whole scene
is that he sort of did the elementary school science
fair project approach, which is he kind of ignored the
data that didn't support what he wanted and cherry picked
out the data that did and went with it. And
(18:08):
somehow like even though there was like some opposition to
it at the time, somehow it became the basis for
how Americans were told to eat from now on, even
though it was flawed. Uh. I mean, for instance, one
of the countries he studied was the United States. One
of them was Japan. And he kind of said, hey,
(18:28):
they have way more heart attacks in the US than
in Japan. It's because he eat more fat. Yeah, they
eat more animal fat and they have more heart attacks.
Eats less animal fat and has fewer heart attacks. If so. Fact,
though eating animal fat leads to heart attacks, and heart disease, right,
not not considering the amount of sugar Americans aid, or
bread or nothing, lifestyle or anything. Yes, no, he didn't.
(18:51):
Nothing else was controlled for. So that was part one.
Part two is, like you said, he cherry picks six
countries that supported his hypothesis. Uh. And at the time
some other people pointed out, uh, countries. Yeah, we've got
a data for twenty two countries. And when you take
all that data and do it a survey across the
twenty two countries of a correlation between animal fat intake
(19:14):
and heart disease, it goes away that correlation dissolves, not
only dissolves, but like disproves it in some cases. Uh.
The death rate from heart disease in Finland, for instance,
was twenty four times that of Mexico, even though in
Mexico the fat consumption rate was uh twice as much
as Finland. That's right. So that's complete opposite finding. So
(19:36):
Keys does the six country study in the fifties, and
then in nine he follows up with the seven country study. Uh.
Well he this to this time he did Japan, Italy,
the US, Greece, Yugoslavia, Finland, and the Netherlands. And he
found the animal fat was a strong predictor of heart
attacks over a five year period. Again, Um, they basically said, dude,
(19:58):
what are you doing, Like you're you're not doing good
science here. And it's unclear, I should say, it's unclear
whether keys misrepresented his data. Um, he published his findings
like all that's fine. He wasn't like, I'm just not
going to publish this. It was more like in his
discussion at the end of the studies, they he was
(20:19):
saying like, yeah, this kind of came up, but we're
not paying attention to that. It doesn't matter, So he
doesn't necessarily misrepresent the facts. He It seems like he
was more a victim of the media saying, yes, there's
the answer. We've been wondering why Americans die more heart attacks.
This guy just figured it out. It's animal fat and
(20:40):
takes saturated fats, and it took off like a rocket
from there. In the seventies. Well, it's sort of I mean,
it makes sense to the ear. When you hear saturated fats,
it sounds like, well, that's gotta clog your arteries and
give you a heart attack. Saturated well, you know it's
saturated with the word saturated means that there's no double
bonds of carbon in these atty change these fatty acid chains.
(21:02):
So unsaturated means that there's at least one atom of
carbon linked to another atom of carbon in the chain.
In a saturated fat, there's hydrogen carbons linking all of
the carbon atoms together. That's it. It's saturated with hydrogen carbon.
It doesn't mean it saturates your arteries right and clogs
it up, which is what it sounds like exactly. And
so Keys comes up with this, It takes off like
(21:24):
a rocket. It becomes adopted officially by the federal government
to encourage a low fat diet, and study after study
after study just kind of follows and Keys footsteps. The
thing is is if you really kind of look at
these studies, especially ones that are just pointed to, is
like these are definitive proof that the that that animal fat,
(21:47):
that saturated fat intake uh produces heart attacks. They kind
of all fall apart, and you realize that for decades now,
we've just been taken as gospel a first of all,
an unproven correlation as causation, like completely unproven as far
as like you know, unarguable evidence goes yeah, And there
(22:11):
is definitely a dogma that's evolved around this that's been
tough to crack. But a lot of scientists have been
creating research and publishing research that says, look, man, we
don't understand fat like you think. It's not black and
white and as simple as that, Like, for example, there's
l d L fat and there's HDL fat, and people
typically think that HDL is good fat. L d L
(22:34):
is bad fat. Yes, right, So if you have and
your body uses cholesterol to do things that produce hormones,
especially sex hormones, so you need cholesterol, right, But it's
the idea that you're that animal fats raise your l
d L, which is the bad cholesterol. Uh, that that
(22:55):
gave them this bad rap. But even if you look
at LDL cholesterol, not all the L cholesterol is the same.
There's different things called subfractions, and depending on the subfraction,
these start to correlate to heart disease finally, right, right,
So some are small dns types of l d L
(23:16):
and some are puffy and right exactly, and the pillowy
ones are fine. They seem to be totally fine. And
what they found also is that the overall ratio of
pillowy to dnse L d L is what finally you
can get a good predictor of heart disease risk, not
(23:39):
just L d L cholesterol, but the ratio. Like you
can't even say, well, this guy's got a ton of
small dense ld L particles in his bloodstream, so he's
going to die of a heart attack. That's not necessarily
true because you haven't taken into account the fluffiness. And
if you have more fluffiness then dense articles, then it's
(24:01):
gonna even out. Yeah. Well, I like Ronald Krauss. He's
a doctor out at UC Berkeley. He seems to kind
of be hitting it on the head with at least
how he's characterizing some of this stuff. Uh Like, one
of his statements that struck me was he said it
may these findings may simply suggest that unsaturated fats are
(24:22):
are a healthier option, but not necessarily that saturated fats
are killing you. And that's just a very like reasonable
thing to say to me. Yeah, he seemed like a
very reasonable guy when he came in the other day. Well,
in this article, and we should say this is the
NBC um really exhaustive NBC news article called what if
(24:42):
bad fat isn't so bad? It's really worth reading? Well,
it is, and one of the lead how the article
leads in is super interesting. Um. They have found tribes
in Africa, one called the mess ay Uh nomadic tribe
in Kenya in Tanzania, and they basically live on a
diet of fat, of of supplemented with blood from cattle,
(25:02):
they heard, but they basically exist on red meat and
whole milk. They're die it's like fat, and they're super
lean and they're super healthy. And their cholesterol levels were
some of the lowest they've ever measured in people. Right.
So people who responded to this these these findings said, well,
obviously them as I have some sort of genetic predisposition
(25:24):
to lower cholesterol. Somehow, there's something going on. No, because
they studied a group of these these tribes, people who
moved to the city and basically adopted a Western diet,
and all of them just immediately there they went right
into the normal levels of risk for heart disease. UM.
So it's clear that it's not just animal fats that
(25:48):
are associated with heart disease, and they may not really
be associated with heart disease at all, we're kind of
in the stage now where science is undoing the damage
while it still hasn't figured out the true answer. They
just know that the that the the hot the the
heart diet hypothesis has is not correct. There was more too.
(26:10):
Why did Congress in nineteen seventy seven say this is
the way to go even though the American Medical Association
said this is not necessarily true? Why did Why is
the food pyramid endorsed? Does it have something to do
with people lobbying for grains? Like? Who knows? Um? And
apparently it wasn't just nineteen seventy seven. They very recently
(26:31):
also um the government endorsed and even lower saturated fat diet,
like they dropped the percentage of calories daily from ten
percent to seven percent, like this year or last year.
And the big problem with this is that like it's
not like, oh, all these people missed out on all
that prime rib. They could have been eating the whole time, right,
(26:53):
That's not the problem with it. The problem is is
like when we adapt, when we adapted adopted this low
fat diet, fat gives taste to food, Yeah, delicious taste,
it does. So when you remove fat, you you you're
not gonna sell a product that's just fat free or
even low fat unless you add more salt, unless you
(27:13):
add more sugar. So if you look at the nutrition
info on a low fat product, like yeah, there's lower fat,
but buddy, you've got a lot more calories than you do.
And just the regular version of that side by side,
which if you look at the medical records of every American,
if you could from the sixties to today, you would
(27:35):
find that while we reduced our intake of fat by
a third, race of obesity multiplied by almost three times,
and then eleven times where people have diabetes. Yeah, and
I think it's a it's a truth that they found
that people eat more of low fat foods because they
think they can. Yes, like, oh, it's just low fat mayo,
(27:56):
So I'm gonna slather up both sides of my sandwich
bread because it's low fat. And again this, well that's why,
Like I'm not a paleo diet guy, but I think
there's definitely something to eating cleaner. And you know, a
doctor and a nutritionist that knows what they're doing, I'll
tell you straight up, like don't eat things from a
box in your headed in the right direction. Yeah, it's true. Um,
(28:19):
and anything that's kind of been taken from its natural state,
even if it's like not in a box. Like for example,
I did a brain stuff on what's the difference between
whole milk and skim milk. Well, skim milk is really really,
really messed around with milk, I processed, you could say,
whereas whole milk you're like, oh, it's got a ton
of fat, and I mean like that's cream mixed in there.
(28:41):
That's it's whole milk for a reason. It's not messed
around with. I mean, yes, there's the whole thing with antibiotics,
and you may be lactose and taller, But I'm just
saying specifically from a nutritional point of view, if you
have whole milk, you have whole milk. If you have
skim milk, you have milk that's had the fat removed
and replaced with some thing like high fruit toast, corn
syrup or something like that, some powdered milk proteins. It's
(29:04):
it's messed around, it's it's processed. It's not the same thing.
And the other problem with drinking anything but whole milk
is that when you take the fat the milk fats out,
which by the way, some uh margeric acid has been
shown to actually lower your risk of heart disease. It
actually increase your HDL good cholesterol. Um. When you take
(29:25):
the milk fats out, you're also taking out the vitamin
A and the vitamin D and those are fat soluble,
which means that fat needs to be present for your
body to absorb them. Yeah, and you can make up
for that in other areas, but you have to know
to do that. It's like people who jump on and
become like vegan or vegetarian, like you have to do
your homework. If you want to do that, that's great,
(29:46):
but you need to find a way to give your
body the things that needs that maybe uh was in
that milk or that red meat. Like with the paleo
diet that they say stay away from dairy, which I
disagree with. Yeah, this I found that some paleo will
drink dairy or ingested dairy. It's sort of a but
(30:08):
it definitely isn't endorsed. But it's it's interesting that like
we're the only animal that drinks milk into their life,
like after after we're you know, weaned off of it. Yeah,
I thought it's It's definitely an odd thing, and that's
I think that's why the Paleo they say not to
drink milk because Caveman didn't, you know, go around milk
(30:28):
and cows no, And I mean we are rear to
drink milk. We remember in the Microbiome episode, we talked
about how your your mother's like gut bacteria is transferred
to you so that you can break down breast milk.
So apparently the newest thing that I saw was that
lactose intolerance comes from the fact that everybody can digest milk,
(30:51):
but then only something like a third of humans keep
maintain that ability to break down milk, and everybody else
loses as they Yeah, it's interesting. I never really thought
about it before. But no one else but us drinks
milk as adults. You know, even goats they don't drink milk.
(31:13):
So um, Before we keep going, let's you want to
do another message break Yeah. Okay, hey, Chuck, I don't
know if you know this or not, but this episode
has brought to you in part by squarespace. That's right,
it's the all in one platform that makes it fast
and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.
(31:34):
And we don't have to do that because we have
our own website. But if I was a single guy,
I would sign up for squar space. Okay, do you
have intuition? Uh? You do, Yeah, you do, And since
you have it, you could use squares space. It's like
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they've got seven customer support, email support, live chat there.
(31:59):
They're all the time for you. Yeah, and it's super
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it's not too expensive either, No, it isn't too expensive.
Costs are as low as eight dollars a month and
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(32:21):
fourteen day trial with no credit card necessary, and if
you use the offer code stuff s t u f F,
you can get ten percent off of your first purchase.
Well that sounds like a deal, my friend. It does,
So everybody go to squarespace dot com slash stuff and
use the promo code stuff. So Chuck, you said, I
(32:44):
wanted to also say you said that, Um, you know
some paleo people say, well, you can still eat butter
or something like that, or drink milk if you go
on the paleo website and read stuff from Cordaine. He
is like, there's people out there who are like pay
leo experts who say you can eat leg ooms or
you can have a little bird something. He's like, they're wrong,
(33:05):
none of that right. Yeah, he's basically saying, like what
I wrote is right, and like it's not an evolving
concept that it's like you can't eat lagoons, you can't
eat beans, like, it's not okay. There is something called
the rule that he built into it, which I think
was smart the time go paleo. Yes, you can have
about three meals a week, um where that are non
(33:28):
paleo and still get the benefits of the paleo diet
according to the paleo diet. Hm, well it is that
they found. Do they have any like definitive research. There
is no definitive research on any of these, right, like
that the paleo will cause you to be healthier. Yeah,
I mean no, here's the thing, Like, from this episode,
(33:49):
I think the one thing everybody should walk away with
besides an understanding of the basics of the paleo diet.
So are you saying this is the takeaway? All right?
The takeaway is as follows, Chuck. If you see a
study and uh, an article like, click on the link
and read the abstract and see if the sample size
(34:11):
is enough to convince you that it's a believable study. Yeah,
we didn't even get into the four studies that a
lot of the saturated fat argument is based on throughout
the years. But there are four notable ones that are
always pointed to, and every single one of them are
flawed in some way. Yeah, I mean there's a there's
a problem with it. And and I say that also because,
like even the article that we have on how stuff
(34:33):
works sites a two thousand nine study published in Cardiovascular Diabetology,
which is a journal, and it found that um, people
with type two diabetes who followed the paleo diet for
three months benefited more than those who followed a standard
recommended diet for diabetics. That sounds like a problematic study,
Well it's it's but if you just read that sentence,
(34:55):
and this is a very typical sentence for any media
ar coal. You're like, oh, well, that proves that the
paleo diet works. At least there's one study out there
that proved that it works. But if you click the
link and read the abstract, there were thirteen people in
the study, ten men and three women. They were they
carried it out for two consecutive three month periods, and like, sure, okay,
(35:19):
the findings proved that among these thirteen people, the paleo
diet was better for people with type two diabetes than
a diabetic diet. And but that can you extrapolate that?
And the problem is is like even on our beloved
How Stuff Works website, the way that the media is
set up, it's like here, here's something that proves my point.
(35:41):
Here's something almost yeah, And it's just if you, if you,
as a consumer or a thinking person, can just go
a step further and just click that link. Like I
almost guarantee you whatever study is being discussed the journalists
is you know, link to it. Click the link and
(36:02):
it'll take you to an abstract and you can read,
you know yourself about this study and make your own decisions. Agreed.
I think like that's my takeaway is to be your
own health advocate. Read read the labels of the things
you're eating and putting into your body, do the research,
read studies, and decide what works for you, uh and
(36:23):
try it out. It's not like the end allbl you
don't have to stick to it for life. No, And
I mean I think most of the most of the
diets that are around these days are for a prescribed
period of time, very difficult. There's like a boot camp
like kind of version at the beginning, and then it
becomes easier and easier and you reach like some sort
(36:45):
of level of general maintenance. But I think from doing
any diet like that for a couple of weeks even,
one of the great things that you get from it
is that you learn about your food, whether you want
to or not. Because just by preparing your own food,
planning your own your meals every day, rather than just
(37:07):
like going down to the cafeteria or going to like
a fast food place and just buying something like, you're
forced to get to know the food you're eating, Like
you know how many carbs are in salary, you know
like how much fat is in like this um this,
you know, five ounce steak, Like you just know these things,
and that in and of itself is something that makes
(37:29):
you better off just for having done it. Yeah. I
think the ill health comes from from not planning and
resorting to what's around you. Because what's around you and
easy is usually not good for you. So you gotta
put a little little effort into it. Um. I did
find this, and I'm gonna I'm pooping it right off
the bat. But US News and World Report did evaluated
(37:51):
and ranked thirty two diets from a panel of experts. UH.
To be top righted, a diet had to be relatively
easy to follow, nutritious, safe, and effective for weight loss
and against diabetes and heart disease. So according to the experts, UH,
these are the top ten diets. And by the way,
the Paleo diet was thirty two out of thirty two.
(38:14):
They had it dead last. The DASH diet is number one, UH.
And we're not going to get into what all these are.
You can look it up if you're interested, but the
DASH diet came in at one. The TLC diet is
number two, and that is not the TLC network. It
stands for something. The Mayo Clinic Diet, the Mediterranean Diet,
and Weight Watchers all tied at number three, and then
(38:35):
at number six something called the Flexitarian diet, which had
never heard of. Also tied at six was Volume Metrics
number it does, uh. Number eight was Jenny Craig. Number
nine was the Biggest Loser diet apparently they have their
own diet, and number ten was the Ornish diet O
R n I s h and uh man that it's
(38:58):
a big industry. If you want to write diet books,
try and get people going on good health, write diet books,
start making like convenience food that falls within the diet.
That that's some money. But uh so what's our advice,
be your own health advocate, try to avoid package foods
and and uh put some time into it. That's right.
(39:19):
How's that we should write a book? That's good stuff.
If you want to know more about the Paleo diet,
so you can um look them up online at Paleo
diet dot com. Uh And yeah, just start looking around.
If once you start poking into that kind of stuff
like it, it's almost like a great entree into the
world of like understanding your own nutrition. It's empowering. Yes, uh.
(39:41):
And if you want to learn more about the paleo diet,
you can type those words into the search part house
to work dot com. And since I said bad, it's
time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this defending Skinner. Hey,
guess my name is and I don't know how to
pronounce it's h A I k E. Any idea hike hike?
H what h A I K? Hey? Maybe I'm gonna
(40:05):
go with Hake. Hi. Guys, my name is Hake and
I'm an Austrian UH psychology student. UM. I just wanted
to defend poor B. F. Skinner in case no one
else did it yet. In the Anesia episode, you mentioned
how Skinner's daughter should be honored because she was tortured
in a box. Well, all Skinner ever put in the
Skinner box where rats and pigeons. The thing he invented
(40:27):
for his daughter was called the air crib. It is
a crib that is higher than the average crib, so
it's easier to stoop over. Uh. And in it there
was a controlled climate for the infant. UH. Fresh clean
air was coming in from the outside, and temperature as
well as humidity could be controlled. It sounds like a box.
To me, it was just a device designed to make
(40:49):
the baby's life more comfortable, in the parents life a little, uh,
a little easier. Deborah Skinner is fine and untraumatized, and
she herself says that people should stop talking rubbish about
her dad and her So maybe I can help help
her out with this email she owes you she does.
(41:10):
Keep up the good work. Guys. Um, my boyfriend is
also a fan. Oh so he is a is a
lady not necessarily, Oh yeah, that's true. Look at me.
I'll find out I'm a caveman eating meat and nuts.
That is very unlike me too. Good boyfriend's gotta be
a girl, right. Oh and also, I wanted to point
(41:33):
out an error I made and when I was talking
about how I wanted to punch Jared with the toxic
bread of subway. Oh yeah, you heard about it for that. Well,
in my defense all the it turns out that it's
not true. But all that stuff came out after we recorded,
like that was had just hit the news the day
we recorded, and then all the other stuff saying no,
this is one lady who had a bund to pick
(41:54):
and she was wrong. That came out afterwards so, uh,
Subway does not do that, and I still want to
punch Jared. Okay, I hope Jared doesn't listen to this.
I feel so bad if he came up with me
one day he was like, Man, I really I'm a
big fan. Video con hug him. Uh. I will look
forward to that. I'll get a video of that and
(42:15):
post it. Uh if you want to get in touch
with me and Chuck and point out how we were
wrong or how we can better ourselves and that kind
of thing. Oh and thank you. By the way, what
did we end up on, Hike or Hake? I went
with Hake. We'll go with Hack. Thanks hack Um. If
you want to be like Hake and correct us, you
can send us a tweet to s y s K podcast.
(42:37):
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, you
can join us at our home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Does it, How stuff works dot com.
(43:00):
M
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all
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squarespace dot com slash stuff and use the offer code stuff.
Welcome to you, Stuff you should know from house stuff
works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
(00:27):
Josh Clark, and there's Charles w. Chuck Bryant and Jerry
and this is stuff you should know the podcast. Hm. Hey,
congratulations to Jerry. Oh yeah, she's got married. Congratulations Jerry,
way to go. She just gave a thumbs up. She
has the right. Germain silent. Yeah, So congratulations to Jerry
(00:49):
and Anna and uh sadly Jerry had to go to
a different state to get married, but she did it, yes,
because they have initiative. That's right, don't you, Jerry. Yeah.
Some of the nice yeah congratulations chairs were very happy
for you guys. Um so happy in fact that we
(01:09):
have a podcast. I just realized I said I'm very
happy for you guys, and its sounded not at all
happy for them. I'm very happy for you. I'm really
happy for you guys. Yeah, but I think everybody bought that.
You're happy for him. Everybody knows you, they know me. Well,
Jerry bought it, and that's what counts. Jerry, did you
buy it? Think interesting? I like your French chuck thanks
(01:33):
to something I know how to say. Uh is it? No?
I mean I've got the bonjour down and Frosch fries,
Frosch bread, France dressing, fross dressing. Uh. So you say
all those things, French dressing, French bread, French fries, and
(01:54):
I can tell you that none of them were around
years ago. Nice segue, my friend. It wasn't. It was
pretty clumsy. It felt clumsy, but thank you. Yeah. Are
you talking about the Paleo diet? Yeah, which, by the way,
short for Paleolithic diet. And um, this thing's been around
(02:16):
longer than I thought. The book was written by a
guy named Dr Lauren Cordain, the creator of the Paleo
Diet back in two thousand two, and um, Dr Cordain
is no slouch. He is a celebrated PhD in Health
and Health sciences UM, and he started looking at the
(02:40):
massive chronic health problems that face Westerners and Americans in particular,
I think we might be the most chronically unhealthy country
in the world. Um, as far as like beats, obesity,
heart disease, all of these things go uh, and Dr
Cordin is like, there's out to be a better way.
(03:01):
And what he focused on was the idea that the
Western diet is also a very modern diet, full full
of processed foods, foods that are pre prepared, prepackaged, boxed.
Even a lot of the pictures of the food are
on the box laden with chemicals, vaive, stuff you're not
(03:22):
gonna do at home, and um, stuff that tastes really good,
mainly because it's been designed to taste really good. Um.
The problem is Dr Cordain believes this stuff is really
bad for us because of those preservatives as chemicals, and
a lot of the good stuff that was present in
and at one point has been worked out removed. So
(03:44):
his idea was, well, let's create a diet that's the
opposite of modern, that's prehistoric even. And what he came
up with was the paleo or Paleolithic diet. And the
Paleolithic era um ended at about the advent of agriculture.
So the premise of the diet is like all of
(04:05):
this stuff would be the same diet that a hunter
gatherer would eat. Yeah, And the idea is, and this
is there's a lot of controversy. Not everyone believes us
any there's controversy with every diet, with every diet, But
if you subscribe to this, the idea is that our
body chemistry and physiology has not changed. Like if you
(04:25):
look at a if you think of it like a
hundred yard football field, we went ninety nine yards as
hunter gatherers, and then the last yard is since agriculture
has come around, that's the longest yard. So are so
our bodies have not changed genetically and they're the same
(04:45):
way they were back then. So to eat how they
were back then and they did for thousands and thousands
of years, makes more sense with that analogy with what
happens when we succore a touchdown, like is at the
end of vanity. I don't know, Um, but the dude
you mentioned he wasn't the first. That was actually a
guy in the seventies that wrote a book. Um Walter
(05:09):
Voting wrote a self published book in seventy five called
The Stone Age Diet. Oh, I didn't know that based
on in depth studies of human ecology and the diet
of man. But like I said, it was self published
and he didn't like it didn't blow up. It definitely
took till the two thousands to gain traction. Has Cordaine
like given this guy credit and he said, like he's
(05:29):
based his ideas on this guy or what. I don't know,
but I think he was the first guy to actually
coin that term. But um, yeah, these are people who
subscribed to that notion that since we haven't changed physiologically
and how we're supposed to eat, then we shouldn't be
eating how we're eating, right, we should eat how we
used to eat. I would suggest that that's not necessarily true.
And part of the problem with saying things like that,
(05:52):
or saying like, you know this is this is how
paleolithic body human body um absorbed nutrients or these are
the nutrients that could absorbed. You're you're making a pretty
broad and unsubstantiated claim in and of itself, like they did. Okay, Well, also,
you don't have a paleolithic body to dissect to study. Um.
(06:16):
All you have are modern bodies and assumptions about what
paleolithic diets were like. Now, I mean, there are still
hunter gatherer tribes currently, but I haven't seen anybody say, well,
we study these hunter gatherer tribes specifically for a very
long time, and we've concluded that this paleo diet is
(06:37):
is totally supported by this. It's basically people saying, no,
this is what Paleolithic people would have eaten, so this
is how how their body would have been. And when
they make a step to that second sentence, you're you're
making a jump into an unsubstantiated claim. Just keep that
in mind. That's all. And like you said, every every
(07:00):
diet on earth is you're gonna find studies that say
they're great and studies that say they're not so great.
You're going to find people who say the food pyramid
is what you should look at, and other people to
say the food pyramids out of whack and we shouldn't
be eating that many grains. Pyramid is out of whack. Yeah.
But like you know, there is no definitive right or wrong.
(07:22):
I think because every time there's a study done, it
seems like there's another study that can refute it. You
just hit the nail on the head. There is no
right or wrong because we don't understand our body, our
bodies and our bodies metabolic processes enough to say this
one's right and this one's wrong for everybody. Yeah, you know,
(07:44):
there's no there's no baseline that's been established. We don't
know quite enough yet. And so the problem has been
as we've set ourselves back decade after decade by basically
picking a study whichever one got the media play and
seemed the most sensible, and going with that, throwing lots
(08:04):
of money and education, time and effort at bolstering that
the findings of that study, even though it may or
may not have been the case, rather than just saying, like,
we're still figuring it out in the meantime, we think
maybe don't eat so much of this or whatever. Yeah,
And I think that that's set us back quite a bit,
which we'll talk about more later. Yeah. And I think
(08:27):
just personally, like, if you're if you're doing it healthily,
then find something that works for you. If that's Sugar Busters, great,
if that's Atkins, or if that's Weight Watchers or Jenny
Craig or super Calorie Restriction or whatever. Not everything is
gonna work for everyone, you know, or or paleo you
know what are the other names, the warrior diet or
(08:48):
the caveman diet. They're you know, they're fads, but that
doesn't mean there can't be something to some of them
for some people. Well, the other thing I think about
diets that makes each one so controversial two is that
they do end up ultimately being fats. But every single
one of the diets aspires to be that one diet
(09:09):
that works for everybody. They all kind of claim that,
and that's to sell books, you know, let's get real,
But there are It's not like these things are are
necessarily just totally made up out of the whole cloth.
Like we'll talk about the paleo diet and and and
the basis of it. Right. So the whole idea is
(09:30):
is that, like I said, the modern diet has a
lot of foods involved in it that are not good
for you. And by cutting those things out, that's step one, Yeah,
basically eating cleaner. Right. But step two isn't just like, okay,
so anything that you can find growing on a tree
or you know that that has a face and you
(09:52):
and you can eat it, um besides humans is healthy
for you. Um, there's if you take it a little
bit further, Uh, there's some things that you really shouldn't
eat according to the Paleo diet. One of the things
that it's centered around are foods that if you have
to cook them to gain nutrients from them, Like beans
(10:13):
are a really good example. Uh, you can't eat them.
You don't want them. In the case of the Paleo diet,
the reason is they affect gut health supposedly, right, what else, welch,
I mean, should we just go ahead and talk about
what is on the good list and the bad list?
Just so if you, I mean you've probably heard of
the diet before, especially lately, but generally very high in protein. Yeah,
(10:38):
And a lot of people make the mistake of saying like, oh,
it's just like eating huge steaks all the time, and
and you know, pulling pulling women by their hair like
it's like that. It's actually now they say proteins like
fifteen or nineteen of the diet, right, whereas um protein
for the average diet here in the West is about
(11:00):
so more protein. Um. And when we say protein, we
mean poultry and pork and fish and eggs, and uh,
you know, even red meat is on there of course. Uh,
then lower carbohydrates, like a lower amount of carbohydrates and
different kinds of carbohydrates. That's right, Um, The carbs you
(11:22):
want are slow burning carbs. UM. And the idea behind
this extends beyond just the paleo diet. There's a lot
of diets, including Atkins, that believe in lowering carbs, and
they based it on But it's not no carbs. You
do want some carbs because your body does need some energy.
But you you do want some carbs, but you want
(11:43):
carbs from things like an apple, or from celery or
black olives, things that are slow burning carbs that will
give you energy without raising your blood sugar. Something with
them low on the glycemic index. Yeah, that's how it's scored.
So something that has about fifty five or lower on
the glycemic index is considered low. And that's what you
(12:06):
want as far as the carbohydrate is concerned, because it
is going to give you energy without raising your blood sugar.
When you raise your blood sugar, as I think we've
talked about recently, UM, the insulin comes out to stabilize
your blood sugar well, insulince and is a signal to
your liver to start producing fat for storage and that's
why you tend to gain weight when you eat carbohydrates,
(12:31):
because your blood sugar spikes and your insulin comes out. Yeah.
And the difference, like, that's the difference between eating a
sweet potato or a regular baked potato. Sweet potato, good,
baked potato not so good. Yeah, And it's glycemic index
both carbohydrates though, right. The problem is also is the
glycemic index is extraordinarily unproven. Still it's a I don't
know that it's a relatively new thing, but it's been
(12:53):
used much more frequently recently. But if you start really
looking into the glycemic index, any uh reasonable source will say, like,
here's the glycemic index. This is a pretty good understanding
of it. But the difference between a tart apple in
a very ripe sweet apple. You can't just say apples
(13:14):
have a glycemic index of whatever, like one that's ripened
more than another that's just the same exact apple from
the same tree. You're going to have radically different glycemic induseries.
That's interesting. So I mean, like a solid point too,
because it seems like there are too many definitive statements
about diet when there shouldn't be. Absolutely the one that
(13:35):
I think keeps coming up again and again. That's the
most sensible is Well, we'll get too later, but it
involves it's moderation basically. You know, paying attention to your
food is very important, but but moderation, you know, like
eating a bunch of Twinkies over the course of your lifetime,
it's not gonna kill you. But if you have to
box of twinkies a day, like that's that's kill you.
(13:58):
And that's a moderate moderate ration. Is is I think
the key to health. I agree, man, And that's sort
of the key to I think most things in life. Yeah,
I mean it pops up everywhere like moderation. Our moderation
is the spice of life. No, I don't think that's
the phrase, but uh so. Fiber fiber is a big
part of the paleo diet. Um fiber is super great
(14:21):
for your health. And people are getting too much fiber
from um grains, or at least the thought is that
you're getting too much fiber from your grains, whereas you
should get it um and things like fruits maybe or
whole grains instead of refined grains, non starchy vegetables. Uh yeah.
(14:45):
And you if you're if you're counting carbs to um
on like a low carb or no carb restricted diet
like say Atkins or something. You actually look at the
total carbohydrates and then some act dietary fiber to come
up with what's called net carbohydrates, and those are the
ones that you actually count because apparently fiber is counted
(15:09):
toward carbohydrates, which is why it shows up in things
like non starchy vegetables and things like that. But um
it doesn't raise your blood sugar, which is what we
come back to again and again and again. Okay, as
far as weight loss is concerned, right, another part of
the paleo diet is um fat intake, higher fat intake,
(15:31):
but the what they call the right kinds of fats
um oh make it three and o maga six fats mainly,
so you want to get into that, Yeah, I think
it's time. So this is a well before we do, man,
let's pull back from the precipice here and take a
message breaks so quickly to recap things that you're gonna
(15:54):
be eating on the paleo diet or lots of protein,
lots of protein, um to vegetables, slow burning carbohydrates, fruits, nuts,
things that you might have hunted and gathered, but not today.
Not beans, not legumes, not modern processed foods. Yeah, not
salt and refined sugar is a really big no no. Yeah,
(16:15):
and we got too fat and um, this is extremely controversial.
I thought this super interesting. The well, the paleo diet,
like pretty much any any typical diet these days, recommends
that you really take it easy on the animal fats um.
And the idea that the reason why pretty much everybody
(16:37):
recommends you take it easy on animal fats saturated fats,
which are steeric acid, palmitic acid, and louric acid. Um.
Those are the three biggest saturated fats found in animal fats.
The idea that that everybody has for um steering clear
of them is because they will give you heart disease,
(16:58):
heart attacks, coronary disease. Yeah, if you eat too many
saturated fats, you're gonna die of a heart attack exactly.
This idea gave rise to a complete change in diet
among Americans and Westerners in general. The whole concept of
a low fat diet, which your is everywhere you go
(17:22):
to any store. It's like fat free, low fat, fat free,
low fat. Everything is low fat now there's a version
of its low fat came from an initial study from
the fifties by a guy named Ansel Keys who carried
out what's called the Six Countries study, and he basically
was the first to link animal fat intake too heart disease. Yeah,
(17:46):
and it's uh, what do they call it? The diet
heart hypothesis, And um, what stinks about that whole scene
is that he sort of did the elementary school science
fair project approach, which is he kind of ignored the
data that didn't support what he wanted and cherry picked
out the data that did and went with it. And
(18:08):
somehow like even though there was like some opposition to
it at the time, somehow it became the basis for
how Americans were told to eat from now on, even
though it was flawed. Uh. I mean, for instance, one
of the countries he studied was the United States. One
of them was Japan. And he kind of said, hey,
(18:28):
they have way more heart attacks in the US than
in Japan. It's because he eat more fat. Yeah, they
eat more animal fat and they have more heart attacks.
Eats less animal fat and has fewer heart attacks. If so. Fact,
though eating animal fat leads to heart attacks, and heart disease, right,
not not considering the amount of sugar Americans aid, or
bread or nothing, lifestyle or anything. Yes, no, he didn't.
(18:51):
Nothing else was controlled for. So that was part one.
Part two is, like you said, he cherry picks six
countries that supported his hypothesis. Uh. And at the time
some other people pointed out, uh, countries. Yeah, we've got
a data for twenty two countries. And when you take
all that data and do it a survey across the
twenty two countries of a correlation between animal fat intake
(19:14):
and heart disease, it goes away that correlation dissolves, not
only dissolves, but like disproves it in some cases. Uh.
The death rate from heart disease in Finland, for instance,
was twenty four times that of Mexico, even though in
Mexico the fat consumption rate was uh twice as much
as Finland. That's right. So that's complete opposite finding. So
(19:36):
Keys does the six country study in the fifties, and
then in nine he follows up with the seven country study. Uh.
Well he this to this time he did Japan, Italy,
the US, Greece, Yugoslavia, Finland, and the Netherlands. And he
found the animal fat was a strong predictor of heart
attacks over a five year period. Again, Um, they basically said, dude,
(19:58):
what are you doing, Like you're you're not doing good
science here. And it's unclear, I should say, it's unclear
whether keys misrepresented his data. Um, he published his findings
like all that's fine. He wasn't like, I'm just not
going to publish this. It was more like in his
discussion at the end of the studies, they he was
(20:19):
saying like, yeah, this kind of came up, but we're
not paying attention to that. It doesn't matter, So he
doesn't necessarily misrepresent the facts. He It seems like he
was more a victim of the media saying, yes, there's
the answer. We've been wondering why Americans die more heart attacks.
This guy just figured it out. It's animal fat and
(20:40):
takes saturated fats, and it took off like a rocket
from there. In the seventies. Well, it's sort of I mean,
it makes sense to the ear. When you hear saturated fats,
it sounds like, well, that's gotta clog your arteries and
give you a heart attack. Saturated well, you know it's
saturated with the word saturated means that there's no double
bonds of carbon in these atty change these fatty acid chains.
(21:02):
So unsaturated means that there's at least one atom of
carbon linked to another atom of carbon in the chain.
In a saturated fat, there's hydrogen carbons linking all of
the carbon atoms together. That's it. It's saturated with hydrogen carbon.
It doesn't mean it saturates your arteries right and clogs
it up, which is what it sounds like exactly. And
so Keys comes up with this, It takes off like
(21:24):
a rocket. It becomes adopted officially by the federal government
to encourage a low fat diet, and study after study
after study just kind of follows and Keys footsteps. The
thing is is if you really kind of look at
these studies, especially ones that are just pointed to, is
like these are definitive proof that the that that animal fat,
(21:47):
that saturated fat intake uh produces heart attacks. They kind
of all fall apart, and you realize that for decades now,
we've just been taken as gospel a first of all,
an unproven correlation as causation, like completely unproven as far
as like you know, unarguable evidence goes yeah, And there
(22:11):
is definitely a dogma that's evolved around this that's been
tough to crack. But a lot of scientists have been
creating research and publishing research that says, look, man, we
don't understand fat like you think. It's not black and
white and as simple as that, Like, for example, there's
l d L fat and there's HDL fat, and people
typically think that HDL is good fat. L d L
(22:34):
is bad fat. Yes, right, So if you have and
your body uses cholesterol to do things that produce hormones,
especially sex hormones, so you need cholesterol, right, But it's
the idea that you're that animal fats raise your l
d L, which is the bad cholesterol. Uh, that that
(22:55):
gave them this bad rap. But even if you look
at LDL cholesterol, not all the L cholesterol is the same.
There's different things called subfractions, and depending on the subfraction,
these start to correlate to heart disease finally, right, right,
So some are small dns types of l d L
(23:16):
and some are puffy and right exactly, and the pillowy
ones are fine. They seem to be totally fine. And
what they found also is that the overall ratio of
pillowy to dnse L d L is what finally you
can get a good predictor of heart disease risk, not
(23:39):
just L d L cholesterol, but the ratio. Like you
can't even say, well, this guy's got a ton of
small dense ld L particles in his bloodstream, so he's
going to die of a heart attack. That's not necessarily
true because you haven't taken into account the fluffiness. And
if you have more fluffiness then dense articles, then it's
(24:01):
gonna even out. Yeah. Well, I like Ronald Krauss. He's
a doctor out at UC Berkeley. He seems to kind
of be hitting it on the head with at least
how he's characterizing some of this stuff. Uh Like, one
of his statements that struck me was he said it
may these findings may simply suggest that unsaturated fats are
(24:22):
are a healthier option, but not necessarily that saturated fats
are killing you. And that's just a very like reasonable
thing to say to me. Yeah, he seemed like a
very reasonable guy when he came in the other day. Well,
in this article, and we should say this is the
NBC um really exhaustive NBC news article called what if
(24:42):
bad fat isn't so bad? It's really worth reading? Well,
it is, and one of the lead how the article
leads in is super interesting. Um. They have found tribes
in Africa, one called the mess ay Uh nomadic tribe
in Kenya in Tanzania, and they basically live on a
diet of fat, of of supplemented with blood from cattle,
(25:02):
they heard, but they basically exist on red meat and
whole milk. They're die it's like fat, and they're super
lean and they're super healthy. And their cholesterol levels were
some of the lowest they've ever measured in people. Right.
So people who responded to this these these findings said, well,
obviously them as I have some sort of genetic predisposition
(25:24):
to lower cholesterol. Somehow, there's something going on. No, because
they studied a group of these these tribes, people who
moved to the city and basically adopted a Western diet,
and all of them just immediately there they went right
into the normal levels of risk for heart disease. UM.
So it's clear that it's not just animal fats that
(25:48):
are associated with heart disease, and they may not really
be associated with heart disease at all, we're kind of
in the stage now where science is undoing the damage
while it still hasn't figured out the true answer. They
just know that the that the the hot the the
heart diet hypothesis has is not correct. There was more too.
(26:10):
Why did Congress in nineteen seventy seven say this is
the way to go even though the American Medical Association
said this is not necessarily true? Why did Why is
the food pyramid endorsed? Does it have something to do
with people lobbying for grains? Like? Who knows? Um? And
apparently it wasn't just nineteen seventy seven. They very recently
(26:31):
also um the government endorsed and even lower saturated fat diet,
like they dropped the percentage of calories daily from ten
percent to seven percent, like this year or last year.
And the big problem with this is that like it's
not like, oh, all these people missed out on all
that prime rib. They could have been eating the whole time, right,
(26:53):
That's not the problem with it. The problem is is
like when we adapt, when we adapted adopted this low
fat diet, fat gives taste to food, Yeah, delicious taste,
it does. So when you remove fat, you you you're
not gonna sell a product that's just fat free or
even low fat unless you add more salt, unless you
(27:13):
add more sugar. So if you look at the nutrition
info on a low fat product, like yeah, there's lower fat,
but buddy, you've got a lot more calories than you do.
And just the regular version of that side by side,
which if you look at the medical records of every American,
if you could from the sixties to today, you would
(27:35):
find that while we reduced our intake of fat by
a third, race of obesity multiplied by almost three times,
and then eleven times where people have diabetes. Yeah, and
I think it's a it's a truth that they found
that people eat more of low fat foods because they
think they can. Yes, like, oh, it's just low fat mayo,
(27:56):
So I'm gonna slather up both sides of my sandwich
bread because it's low fat. And again this, well that's why,
Like I'm not a paleo diet guy, but I think
there's definitely something to eating cleaner. And you know, a
doctor and a nutritionist that knows what they're doing, I'll
tell you straight up, like don't eat things from a
box in your headed in the right direction. Yeah, it's true. Um,
(28:19):
and anything that's kind of been taken from its natural state,
even if it's like not in a box. Like for example,
I did a brain stuff on what's the difference between
whole milk and skim milk. Well, skim milk is really really,
really messed around with milk, I processed, you could say,
whereas whole milk you're like, oh, it's got a ton
of fat, and I mean like that's cream mixed in there.
(28:41):
That's it's whole milk for a reason. It's not messed
around with. I mean, yes, there's the whole thing with antibiotics,
and you may be lactose and taller, But I'm just
saying specifically from a nutritional point of view, if you
have whole milk, you have whole milk. If you have
skim milk, you have milk that's had the fat removed
and replaced with some thing like high fruit toast, corn
syrup or something like that, some powdered milk proteins. It's
(29:04):
it's messed around, it's it's processed. It's not the same thing.
And the other problem with drinking anything but whole milk
is that when you take the fat the milk fats out,
which by the way, some uh margeric acid has been
shown to actually lower your risk of heart disease. It
actually increase your HDL good cholesterol. Um. When you take
(29:25):
the milk fats out, you're also taking out the vitamin
A and the vitamin D and those are fat soluble,
which means that fat needs to be present for your
body to absorb them. Yeah, and you can make up
for that in other areas, but you have to know
to do that. It's like people who jump on and
become like vegan or vegetarian, like you have to do
your homework. If you want to do that, that's great,
(29:46):
but you need to find a way to give your
body the things that needs that maybe uh was in
that milk or that red meat. Like with the paleo
diet that they say stay away from dairy, which I
disagree with. Yeah, this I found that some paleo will
drink dairy or ingested dairy. It's sort of a but
(30:08):
it definitely isn't endorsed. But it's it's interesting that like
we're the only animal that drinks milk into their life,
like after after we're you know, weaned off of it. Yeah,
I thought it's It's definitely an odd thing, and that's
I think that's why the Paleo they say not to
drink milk because Caveman didn't, you know, go around milk
(30:28):
and cows no, And I mean we are rear to
drink milk. We remember in the Microbiome episode, we talked
about how your your mother's like gut bacteria is transferred
to you so that you can break down breast milk.
So apparently the newest thing that I saw was that
lactose intolerance comes from the fact that everybody can digest milk,
(30:51):
but then only something like a third of humans keep
maintain that ability to break down milk, and everybody else
loses as they Yeah, it's interesting. I never really thought
about it before. But no one else but us drinks
milk as adults. You know, even goats they don't drink milk.
(31:13):
So um, Before we keep going, let's you want to
do another message break Yeah. Okay, hey, Chuck, I don't
know if you know this or not, but this episode
has brought to you in part by squarespace. That's right,
it's the all in one platform that makes it fast
and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.
(31:34):
And we don't have to do that because we have
our own website. But if I was a single guy,
I would sign up for squar space. Okay, do you
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(31:59):
They're all the time for you. Yeah, and it's super
design focus is gonna look amazing and uh, you know
it's not too expensive either, No, it isn't too expensive.
Costs are as low as eight dollars a month and
includes a free domain name if you sign up for
a year and get this, everybody, we have a special
offer for you. You You can go to www dot squarespace
dot com slash stuff and sign up for a free
(32:21):
fourteen day trial with no credit card necessary, and if
you use the offer code stuff s t u f F,
you can get ten percent off of your first purchase.
Well that sounds like a deal, my friend. It does,
So everybody go to squarespace dot com slash stuff and
use the promo code stuff. So Chuck, you said, I
(32:44):
wanted to also say you said that, Um, you know
some paleo people say, well, you can still eat butter
or something like that, or drink milk if you go
on the paleo website and read stuff from Cordaine. He
is like, there's people out there who are like pay
leo experts who say you can eat leg ooms or
you can have a little bird something. He's like, they're wrong,
(33:05):
none of that right. Yeah, he's basically saying, like what
I wrote is right, and like it's not an evolving
concept that it's like you can't eat lagoons, you can't
eat beans, like, it's not okay. There is something called
the rule that he built into it, which I think
was smart the time go paleo. Yes, you can have
about three meals a week, um where that are non
(33:28):
paleo and still get the benefits of the paleo diet
according to the paleo diet. Hm, well it is that
they found. Do they have any like definitive research. There
is no definitive research on any of these, right, like
that the paleo will cause you to be healthier. Yeah,
I mean no, here's the thing, Like, from this episode,
(33:49):
I think the one thing everybody should walk away with
besides an understanding of the basics of the paleo diet.
So are you saying this is the takeaway? All right?
The takeaway is as follows, Chuck. If you see a
study and uh, an article like, click on the link
and read the abstract and see if the sample size
(34:11):
is enough to convince you that it's a believable study. Yeah,
we didn't even get into the four studies that a
lot of the saturated fat argument is based on throughout
the years. But there are four notable ones that are
always pointed to, and every single one of them are
flawed in some way. Yeah, I mean there's a there's
a problem with it. And and I say that also because,
like even the article that we have on how stuff
(34:33):
works sites a two thousand nine study published in Cardiovascular Diabetology,
which is a journal, and it found that um, people
with type two diabetes who followed the paleo diet for
three months benefited more than those who followed a standard
recommended diet for diabetics. That sounds like a problematic study,
Well it's it's but if you just read that sentence,
(34:55):
and this is a very typical sentence for any media
ar coal. You're like, oh, well, that proves that the
paleo diet works. At least there's one study out there
that proved that it works. But if you click the
link and read the abstract, there were thirteen people in
the study, ten men and three women. They were they
carried it out for two consecutive three month periods, and like, sure, okay,
(35:19):
the findings proved that among these thirteen people, the paleo
diet was better for people with type two diabetes than
a diabetic diet. And but that can you extrapolate that?
And the problem is is like even on our beloved
How Stuff Works website, the way that the media is
set up, it's like here, here's something that proves my point.
(35:41):
Here's something almost yeah, And it's just if you, if you,
as a consumer or a thinking person, can just go
a step further and just click that link. Like I
almost guarantee you whatever study is being discussed the journalists
is you know, link to it. Click the link and
(36:02):
it'll take you to an abstract and you can read,
you know yourself about this study and make your own decisions. Agreed.
I think like that's my takeaway is to be your
own health advocate. Read read the labels of the things
you're eating and putting into your body, do the research,
read studies, and decide what works for you, uh and
(36:23):
try it out. It's not like the end allbl you
don't have to stick to it for life. No, And
I mean I think most of the most of the
diets that are around these days are for a prescribed
period of time, very difficult. There's like a boot camp
like kind of version at the beginning, and then it
becomes easier and easier and you reach like some sort
(36:45):
of level of general maintenance. But I think from doing
any diet like that for a couple of weeks even,
one of the great things that you get from it
is that you learn about your food, whether you want
to or not. Because just by preparing your own food,
planning your own your meals every day, rather than just
(37:07):
like going down to the cafeteria or going to like
a fast food place and just buying something like, you're
forced to get to know the food you're eating, Like
you know how many carbs are in salary, you know
like how much fat is in like this um this,
you know, five ounce steak, Like you just know these things,
and that in and of itself is something that makes
(37:29):
you better off just for having done it. Yeah. I
think the ill health comes from from not planning and
resorting to what's around you. Because what's around you and
easy is usually not good for you. So you gotta
put a little little effort into it. Um. I did
find this, and I'm gonna I'm pooping it right off
the bat. But US News and World Report did evaluated
(37:51):
and ranked thirty two diets from a panel of experts. UH.
To be top righted, a diet had to be relatively
easy to follow, nutritious, safe, and effective for weight loss
and against diabetes and heart disease. So according to the experts, UH,
these are the top ten diets. And by the way,
the Paleo diet was thirty two out of thirty two.
(38:14):
They had it dead last. The DASH diet is number one, UH.
And we're not going to get into what all these are.
You can look it up if you're interested, but the
DASH diet came in at one. The TLC diet is
number two, and that is not the TLC network. It
stands for something. The Mayo Clinic Diet, the Mediterranean Diet,
and Weight Watchers all tied at number three, and then
(38:35):
at number six something called the Flexitarian diet, which had
never heard of. Also tied at six was Volume Metrics
number it does, uh. Number eight was Jenny Craig. Number
nine was the Biggest Loser diet apparently they have their
own diet, and number ten was the Ornish diet O
R n I s h and uh man that it's
(38:58):
a big industry. If you want to write diet books,
try and get people going on good health, write diet books,
start making like convenience food that falls within the diet.
That that's some money. But uh so what's our advice,
be your own health advocate, try to avoid package foods
and and uh put some time into it. That's right.
(39:19):
How's that we should write a book? That's good stuff.
If you want to know more about the Paleo diet,
so you can um look them up online at Paleo
diet dot com. Uh And yeah, just start looking around.
If once you start poking into that kind of stuff
like it, it's almost like a great entree into the
world of like understanding your own nutrition. It's empowering. Yes, uh.
(39:41):
And if you want to learn more about the paleo diet,
you can type those words into the search part house
to work dot com. And since I said bad, it's
time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this defending Skinner. Hey,
guess my name is and I don't know how to
pronounce it's h A I k E. Any idea hike hike?
H what h A I K? Hey? Maybe I'm gonna
(40:05):
go with Hake. Hi. Guys, my name is Hake and
I'm an Austrian UH psychology student. UM. I just wanted
to defend poor B. F. Skinner in case no one
else did it yet. In the Anesia episode, you mentioned
how Skinner's daughter should be honored because she was tortured
in a box. Well, all Skinner ever put in the
Skinner box where rats and pigeons. The thing he invented
(40:27):
for his daughter was called the air crib. It is
a crib that is higher than the average crib, so
it's easier to stoop over. Uh. And in it there
was a controlled climate for the infant. UH. Fresh clean
air was coming in from the outside, and temperature as
well as humidity could be controlled. It sounds like a box.
To me, it was just a device designed to make
(40:49):
the baby's life more comfortable, in the parents life a little, uh,
a little easier. Deborah Skinner is fine and untraumatized, and
she herself says that people should stop talking rubbish about
her dad and her So maybe I can help help
her out with this email she owes you she does.
(41:10):
Keep up the good work. Guys. Um, my boyfriend is
also a fan. Oh so he is a is a
lady not necessarily, Oh yeah, that's true. Look at me.
I'll find out I'm a caveman eating meat and nuts.
That is very unlike me too. Good boyfriend's gotta be
a girl, right. Oh and also, I wanted to point
(41:33):
out an error I made and when I was talking
about how I wanted to punch Jared with the toxic
bread of subway. Oh yeah, you heard about it for that. Well,
in my defense all the it turns out that it's
not true. But all that stuff came out after we recorded,
like that was had just hit the news the day
we recorded, and then all the other stuff saying no,
this is one lady who had a bund to pick
(41:54):
and she was wrong. That came out afterwards so, uh,
Subway does not do that, and I still want to
punch Jared. Okay, I hope Jared doesn't listen to this.
I feel so bad if he came up with me
one day he was like, Man, I really I'm a
big fan. Video con hug him. Uh. I will look
forward to that. I'll get a video of that and
(42:15):
post it. Uh if you want to get in touch
with me and Chuck and point out how we were
wrong or how we can better ourselves and that kind
of thing. Oh and thank you. By the way, what
did we end up on, Hike or Hake? I went
with Hake. We'll go with Hack. Thanks hack Um. If
you want to be like Hake and correct us, you
can send us a tweet to s y s K podcast.
(42:37):
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, you
can join us at our home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Does it, How stuff works dot com.
(43:00):
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