Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Avoid These 3 Foods For Better Brain Health | Max Lugavere #443

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Today’s guest shares evidence-based principles that will help all of us protect our brain health. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 330 of the podcast with science journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Max Lugavere. Max is on a mission to help people feel better, live longer, and maximise their brain health by optimising their diet. In this clip he shares the three food types that we should think about cutting out of our diet – and why.  Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/330 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel

packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 330 of the podcast with science journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Max LeGuevier. Max is on a mission to help people feel better, live longer, and maximize their brain health by optimizing their diet.

And in this clip, he shares the three food types we should think about cutting out of our diet and why. we should think about cutting out of our diet and wine. I think many of us are aware now that the foods we're consuming are hugely increasing our risk of getting sick in the future. In your view, with all the research you've done, what do you think are some of those common foods or types of foods that we should think about cutting out or at least reducing to reduce the chance that we're going to get sick? That is a great starting place. One of the biggest food issues related to disease

and our predisposition for any number of non-communicable so-called diseases of civilization, including Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, is the preponderance of ultra-processed foods in the food environment. So this is a category of foods. And these are foods that you couldn't make in your own kitchen. These are foods that typically line our supermarket aisles. They're the foods now that make up 60% of the calories that Americans are consuming worldwide. And these foods pull the trigger in many ways on our predisposition to non-communicable chronic diseases. Every 10% increase in ultra-processed food consumption has been associated with a 14%

increased risk in early mortality and a 25% increased risk in the development of dementia. These are the foods that are typically shelf-stable. They have long ingredients lists. They don't rot. They're not the kinds of foods that have immediate shelf lives. And they typically have a number of different characteristics that make them in particular dangerous. There's nothing about them that is inherently toxic, but it's the confluence of variables

that make them a driver of this epidemic that we're talking about. One of those factors is that they tend to be hyperpalatable. When you consume these types of ultra-processed, package-processed foods that are hyperpalatable, it pushes your brain to a bliss point beyond which self-control is nearly impossible. I mean, some people can do it, right? But I think a very common experience that most people have,

for example, with ice cream, is that they open up the pint of ice cream intending to have one spoonful, and before they know it, they're looking at the bottom of the pint. And oftentimes we feel a sense of moral failure when we're not able to moderate our consumption of these foods, but these foods are not designed to be consumed in moderation. So it's not actually a moral failure. It's something that these foods are quite explicitly designed to do. Yeah. One of the key points there for me was the fact that these foods are hyperpalatable. And I think everyone will know that feeling. They've tried to embark on a new

eating plan. They've tried to exercise self-restraint. Yet, if those foods are in their house, many people really, really struggle to stop. How do you tackle that though for people? Because they are everywhere and their foods that are absolutely contributing to how sick many of us are getting. Yet many of us just don't know what to do about that. Yeah, there was actually a project done by a photojournalist. I don't. I'm not sure the name, but people can go to Google Images and look for a week's worth of food, like a typical week-long shopping haul from both an American family, a family in the U.S., as well as in the U.K. In the U.K., it's a Caucasian family. In the U.S., it's an African-American family. But you can see the week's worth of groceries typically consumed in both countries.

And you have to use a magnifying glass to find the fresh perishable food it's primarily ultra processed food or these mixed dishes which combine fat sugar and salt the so-called dorito effect that make foods not not just difficult to consume moderately but incredibly calorie dense so as i mentioned it's not that these foods are moderately but incredibly calorie dense. So as I mentioned, it's not that these foods are innately toxic or innately fattening, but they are obesogenic, meaning they do drive obesity and metabolic dysfunction because we tend to overconsume them. When eating to the point of satiety, we tend to overconsume these foods. And this was proven in a very elegant study funded by the NIH, actually, led by a well-known obesity researcher named Kevin Hall, who found that when

people are given access to ultra-processed foods and told to eat to satiety, as a human does, right? Like we like to eat to a point of satiety, of fullness. That when allowed only to consume ultra-processed foods, people ended up eating a 500-calorie energy surplus, right? So an energy surplus is the way – that's how we – that's why we store fat, essentially, right? It's like the law of thermodynamics. So these foods, by the time we've eaten to satiety, we've already over-consumed them. But in this crossover trial, what they were also able to show was that when you give the same people access to minimally processed foods, these are the kinds of foods that you are potentially able to cook in your own kitchen, depending on food access and availability, all important

factors, that they ended up eating to the same degree of satiety, but they came in at a 300 calorie energy deficit. So that's an 800 calorie swing. That is a significant amount of calories determined purely by the quality of the food that these people were eating. So oftentimes, somebody who's overweight, they get told by their doctors to just eat less, move more, right? To moderate the quantity of the food that they're consuming. But here's the kicker. The quality of the food that a person is consuming dictates, or at least influences, the quantity. Yeah, that's such a key point, isn't it, for people, Max? Whether it's to lose weight, reduce their risk of disease in the future, to help them lower their blood sugar, whatever their health goal might be.

A lot of people these days, they want to find a way to eat less. They don't want to be consuming as much as they're often consuming. But a lot of people still don't realize that actually the quantity often is downstream from the quality. Get the quality bang on, then often, not always, I know it is possible to over-consume good quality food. I've certainly done it myself, but it's just a lot less likely. Any other foods or food groups that you would encourage us to look at and go, you know, just be careful there? Yeah, definitely. So this is a bit more controversial, but I think it is probably worthwhile to minimize your consumption of grain and seed oils. Now, this

is controversial because the nutritional and medical orthodoxy still loves and encourages the consumption of these types of fats. In fact, I identified by going to the, at least in the United States, the MyPlate paradigm, which is sort of the successor to the food pyramid, which was the first paradigm that really told Americans how to eat, it still implores us to consume more of these types of oils, these unsaturated grain and seed oils. And specifically what I'm talking about are industrially produced, refined, bleached, and deodorized grain and seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, grapeseed oil. And I think it's very much worth, in accordance with the research, swapping these oils for extra virgin olive oil, which has a ton of evidence on being cardioprotective, being neuroprotective,

being supportive of metabolic health. And so I make that recommendation for a number of reasons. One, the preponderance of evidence really does support that extra virgin olive oil has myriad health benefits, right? It's anti-inflammatory. It's got a very cardioprotective fatty acid profile. So it's rich in heart healthy, monounsaturated fat. It's chemically stable, which is not that you can't say the same thing about these refined bleached and deodorized grain and seed oils. So you can actually cook with it. You can use it as a sauce. And we have, whether it's animal research, observational level data, like looking at people who adhere to a Mediterranean dietary pattern or

the MIND diet, which is protective of brain health, extra virgin olive oil is the only oil that's recommended in the MIND diet and in the Mediterranean dietary pattern. This is, I think, crucially important and tends to be overlooked. They're not recommending that people ingest more canola oil in these dietary patterns that are associated with reduced risk for dementia, for Alzheimer's disease and other chronic conditions. Yeah. I mean, even when you describe those oils, you use three terms, refined, bleached, and deodorized. If we just take a step back for a minute, those are three terms that I don't think many of us want to associate with

the food that we're putting inside our bodies. You know, it's that stark when you describe it. Where does sunflower oil, for example, fit into this paradigm here? Yeah, great question. So there are different types of sunflower oil. You can actually find on the market a variant of sunflower oil, because sunflower oil typically is one of these kinds of oils that I'm suggesting that people minimize their consumption of. But you can often find, especially now, a variant of sunflower seed oil called high oleic sunflower oil, which I think is actually okay to use. It's still not as good as extra virgin olive oil,

but it is primarily oleic acid, which is a very abundant type of fatty acid found in nature. It's chemically very stable. And so it actually has a fatty acid profile that looks quite similar to avocado oil. And so I think that that's fine. But yeah, it was so great, Rangan, that you teased this out because we know that ultra-processed foods, as I've mentioned, is associated with all the bad things that you don't want, right? There's no health expert out there, no nutrition expert that would say we need to consume more ultra-processed foods, right? Everybody's saying we need to consume less. So why do these refined, bleached, and deodorized grain and seed oils get a pass? They are the very definition of ultra-processed. You couldn't make them in your own kitchen if you tried. They didn't exist in the human food supply prior to 100 years ago.

That's a really key point for me when we're looking at these modern foods or certainly these modern food-like substances, if there is any doubt with evidence, if there's conflict, if there's debate on both sides, I think a reasonable thing to look at is how long has this been in the human food supply for? It's not the only thing, but I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to look at and go, well, it didn't exist 100 years ago, 150 years ago. I think that note of caution is pretty reasonable because it is really, really divisive at the moment, this whole vegetable oil thing.

Some people are saying there is no evidence at all for people to be reducing this in their diet. Other people are saying we should never be touching these things at all. And I think you're making a very strong case that I think for most of us, we should absolutely be limiting them. I think the're making a very strong case that I think for most of us, we should absolutely be limiting them. I think the moderate message is that the dose makes the poison, and if we're

talking about the oils that you're bringing into your house, I suggest not doing that, but it's not going to kill you, right, necessarily, to have a little bit in your house here and there. Most people, when they cut these oils out, in fact, they end up cutting out ultra-processed foods in general. And so they'll inevitably see a health benefit to doing that. Yeah. I appreciate what you said there about the dose making the poison, because frankly, it's very hard for people to avoid those oils 100% of the time. Unless they're going to just stay at home, cook all their meals with extra virgin olive oil, you know, it's going to probably be impossible to avoid those things all the time. Any other foods that we should think about sort of reducing and cutting out of our diets? I mean, I think it's always important to

underscore the insidious nature of added sugar today in Western diets. So I would say that added sugar is something that people need to become as well more mindful of and to do their best to minimize. Today, your average adult consumes about 77 grams of added sugar, sugar for which we have no biological requirement. That's about 19 teaspoons. And when you consume that amount of sugar, first of all, sugar, again, dose makes the poison as with most things. It's not inherently fattening, but it does contribute empty calories to the diet. It contributes to the hyperpalatable characteristic of most ultra processed foods, you know, the

added sugar component. It tends to be hidden, whether it's in commercial bread products or sauces. Added sugar seems to be everywhere. We know that glycemic variability is associated with increased feelings of hunger. So eating a high sugar snack or meal could actually perpetuate feelings of hunger as opposed to satiate, to reduce feelings of hunger, which is kind of ironic and counterproductive. We know that high sugar boluses, meaning in one single meal consuming a very high amount of sugar, has been associated with a drop in testosterone by about 25%. We can see that high sugar boluses increase systolic blood pressure, and this seems to persist for hours after ingestion. We know that high blood

pressure is a risk factor for not just stroke and cardiovascular disease, but also for dementia. And one of the big problems, I think, and contributing to this insidious nature of it, is that sugar tends to go by many different names in the food supply. You can see on the labels here in the UK that there is added sugar. It sneaks in everywhere. Whatever you buy, if you're not careful, you will be having more sugar than is good for you. There's no question about that. It's a big problem. I think it has to do with the fact that sugar is cheap. Again, it contributes to hyper-palatability, which makes repeat customers for the food industry. And yeah, we just, you know, we love sugar. I mean, we've evolved to like sugar.

When sugar is in the body, it causes the hormone insulin to become elevated, which tells our body to store fat, right? It not only tells our body to store fat, but it keeps our fat siloed away so that we burn sugar instead of our hard won fat stores, which back prior to the ubiquity of food stability, right? When food scarcity was a real problem for most people, being a better fat store was actually an advantageous physiologic phenomena, right? And sugar is the primary food ingredient that tells our bodies that essentially it's summer.

Fruit is ripe, gorge yourself on fruit and store fat. And so that today has become hijacked by the modern food supply. And it's not to say that sugar is the primary driver of obesity. It's not. It really comes back to ultra-processed foods, hyperpalatable mixed dishes and the preponderance of these oils and the like. But sugar, when consumed, especially in the quantity that it is consumed today, it contributes. With all your experience, from all your podcast episodes, from all your books, if you were to share just a few final practical tips to my audience to help them start living better lives immediately,

what would some of your top tips be? Wow. Well, I think we can't let perfect be the enemy of the good. You know, sometimes it's the little gifts that we give ourselves over the course of the day that ultimately will add up to make a big impact, right? Incrementally, if you, for example, reduce your intake of ultra processed foods, even just a little bit, or reducing your intake just a little bit of the grain and seed oils or the added sugar that we were talking about,

or maybe using a little more extra virgin olive oil, or you'll see a benefit. And in my world, dementia, this is a condition that takes decades to manifest. You have decades of agency to change the course of your cognitive path. And I think what's so crucial about that is that, you know, you have choices that you make every single day, right? Like we eat three times a day, if not more. And why not make a decision that is hedging your bets to some degree, but also makes sense through the lens of evolution, right? These are conditions that for the most part were rare

in antiquity, right? Throughout human history. And now they're increasing in their incidence, right? So I think a very small proportion of people have deterministic genes, but this makes up only two to 3% of Alzheimer's cases. So I want the people that are listening to this to know that you have a degree of control in terms of your cognitive destiny and food plays a major role here. Genes are not destiny, right? Your genes may load the gun, but it's your diet and lifestyle ultimately that pull the trigger on this condition for many. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.