Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 524: Dr. Nicole Avena- How Sugar Affects the Brain

Episode Date: June 8, 2017

Sal, Adam & Justin interview Dr. Nicole Avena about the affect of sugar and sugar substitutes in the diet and how they affect the brain. This is a must listen if you have a sweet tooth. You can also catch Dr. Avena's TED presentation here: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-sugar-affects-the-brain-nicole-avena You can find Dr. Avena at www.drnicoleavena.com Dr. Avena is a research neuroscientist, author and expert in the fields of nutrition, diet and addiction. She received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Psychology from Princeton University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology at The Rockefeller University in New York City. She has published over 70 scholarly journal articles, as well as several book chapters and books, on topics related to food, addiction, obesity and eating disorders. She also edited the books, "Animal Models of Eating Disorders" (2012) and "Hedonic Eating" (2015), coauthored the popular book of food and addiction called "Why Diets Fail" (Ten Speed Press), and recently finished her new book, "What to Eat When You're Pregnant." Her research achievements have been honored by awards from several groups including the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Eating Disorders Association. She also maintains a blog, Food Junkie, with Psychology Today. Get our newest program, Kettlebells 4 Aesthetics (KB4A), which provides full expert workout programming to sculpt and shape your body using kettlebells. Only $7 at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Got a beard? Condition your beard with Big Top Beard Company’s natural oils and organic essential oil blends to make it not only feel great but smell amazing! Get Big Top Beard Company products at www.bigtopbeardcompany.com, code "mindpump" for 33% off. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

So I was really excited that we got a chance to interview Dr. of you know, just a brilliant woman. And I think she's got an incredible message that and she's working against what the food industry wants, right? So she's definitely got an uphill battle. She's been doing this for over 15 years. And a lot of the great information that she gives related to nutrition. We've kind of talked about over the last 500 plus episodes

that we've done on MindPump. So something that we did for a lot of people that are just now coming on board, we realized like, okay, not everybody's gonna be able to go back, listen to 500 episodes of it on them much time. So how would we curate all of this great information that we've provided over the last few years

into a 30 day, put it all into bullet points, and make it simple, straightforward. Yeah, so each day you guys get an email sent to you with a topic, a single topic with bullet points, like Justin said, and then underneath that has any episode timestamped to right to the minute of where we discuss that specific topic

that you wanna learn more about. In addition to that, any studies supporting the topics that we're talking about. So this is our 30 days of coaching. It's absolutely free for people. And really what this is designed to do is to help you on your journey with food, on training, on mobility. I mean, you name it. We cover all the main topics that we would go over with any of our clients that we are training 101. You guys go to our mind pump media dot com. You'll see right at the top.

There's a button. You just click it. You put in your email and you guys get mail this for free. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, mind, up with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Man, we just had a great interview with Dr. Nicole Lovina.

Sugar's gonna kill you. I'll throw a wide diet spell. In this episode, we talk about the addictive, yes, addictive properties of circumformation. In particular, sugar, now this is, this is what she studies, this is what she studies. This is what she does. Now, addiction has, in medical terms,

there is a certain criteria that you have to meet in order for something to be considered addictive. Well, sugar and other types of foods, sugar in particular, falls in this category from a physiological standpoint and from, of course, the psychological standpoint. So I know we've gotten into debates with other fitness personalities and professionals and one of our friends that we love and hate, Lane Norton talks about how sugar is not addictive and this and that and the other. She would just completely disagree and her

science completely supports her and it's very, very compelling stuff. So it's a really good episode. If you want to figure out why you have such a tough time with certain foods or why it's hard to eat whole natural foods or why mind pump always gives a recommendation of avoiding heavily processed foods. Yes. This episode is for you. Now, you can find more information on Dr. Nicole Laveena on her website. That's Dr. DR Nicole Aveena, avna.com. And her book is why diets fail. She's got several good books. She's got like the hedonic eating one.

She has several books. Yeah, yeah. She's got several books. She's a neuroscientist and just brilliant woman brilliant woman awesome Conversation she's doing some research now on artificial sweeteners. She talks about that a little bit as well It's pretty cool. So here we are talking to doctrine to colovina So I want to start off by asking you you now you

Well, you know, and I find this shocking that it's actually controversial to say that food can be addictive. It's like, it's a huge controversy in nutrition because, you know, in fact, I'm actually holding up a study right now that was just, it was just completed or just published, I believe this year. And the title of it was,

Eating Dependence and Weight Gain, no human evidence for a sugar addiction model of overweight. Now, in our experiences, trainers, we've worked with lots of clients, and I also have two eyes and a brain, and I know I can pretty much tell people that with 100% certainty that there's some foods that I will overeat and others that I won't, and sugar definitely is in that category. Let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about food addiction and sugar addiction and your research involving that.

Yeah, so we've been doing research on food addiction for a while now. I don't want to date myself, but it's been about 15 years. And it's interesting because to me, just like you said, it seems like almost such an obvious concept that there are foods out there that really are no longer like typical foods, right? There are concoctions of ingredients that were created in a laboratory and some food industry building somewhere. And they're designed to have lots of sugar, fat, salt, and all these other ingredients to make them just taste delicious.

And that's part of the reason why people like them. And so I've started years ago thinking about this and the terms of, well, maybe something about these foods, these new designer foods that we have, is leading people to overeat them because it's an addiction, because it's affecting the brain in a way that suggests it's addictive. And so we started doing research on this

in first and laboratory rats, and then we moved on to doing studies in humans. And essentially, we found, and lots of other labs have found that if you look at the criteria for addiction, but have the addictive substance be a sugar or a highly palatable junk food, you see the same effects that you would see if you were looking at addiction to things like alcohol or morphine. We see binging.

We see withdrawal, craving. We also see changes in the brain. So if you do brain scans or do studies where we can measure the release of neurotransmitters in the brain, you see that the same types of neurochemical, biological changes that you'd see in response to a drug of abuse can also happen in response to overeating lots of these junk foods and sugar in particular. Now, can we maybe describe what that criteria, the specific criteria, maybe the physiological and physical effects of addiction?

How do you define addiction from a, maybe from a physiological standpoint? What has to happen in the brain for people to say, okay, this has classical... Right, this is part of the reason why I kind of think it's funny that there's a controversy because in medicine and in science, we have very clear-cut criteria that need to be met in order for someone to be diagnosed as being addicted to something. So there's specific criteria that are in a book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And this is essentially a book that psychologists, psychiatrists, medical professionals use to diagnose all the different types of mental disorders that are out there.

And among those disorders is addiction. And so there's specific criteria that are laid out that need to be identified in a person in order for them to be identified as being an addict or having a substance use problem. And so what we've done is to basically use those criteria but apply them to food. And so we're looking for things like binging, over-consuming or the development of tolerance. In some cases, signs of withdrawal. There's also some social factors that can occur. So like, for instance, some of these things are a little bit more difficult to understand from the concept of food because our social construct around food is different than it

is around drugs. So people don't necessarily go to jail for, you know, bringing donuts to the office, but if you showed up at your office with a plate of cocaine, you're probably going to get in trouble. So, you know, so it's a lot of these criteria, you know, some of them are very, you know, strictly biological that we can measure, but some of them are socially constructed and have to do with, you know, for instance, one of the criteria that is associated with addiction can be if you're having an ability to fulfill role obligations at work or with your family. And if you think about somebody who might be an alcoholic or somebody who might have a drug problem, you can kind of see how that could certainly be an issue.

But because we're allowed to eat all the time wherever we want, that's not an issue of someone's a food addict or if someone has a problem with obesity. Now, on the lines of addiction like that, do you think maybe why some people are so hard headed about this to say that, you know, oh, you can't be addicted to food or sugar? Because just like, okay, you know, you have some families that tend to gravitate

to certain things that they're addicted to and others they're not. For example, like, you know, my fiance's family, alcoholism runs in the family. It seems like there's several people in there, but they don't have any deal with the other hard drugs or pills or things like that. Then I look at my family and my family doesn't have anything. There are no one's addicted to alcohol or anything like that,

but then the pills run in the family. Do you think that there's a lot of discrepancy between each person individually or what do you think that is? Yeah, that's a great question. So there's actually been some research that's gone on to try to identify, like you say, why is it that some people sort of cluster into these different types of addictions? And so there's been studies that have looked at the genetics of people to try

to understand, you know, why are some of these things hereditary? And I think that, you know, when you look at these different genetic studies, there are some genes that kind of pop out associated, you know, with alcohol, some that are associated with other types of drug use. But I think overall, we're also starting to see that there's studies that will also identify those same genetic variants, particularly variants of the dopamine gene can be associated with addiction to food or overeating food. And so I think that, you know, there could be a genetic propensity for some people to just become addicted.

And what they become addicted to is sometimes a construct of their environment. And so if they happen to be an environment where alcohol is available or the issue, that might be it. But if they have that same genetic variant and they happen to be in an obeseogenic environment, then maybe they're going to end up becoming overweight or obese. So I think it really is a blend of what happens with the genetic predisposition and what potentially could be happening in their environment. Interesting. Now, two thoughts come to mind for me when people argue the sugar or food is an addictive

argument is when you have an entire generation, I mean, we are definitely going through a massive epidemic of health and obesity, which has the ability to potentially bankrupt this country, the richest country in the world. This is a true fact. The way diabetes is growing, Alzheimer's and obesity and the cost associated, can bankrupt us. And when you look at people and you see someone, and I've been in fitness for a long time,

and I remember thinking this as a young trainer, I'm a 19 year old personal trainer, and I see someone who's 300 pounds, and they're eating horribly, and it's just like, just stop. Like, can't you see how you look in the mirror? Can't you see how you feel? Don't you see what your doctor's telling you?

All you gotta do is just stop eating so terribly, but I could take that same argument and apply towards alcoholics I've known or drug addicts. Like, hey, your liver is failing. Why can't you just stop drinking? It's that simple, but there's obviously something else going on and you talked about dopamine. And for my understanding with dopamine

is anything that's enjoyable will cause a release of dopamine and With food do we find That certain foods or certain types of foods or even getting more basic like sugars for example or you know Cause either a larger dopamine effect or have the ability to maintain a high dopamine release with Subsequent exposures. In other words, if I do something that's great, and I get a dopamine release from my understanding, if I do it again,

it typically you get that dopamine release from something that's novel or new, but then my body doesn't necessarily get that same dopamine release all the time, but I know certain things tend to always release dopamine, like cocaine, for example, or alcohol or sex for some people. Is that true for certain types of foods as well, and is that what makes certain types of

foods more addictive? Yeah, you really know your stuff. Yeah, this is exactly what we've been finding in the research, and so you're right. Dopamine is associated with reward and pleasure in many cases, but it's also associated with novelty. So when we think about the differences that typically exist between drugs and food, one of the biggest differences is that

every drug of abuse releases dopamine every time you take a hit of it. That's really the hallmark of a drug of abuse. Morphine, nicotine, cocaine, even caffeine. Every time you take it, it releases dopamine. Now, food also can release dopamine, but the dopamine release that you typically see with food is more associated with the novelty of the food. So this has protective value. If you think about it, as we evolved, we want to make sure that the food we ate was safe.

And so if you ate raw and food, it could potentially kill you. So we developed this sort of ability to detect whether or not something was safe. And once our brain coated the food as being safe, then that dopamine release tended to sort of attenuate. So if you think about it in terms of maybe the first time you travel to a foreign country and have a particular cuisine, your dopamine release is going to be going off because it's a new food and new taste you never had it. But as long as you don't get sick from it, your dopamine release is then going to attenuate.

So what one of the sort of critical experiments that we did in our lab was was to say, well, hey, what happens if we give junk food or sugar to our rats? Will they release dopamine as if it's a drug, whereas they'll release it every time we give it to them? Or will they show that typical food-like release where they release dopamine, maybe the first time they get it, but then it attenuates after they get repeated exposures. And what we found was that when you give rats sugar, they release dopamine as if you were giving them a drug.

It looks like what you'd see if you were giving that rat morphine. So every time they take a drink of sugar, it's releasing this bolus of dopamine in the reward areas of the brain. And we don't see that when a rat eats their healthy food. And then clinical studies have been done that have essentially shown the same thing in humans. So if you give humans chocolate milkshakes or these delicious tasting drinks when they're in a brain scanner,

and then you look at the brain images via FMRI. So you can see areas of the brain that are active lighting up. We see that it's only in response to that milk shake or that beverage that you see these drug-like responses in the brain. Interesting. Now, is this why you'll eat, sometimes you'll eat foods and they're amazing and you just kind of get sick of them? Do you think that's part of it where that dopamine release kind of starts to blunt down while other foods

you can just seem to overeat them forever? Yeah, and so if you look at, for instance, people talk about food addiction. And when we talk about food addiction, it's really the junk foods, right? Because it's not broccoli. When people don't overeat broccoli or things like that or vegetables, even though those are foods. And that's again, because the dopamine release in response to broccoli is likely much less intense

and most likely attenuates with time for everybody. Whereas if we talk about, you know, chocolate chip cookies or ice cream, that's a different story. That's why, you know, it's very easy to, you know, down a whole pint of ice cream, but eating a whole head of broccoli is not quite, you know, as easy. Now, do we also see down regulation of dopamine receptors from this repeated exposure to dopamine through eating these foods?

Yes, and then we've seen that in our studies and rats. And again, it's very similar to what you would see, the same type of down regulation of those receptors that occurs in response to drug use. So we see lots of parallels between drugs and what we're seeing in response to junk foods. We see that not only is it changes in the release of the neurochemicals, like dopamine and the opioids, but also changes in the receptor expression and availability, that down regulation

of receptors, and there's also changes in the gene expression for those receptors. So there's a lot going on. It's not just sort of like one simple change that occurs in response to maybe a one-time release. It's really a systemic issue that is what I believe affects behavior and causes us to sort of contribute to this spiral

of distress that can emerge when one is addicted to something. Now, is it safe to say that the down regulation of receptors that happens and these gene expressions are shaping the brain to become more and more addicted to whatever substance is causing this? In other words, you'll find yourself having more cravings for them and perhaps perceiving the flavors of other foods to be more bland.

For example, from personal experience, I know when I have a lot of processed sugar in my diet, natural sugars just don't seem like I'll eat fruit and it just doesn't taste very sweet at all. And if I avoid processed sugars for long periods of time and then I eat a strawberry and apple, it's like eating a piece of candy. Does that explain that? Yeah. Well, it's in part, I think that that taste component is in part more due to the fact

that our sweet taste receptors become desensitized over time. So when you're constantly eating sugar, you are essentially causing those receptors to be desensitized. And so when you do taste something that's sort of naturally sweet, but not quite as sweet as like a candy bar, it doesn't really taste as sweet.

But the opposite happens if you allow those receptors to go a period of time where you're not constantly bombarding them with these highly processed, high concentration of sweetness, then you can start to actually taste the naturally occurring sweetness and things like fruits. And even some vegetables, it's funny because I've had, I work with a lot of people who are interested

in figuring out ways to sort of look at this through the addiction lens and change their diet and sort of eat differently. And it's funny. A lot of people who initially start to talk to me will tell me that they never realize that a carrot could actually taste sweet. And when they stop eating so much sugar and they reduce it from their diet, then they actually can taste like a baby carrot actually has a little bit of a sweetness to it. And so a lot of that I think has to do with the taste receptors and the taste that we perceive. And in your experience, Doc, is that something? How long does that typically take for somebody? I remember when I was competing for my first show and I was on a diet, a strict

diet for 10 to 12 weeks, and then I reintroduced these foods. The sugar was just overwhelming. And like Sal was saying, I remember biting into a strawberry and just it was just never tasted so sweet in my life. I don't remember how long it took for that to kind of reset those receptors. Is there a typical amount of time that somebody would fast from those processed foods or how long that needs to be out of the diet or is it depend on each person and how long you've been kind of flooding them for? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it is really dependent on the individual, but I've seen people go a week where they've

really cut back on the processed sugars but I've seen people go a week where they've really cut back on the processed sugars and been pretty strict about it and then be able to start to detect changes in the way that other foods taste. And it's interesting because the opposite happens. If you cut out all those processed sugars and then you go ahead and have a piece of cake, sometimes people report that it's aversive, meaning that it's like too sweet and taste awful. This is what's happened to me from competing.

I for about a year and a half, almost two years, I was competing and shows off and I had to stay on a very strict diet. And before that, I was all over the place. I could eat just about anything as long as I trained hard and stayed in a clorked deficit for most of the time and staying great shape and never really had to watch what I was eating or even cared to.

And when I reintroduced those foods, now I'm almost repulsed by a lot of them. I have my, it's too much, it's overpowering. I can't finish it where before I could power that down. And I also noticed my intake of vegetables and fruits are extremely high in comparison to what they were before I could power that down. And I also noticed my intake of vegetables and fruits are extremely high in comparison to what they were before because those are really fulfilling now. And this is something I try and teach and coach to clients is that, you know, you may not think you like fruits and vegetables right now because you've been itundating your body with all this

process shit. And if we could just clean that out for a while, you'd be surprised on how fulfilling a lot of these foods are. Now, in your experiments, have you also gone through moderation as far as introducing a well-balanced approach, but also having the sugar and the processed food in the mix, but at a lower amount, and then experiment to see the preference of the rats or the control, whatever you have set up. Yeah, that's a good question. So, I've been really thinking about this a lot

over the past couple of years, because when I first started doing this research, thinking about sugar as an addictive substance, most of us think about, if you're addicted to something, you have to to something, you have to quit it, right? Like you just can't ever have coke again or whatever the drug of abuse is, right? But I think it's different with food. And I've become to more interested in more of a harm reduction approach and a harm reduction approach to addiction. Looks at addiction through

the lens of, hey, this is something that you're addicted to in the sense that you can't consume it in a way everyone else can. You need to be extra cautious about your behavior and how much of it you're consuming, but you can get to a point where you can slowly reintroduce it into your life. So you don't have to completely abstain. And for things like alcohol for instance It's actually a therapy that can work pretty well for some individuals who have a problem with alcohol And so I think that a harm reduction model is really the way to go with food because I think it's it's pretty much impossible to quit sugar

We're not going to be able to do it. It's in so many foods It's in so many of the things that we eat and I I think our modern society is just built around the fact that, you know, even if you love to cook and you have all the time in the world, at some point you're going to be reliant on some sort of process food. You can't make it all yourself. And so I think for the everyday person, I mean, you know, I think it's just more realistic to have a situation where you can get off of overeating sugar, meaning you can cut out a lot of the processed foods, gain control over your behaviors around them so that if they are available, you can have some in moderation and enjoy it.

And I think it kind of goes back and forth in terms of, you know, how to get to that point. I think for some people, they need to, yeah, quit cold turkey and, you know, get rid of a lot of these foods for a while and then be able to maybe slowly introduce some back where you can, you know, have them moderation. But again, I think it's a lot dependent on the individual and dependent on, you know, people's personalities. I mean, some people just are all or nothing, whereas some people can be more in the middle. And so I think a lot of that makes a factor into this. That room, this kind of reminds, are you familiar with Dr. Andrew Hill?

No, I'm not. Oh, you should look him up. I think you would enjoy some of his work. He, he, he, he, he's, what's the name of his institute? So I can't, I can't remember, but he's, he's peak brain institute. Yeah, peak brain institute. That's what it is. And he's got there's a several of them and they they're dealing with addiction and they're what they're doing is really unique in comparison to what these facilities would do in the past as far as handling addiction, where we would just lock somebody up in a room for 30 days and take it take whatever substance it

is. Instead of that process process they actually allow all this flexibility for those that are abusing whether it be drugs, food, whatever it may be and they are trying to work on the relationship and the connection that these people have to these foods or this alcohol or the substance and and walk them through that piece and connect that level of awareness for them versus Restricting because that we've shown that just taking it away from somebody is later on going to lead to them reintroducing and in fact probably binging on it or going falling back into you get a symptom eruption I you know it's There's some studies now if we look at food as a potential addictive

substance and we look at some of the newer studies on addiction what we find is When they take my because the old model was you put a mouse in a cage you give them water and then you give them water with like cocaine or something like that and This mouse will take the cocaine and will not eat food and will eventually almost die from their repeated use. And then they said, okay, that's the substance, the substance is addictive. But then what they did, more recently, as they've taken these mice and they said, okay, let's put them in mouse heaven. Let's give them lots of room. Let's give them food and sex and toys and just a wonderful environment. And then let's see if they still display these same addictive behaviors and what they find is they drop dramatically.

So I think it's important to know the physiological effects of these substances, whether we're talking about drugs or sugar or anything else that can be addictive, but it's also important to understand the environment that the individual may be in and the psychological and behavioral connections to those things. Because like you're saying, they're going to be around. Food is everywhere. I think teaching people or working with those things helps them learn how to moderate, because when we look at food, in particular,

food on a very basic scale represents nutrients and calories and macro nutrients and all that stuff. But it's way more complex than that. I mean, culture is, you know, is completely revolves around food. I mean, you know, there's breakfast foods and that we have meetings I mean, there's breakfast foods and that we have meetings at lunch and there's birthday foods and Christmas foods

and foods at your grandmother made you when you were sick and the ways you celebrate and alcohol has got, there's definitely a uses for alcohol with bonding and reducing social anxieties and all these different things. And I think it's important people understand all that because if we just look at things as black and white, then we may experience like what we've been experiencing

with the obesity epidemic where we tell people don't eat it and move more, and that just doesn't work, rather than saying, hey, you're celebrating a birthday, you're not feeding your body great nutrients, but you are feeding your soul with the celebration of the birthday and the birthday cake that you made feeding your body great nutrients, but you are feeding your soul with the celebration of the birthday and the birthday cake that you made with your kids and all that different, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And through working with my clients in that manner, I found a lot more success with that approach versus, you know, you know, just the don't eat it, you know, type of approach. I mean, in the bodybuilding world or the competing world that Adam talks about, I tell you what Nicole, I have never seen eating disorders like I've seen when I go into that world. I mean, we're talking about competitors who'll gain 30 pounds in two weeks. I'm not exaggerating.

From the binging that they do after a show. I mean, classic example of addiction, like you would get when you have someone who goes to a clean house and doesn't have access to drugs and then gets out and then goes on a bender for a week, it's the same type of behavior. Now, I agree. I think it's a really important point. We focus a lot on the food and what it's doing. But it's important to remember,

there's an underlying cause for the behavior. So there's a reason why people are turning to the food. And so, well, the foods to blame, I think it's also important to address the reasons why they're using the food. And so I agree, I think that's a really important piece of this as well. Now, between the three macro nutrients,

proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, and then if you break it down even more types of fats, types of proteins, and types of carbohydrates, our sugars do sugars display the most addictive properties. And the reason why I'm asking this is because highly palatable foods don't just contain sugar. Fats also have an ability to make foods very palatable. Salt is another one that we tend to talk about and there's certain spices and all that

kind of stuff. Which one of those would you say had the highest addictive properties from a physiological standpoint? I think if I had to pick just one, I would say carbohydrates, the sugars, but I think it's important, like you said, we don't typically eat carbohydrates by themselves. Most of the processed foods that we consume are combinations of sweets and fats with these spices and other flavors that it in, in salt and things like that. It gets a little bit difficult to sort of pin down, you know, the specific nutrient

that's responsible for the addictive behavior. And I'm not actually sure that there is a specific nutrient. We actually published a study last year that looked at which foods were most addictive. And the reason why we wanted to look at actual foods, as opposed to trying to figure out the ingredients, was because people don't eat ingredients, people eat foods, right? They eat the foods that are put together. And what we found was that it wasn't actually the ingredients that stood out as being the important factor in determining whether or not something was addictive. It was actually the level of processing.

So the foods that were more highly processed were the ones that were found to be most addictive. And so I think that kind of speaks to the fact that sugar gets called out a lot because a lot of foods contain sugars, a lot of foods contain added sugars. But I think that there's a little bit more to it. I'm not sure that sugar in and of itself is to blame. I think it has to do with the fact that, you know, the concentration of sugar that we end up eating is so great in combination with the fact that, you know,

the foods that have a lot of added sugar are also very highly processed. That's a really good point. Well, I think it's important to note that sugar is highly processed. You can't really find highly concentrated sources of sugar in nature. It's actually quite rare. And when you do find it, like, let's say you found honey, you'd have to get through some some bees to get it. And it wasn't fighting to get it. Yeah. It wasn't very common. So from an evolutionary standpoint, why do you think we have certain triggers?

Is it because at some point through human evolution, they represented certain nutrients that we needed or that were maybe more rare? Well, so in nature, things that are sweet are typically safe. So if you go into forest and you happen to come across like an apple tray, you know, the apples that are safe to eat are going to be the ones that are going to taste sweet. The apples that have fallen on the ground and are rotten are the ones that potentially could, you know, kill you because it could be, you know, toxic at that point. They're going to taste bitter. And so that's actually part of the reason why it's hard to get little kids especially to like cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli,

because they have this somewhat bitter taste. And we actually have this innate aversion to them, which goes away as we mature, and as our taste buds change, and as our taste mature. But that's really the biological basis for it is that sweet has universally been coated with being safe. And also if you think about breast milk, that's really, you know, for most babies, that's the first thing that they consume. And it's also very sweet. And so it's really just safety is associated with sweetness, whereas bitterness is associated with toxicity. Wow, that is very, very interesting.

Very fascinating. Yeah, and if you think about it, obviously children are far more adverse to bitter or strong tastes, probably because they're more likely to not survive eating a potential poison. So we just evolve to be super averse as children. And as you get older, you can kind of, I can eat a little bit of something

that might be not be good for me and I'll survive. And this may even extend to pregnant women who, when I had my kids, I remember at the time my wife, her taste, but seemed to become way more sensitive to those types of things. So it all kind of makes sense. Very interesting. Doc, we talk a lot on our show about, we've been in fitness for so long. We've had the opportunity to have our paradigm shattered so many times. And we like to share that with our audience.

Now, you've obviously been in the field for quite some time studying this. What have been some moments during your career that have just been like either aha or total paradigm shattering moments for you and through all your research that you've done? Well, you know, it's funny. When I first started doing this, it was not popular, meaning that other scientists kind of thought it was a dumb idea. It was, I remember going into conferences and presenting some of our preliminary research before we had it published, and this was back in like 2000, 2001.

And people just thought it was dumb and they were laughing at it. And it was a little bit intimidating for me because I was just starting off in this field and I thought, oh man, am I making a bad decision here? Is this not a good thing to study? But it just wasn't really on anyone's radar. And I found that there were so many people out there in the general public who were struggling

and we're talking about the fact that they, you know, had this addiction to sugar and they felt compelled to eat sugar, but there just wasn't any research on it. So our lab was really the first one to start to look at this from a scientific standpoint, to start doing these studies. And it's just amazing to me now, like, flash forward 15 years, and things are so different. There's so many other laboratories that have been looking at this and thinking about it. We now actually have nutrition guidelines that have come out and that are going to be put into place by the end of next summer that say how much added sugar you're supposed to eat as an American, which is something I never thought we would see

on the nutrition facts label. So a lot has really changed in 15 years. 15 years is like a blink of the eye in science. That goes by really fast. And so I'm really happy to see that we have had a lot of advances. There's been a lot of studies and we've seen some motion in terms of, you know, starting to really think about the foods that we eat and what they could be doing to us, not only from a medical standpoint, but just from an overall wellness standpoint.

Where have you been getting most of the pushback? I would imagine the food industry probably doesn't want to hear this. Yeah, of course. Yeah, the food industry, you know, again, there's pushback from multiple places, but I think the most of it has come from the food industry because, you know, not to be sympathetic to them, but I can see their points in some cases where, you know,

their job is to make foods that taste good so people will buy them. And so that's their job, right? I mean, they're making the food to taste good. And I think it just really comes down to now starting to look at, okay, well, at what point does it taste good, but it's harming us? And then it becomes the ethical question. And it's interesting because it's very similar to what happened with smoking. So if you look back at the literature and what happened politically in terms of finding out about the dangers of smoking back in the 1960s and the 50s, it's very, very similar in terms of how things are changing. Initially, a lot of the Philip Morris and the big smoking companies responded,

that, oh, smoking's not bad for you. I teach a class. I'm actually doing a semester teaching at Princeton University. That's where we are right now, actually. And one of the videos I show in my health psychology class is this old testimony of these smoking executives from Philip Morris testifying in front of Congress that smoking is not bad for you. Smoking will not kill you.

Smoking does not cause lung cancer. And so these are all things that, you know, I hear a lot of similar stories coming out of people from the food industry. Now sugar is an addictive sugar is not bad for you. Process food isn't bad for you. You just need to exercise more. So it's interesting to see the back and forth that is similar between what's happening with smoking

and what I think is happening now with food. Now, have you compared different types of sugars to see if there's any difference in effect? In other words, like high fructose corn syrup gets a lot of heat right now in terms of, you know, it being worse for you than, you know, regular sugar, for example. Have you looked at the differences between the types of sugar? We have done a couple of studies that, you know, have compared sucrose to hyphructose

corn syrup. We've also done some earlier studies looking at glucose. And you know, the bottom line seems to be it's not really the type of sweetness, but it's the fact that it's sweet. We've even done studies with artificial sweeteners and see the same effect on dopamine. So if you give an artificial sweetener, yeah, which is I think important because people tend to turn toward artificial sweeteners as their savior because, you know, they don't have to worry about the calories, but they can still get the enjoyment out of the artificial sweetness.

But that's not the case in terms of addiction. If we're looking at this in terms of what it's doing to your brain and doing to the perpetuation of overeating, artificial sweeteners are contributing to it just as equally as caloric sweeteners are. Very interesting. Yeah, you kind of blew me away with the statement about how sweet means safe, because it makes complete sense considering for most of human evolution, we evolved in states of, you know, where we were always on the brink of starvation.

There was always, you know, finding food was always a priority. And so it makes sense that if you find something sweet, you ate the hell out of it and your brain kept pushing you to eat more of it because it was a safe source of- And who knows when you're gonna get more? And who knows when you get- As a safe source of calories, but in today's modern world,

there is, in Western societies in particular, there is no problem getting calories at all. I can get calories whenever I want. People don't starve to death, really, anymore. We have way more people that die from eating from too much food than too little food. And so now we're in this position where we have this prehistoric kind of caveman brain

that is now in a situation of ridiculous and incredible abundance and hyper-palatable foods, and it makes complete sense that we would find ourselves in this obesity epidemic as a result. Do you, knowing this information, what do you recommend people do? Because I know you wrote a book, Why Diet's Fail,

and this was part of, you know, this is a big part of that book. What do you, what, what are some strategies that you may think may help people knowing all this? Well, I think, I mean, a few things. First, I think knowing about all this, knowing about the research is so important because I think, you know, a lot of times these studies sort of get brushed under the rug

or people don't hear about them until great guys like you come out and get that information out to the public so people can learn about this stuff and apply it to their life. So I think learning about the research that's going on is important. I also think, you mentioned earlier about we sort of were programmed to live in this,

we have this caveman brain, if you will, that is in this other type of environment now. And it's got me thinking lately a lot about the fact that I really think we need to stop looking at processed food as food. I mean, when we use the word food, it can mean anything from a whole baby carrot to pop tarts.

And they're completely different things. I mean, pop tarts have like 60 different ingredients, most of which I can't even pronounce, and I certainly don't know what they mean or do. Yet, they're all considered under the rubric of a food. And so I think it's important that we remember. Our brains were evolved to be able to figure out how to responsibly eat actual food, meaning like stuff that's alive or stuff that is growing in the ground that we, you know, are able to process in that way. Whereas a lot of these foods that are out there now, these processed foods, things that

we buy in the grocery store, our brains aren't going to be able to help us in the sense of figuring out what's right or wrong or healthy or unhealthy or safe or not. And so I think that's something to think about moving forward. How outnumbered do you think you are in your message? Do you feel is there, you know, for every one of you, is there 10 other doctors that are trying to prove the opposite so the food industry can, because you, like you compare it to cigarettes, which it does remind me of that,

and how hard that was, is, are you dealing with the same thing? Do you feel like you've got all kinds of antagonists to what you are trying to do? And do you have those people? And it's like, you see, you see a study come out and get promoted. You're like, son of a bitch,

I did all this work to explain this. And now this idiot comes out and is totally distorting this information. So do you see that? Yeah. A little bit. I think I like to think it's probably like that in every field that people are in.

But yeah, there is a bit of that going on with respect to food. And again, there's always going to be someone that's going to come out and critique and have issues with it. And that's all fine. I think this is all stuff that we need to discuss. But at the end of the day, it boils down to the science and it boils down to the experiments

that are done. And the studies that we've been doing have been replicated and expanded on by multiple different labs. And so you can argue all you want with the concept and whether this is a good idea or not, but at the end of the day, you cannot argue with the data. And the data suggests that sugar is addictive. Excellent. Yeah, I'm just thinking like,

how often do you think, do you guys think humans, for most of the time we've been on Earth, eight more than one ingredient? I mean, think about that. How often do you think we ate meat, and that's what we had? There wasn't even any seasoning.

It just seems like process foods is just the evolution of humans figuring out how to make the brains scored out more and more dopamine. Even cooking food and seasoning it is of course, that's a million steps before the pop tart. But even that is our attempt at making, at kind of hijacking these systems of the brain. And it's kind of blowing the array way right now

to really think about it. When you say it like that, it sounds like sugar is the, is like Instagram is to social media. like the, the inundating of likes and this dopamine rushes from feeling that all the time. Like we figured that out. Rob Wulf and his book, Wired Eat, talks about compares food to porn addiction and how, you know, being, you know, these flashes of pornography are things that we would have never experienced before,

and it trains the brain to only really respond to that. And so, food is really no different. And it's no reason why it's so hard for someone to go from eating a highly processed food-based diet to one that is entirely based on whole foods. I mean, to them, it's bland and it tastes horrible and life sucks. Right. And I think, to them, it's bland and it tastes horrible and life sucks. Right. Well, I think going the opposite was probably easier. So if I think about my grandparents' generation,

they grew up like it was like meat and potatoes for dinner. And like you said, it was single-ingredient foods. And now, you know, the people who are born in this generation, you know, they're not really going to experience that because they're born into this processed food world. And so I think, you know, for people like that who grow up eating lots of processed foods, it's going to be very difficult to make that switch back. Like you said, because their brains are now basically programmed to expect to get constant pleasure from the food that they're eating, which you're not going to get when you have like, you know, just a little piece of meat on the grill.

It's going to expect to be stimulated more by lots of these other, you know, tastings and ingredients and all these other things that we typically see in the foods that people often eat these days. Now, I'm going to make a speculation, and maybe you can help me out here, but, you know, as children and as we grow into adults, there's a tremendous amount of neural plasticity that happens, and there are certain structures and things in the brain that become, and the neural plasticity we have until the day we die, but really don't, we never have the ability that we had when we were children. And I'll give you guys an example, like, you know, you could take a seven-year-old and you

could teach them all kinds of different languages and they'll, they won't have an accent. Now, you teach an adult another language. They can learn that language, but they'll always have an accent, because that's because the brain's ability to mold and change becomes much more limited as we get older, as a child. It's like, incredible what the brain can do. Now knowing that is it safe to say or safe to assume that introducing children to foods that are high in sugar and highly processed, you're gonna cause some permanent changes to the brain. In other words, as adults, even if they change their diets,

it's still gonna have some of those permanent changes to where it's much more difficult for them to eat a diet that's based in whole foods. Yeah, it's great to say that because it's actually something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I've been working on a book that's going to be coming out next year. It's a follow up to a book that I published last year, or those published by Random House, called What to Eat When You're Pregnant. And the premise of that book was essentially

what you just said. We have this generation of babies that are essentially born craving sugar. They're like sugar babies, if you will. They're not crack babies, but because they were exposed to such excessive amounts of sugar and processed food in utero, they're born with brains that expect to get that once they're on the outside. And so I'm working on a follow-up to that book called What to Feed Your Baby, which is essentially a guide for new parents that will allow them to learn about the research on, you know, what happens to your little child's brain when you start off feeding them

and the foods that they're consuming are much like what we see in our highly processed world. And so the dangers of consuming too much sugar as a youngster can really affect you later on in life. Not only does it lead to increased risk for being overweight, no bees, developing diabetes, but like you said, it also really sets the stage to make it just more difficult for them to even like healthy food. And so I think that there is definitely a fact of plasticity that occurs at that young age. We need to capitalize on it. We need to make sure that instead of exposing our kids

to fruit juice and to all these other types of snack foods, we want to be realizing that we have this very small window in which we can essentially try to train them to like the delicious healthy foods. And we really need to recognize that and not dismiss it. I think a lot of people with little kids, they think, oh, they're kids, my kids not fat, I don't have to worry about it. But, you know what, when you look at your kids' blood work, you're going to see that your kid actually could be fat. It's just that the fat is trapped in side and it's not necessarily manifesting as fat on the outside of their body, but it could be fat in their arteries. And so learning about this and helping parents to understand why it's important to feed kids

healthy foods and how that can affect later things in life, I think, is something that we need to be focusing on. And you know what? I tell you what, I mean, you talking about that, you gotta be careful, right? Because the amount of money that goes into advertising towards children with these types of foods is, in fact, I would bet, and I don't know what the numbers are, but I would bet it probably surpasses how much money goes into advertising towards adults. I mean, I have two young children.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I have two young kids. They watch cartoons and stuff like that on TV. And I'm not exaggerating when I say 80% of the commercials, like the vast majority of them are for highly processed foods. And then the other 20% are some toys or something like that. Yeah. And you know what's interesting about that?

Who buys the food, right? Of course, yeah. Not you do, not your kids. So why they advertise into the kids? Because then your kids are going to be the ones that nag you to buy it when you're in the grocery store. Well, even dirty, dirty. But even if we look at food for its addictive properties

or sugar or processed foods for their addictive properties, like think about it this way. How appalled would parents be if there were commercials on TV for cigarettes for kids or for alcohol for kids? Oh yeah. Any other addictive substance. Yeah sure we have to buy them still but no parent would stand for that shit at all. And so when you look at it from that viewpoint when you look at it from that lens and I'm look I'm a big personal responsibility person. I firmly believe people are individuals and we should

have the freedom to make all the choices we want, including all the bad choices we want. But I think that starts when we're adults. I don't believe that for children. I don't think kids should have the freedom to go just by drugs or something at the store. I think that should be illegal. I think an adult should be able to do that because you're an adult. But I don't think kids should be able to do that. So looking at it through that lens, it's, I feel like this may be an interesting battle coming up in the future because as your science

continues to grow and get published, and I'm sure more scientists are going to study and look at what you're looking at because you're kind of opening up this Pandora's box of information. I can see a battle coming up where we may regulate food like we do drugs for children because, again, when I watch these commercials coming from the fitness industry, to me, it's almost as appalling as if they were saying,

hey kid, have a beer. You know, here you go kid, have this candy. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Stop advertising this shit to my kids. Yeah, no, again, you go back to the old smoking tapes. I mean, the advertising for smoking was so vastly different than it is now. I mean, now you hardly see, you can't really advertise for smoking, but back in the 50s and the 60s,

I mean, just the types of advertisements, it's funny, you know, there were advertisements that actually had doctors in them where the doctors would be smoking in the office and saying, oh, you know, sophisticated, it was to be a doctor and an authority figure smoking. And, you know, so that all changed once the science came about and said, hey, guess what? Smoking's killing everybody. So we need to stop promoting it so much. And so I think it's just gonna be a matter of time. And especially now, if we look at the obesity numbers

among little kids, and it's pretty sad when you have to look at the obesity rates among kids age two to five. I mean, you don't typically even think that that's a possibility, but it is a real possibility now. We're seeing that those numbers are just going up and up, and it's not something that's going to be easy to rectify. So I think it's really just a matter of time before we're going to have to see, you know, some social pushback in

terms of people demanding that there be some changes, because you're right. I mean, when you're advertising to children who really don't have volitional control yet over making good decisions, then it becomes a problem. And I've seen studies where they show the livers of children who consume lots of sugar and who are overweight. And they have livers that look like the livers of like alcoholics, in particular when they over consume fructose because the liver has a limited ability to process. I when I first got certified as a personal trainer over 20 years

ago, they had just changed the name of adult onset diabetes to type two diabetes. They used to be called adult onset diabetes. So if you went to the doctor, there were two types of diabetes, type one, and then adult onset. And the reason why they called adult onset was because if you were really unhealthy, you developed it as an adult and no kids got it. It was, it didn't happen to children, but they changed the name because kids get it now. It's absolutely. If that's not a fucking enough. and for any parent out there, this is what I tell people our listeners like you're a parent. You can't tell me, you can't see a difference in your children when they eat a shit ton of sugar.

Yeah. All parents talk about it. I see it's clear as day and I can see my kids overeating the hell out of sugar far more than anything else. I rarely ever see my kids over eat a steak or vegetables or anything else, but if I give them bread sometimes they will, but if I give them candy, if I give them unlimited access to candy all day long, they will eat, they'll eat until they get sick.

They'll eat more candy than you can even, it's mind blowing how much candy they can eat and It's because it's it's got addictive properties bottom line So when I hear people in our industry, especially this like fitness muscle building fat loss industry say things like You know if it fits your macros go ahead and eat it or a calories a calorie or you know I mean they're coming from the standpoint of body composition. They really don't, that's all I care about, right?

How I look. And so they don't take all any of these things into account. I mean, it makes me roll my eyes and, you know, pull my forehead because it's, you know, are you blind? It's pretty obvious to me. And a lot of the studies that you'll come out with even, I'll read the studies and I'll be like, duh, but they have to be done because we've got so much pushback, you know what I mean?

Yeah. So moving forward, what are you gonna be studying moving forward? What are you guys looking at now? You talked about artificial sweeteners, which fascinates me because obviously there's no calories in artificial sweeteners and we wouldn't expect them to have similar effects on the body or the brain or whatever. And of course, now we have studies showing that

artificial sweeteners are tied to diabetes and to obesity as well. Are you gonna be studying that more or what else are you looking at now moving forward? Yeah, so I think definitely interested in artificial sweeteners. I'm interested in, you know, it's funny when you speak of artificial sweeteners. I'm interested in, you know, it's funny when you speak

of artificial sweeteners. People really cling to some of these ideas. And so I hear a lot about, I overheard a couple people the other day just in passing, talking about how they cut all sugar out, but you know, they replaced it with stevia. And that, you know, everything's great now because they're consuming stevia.

But the problem is that stevia is just as processed as real sugar in terms of, it's interesting that because it's marketed so well as being natural and coming from nature that people just sort of believe that, yeah, well, this is actually better for me. But the studies are suggesting that artificial sweeteners and things like stevia actually aren't. And so I'm interested in that. I've also taken a strong interest in looking at nutrition from more of a developmental lifespan.

And so a lot of our initial work on addiction was done, you know, I guess sort of in the characteristic of thinking about what might be happening among adults, but I've become more interested in the genesis of this because we know that adults who potentially are addicted to food got that way somehow. I've been interested in looking at the effects of in utero exposures to different foods and early exposure to different foods. So looking at little kids and how the types of diets that they're consuming can affect not only their behavior, but also what happens later in life in terms of their food preferences. Excellent.

Well, Godspeed, I wish you all the best. I think you're doing excellent work. And these are things that we need to look at because a lot of this country in particular has their head in the sand. And there's a massive, massive amount of money and special interest that goes into telling us that the Emperor's has clothes on or whatever. And this is good. This is very revealing.

It's opening up conversations. And I appreciate the work you're doing and keep doing it. Okay, thank you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance,

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