Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - James Krieger on the Truth About Eating Grains

Episode Date: February 9, 2017

In this podcast I interview James Krieger from Weightology.net. James is a published scientist, author, and speaker, and someone whose work has really helped me better understand the fundamentals of losing fat, building muscle, and staying healthy. He has a knack for breaking down complex ideas and systems into easily digested morsels, which is what I strive to do in my work as well. So, in this interview, I pick James’s brain on the hot issue of eating grains. We’re hearing more and more that grains make us fatter, sicker, and dumber, but how true are these claims? Is wheat slowly killing us? Should we avoid gluten? Are some grains safer or better to eat than others? What about GMO crops? Should we worry about them? Well, James answers all of these questions and more, so if you’ve been wondering or worrying about your grain intake, then you definitely should listen to what he has to say. So, with that, let’s get to the interview... 5:57 - What is the state of grains and should we be worried about them? 10:18 - Is wheat bad? Has it changed over time due to genetic modification? 12:52 - Should we be worried about aflatoxin and methanol? 21:02 - What type of grains are best to choose from? 22:06 - Why do you pay attention to fiber intake? 24:06 - How about brown rice versus white rice? 28:09 - What other grain sources do you like to eat? 29:16 - What if you don't do well with grains? 31:57 - Are there concerns with studies being misrepresented? 41:51 - What's the deal with GMOs? 46:54 - Where can people find you and your projects/work? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

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about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleLife.com back with another episode of my podcast. And in this episode, I interview James Krieger from Weightology.net. Now in case you haven't heard of him, James is a published scientist, he's an author and a speaker, James is a published scientist. He's an author and his speaker and someone whose work has really helped me better understand the fundamentals of losing fat, building muscle and staying healthy. I came across his work early on in my travels in this space. And I think the first article of his

that I ever read was on how insulin works in the body and how it relates to fat storage and fat burning. And that really crystallized for me why insulin isn't the enemy and carbs are not the enemy and why overeating really is the fundamental mechanism underlying weight gain. So thank you, James, for writing that article. He's written hundreds of other articles as well over the years, and he has a knack for breaking down complex ideas and systems into easily digested morsels, which is really what I strive to do in my work as well. So I really appreciated the effort that he put into all the articles that he has posted online. So in this interview, I pick James's brain on the hot issue of eating grains because we're hearing more and more these days that grains, they just make us fatter and sicker and dumber. But you know, you have to wonder how true are these claims? Is it true that wheat is slowly

killing us? Should we avoid gluten? Are some grains safer or better to eat than others? What about GMO crops? Should we worry about them? Should we not worry about them? And in this interview, James answers all of those questions and more. So if you've been wondering or worrying about your grain intake, then you should definitely listen to what he has to say, because I think you're going to find it interesting. So with that, let's continue the interview. Hey, James, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So I'm excited to talk to you because this is a subject, grains, eating grains that I get

asked about frequently. I've written a little bit about it. I've spoken a little bit about it, but I haven't really done a, you know, whatever 30, 45 minute discussion on it. And for people listening, follow-up books. And, you know, Paleo is huge. And a lot of it is about just demonizing grains, of course, and then wheat in general and promising great things if you just stop eating, you know, wheat or grains. And so what's, I'm going to pass the mic to you here, James. So what are your thoughts on the state of grains? And, you know, should we be worried about it should

we not be worried about it unless you are the very very small percentage of the population who has uh gluten intolerance or something like that which is a very very small percentage there's no need to be concerned about grains and i get frustrated with the whole grain thing and you know you got guys like like Perlmutter you know with his grain brain book and stuff these guys that are doing this stuff they're just looking to sell books through fear-mongering I mean let's face it in the nutrition industry and health industry fear-mongering sells I mean if you want to make a lot of money then all you got to do is make people afraid of something.

And, you know, have it, you know, and if you can just make it remotely sound scientific, then you can make a ton of money and people will buy your books and. Buy your nutrition courses and come to your lectures. Yeah. Yeah. And. I think there's also something to be said for the marketing of it. It's like you can just isolate this one thing and here's the boogeyman. And if you just get rid of this, then a whole new life is going to open up to you.

Yeah, and I think these people are taking advantage of human nature. It's human nature to want to find some single thing to blame. Right. to want to find some single thing to blame. Right. You know, and I think from a marketing perspective, these people that are selling these books and doing these things are just taking advantage of that. And so you combine that with the fear mongering

and yeah, you become a New York Times bestseller like Gary Taubes, you know, making, telling people first you should be afraid of carbs and now he's kind of gone away from that. Now he's on sugar, but you know, making, telling people first, you should be afraid of carbs. And now he's, he's kind of gone away from that. Now he's on sugar, but yeah, you know, it's, uh, like, don't, don't cares about calories. That's old thinking, you know, energy. It's nonsense. Um, and so, I mean, it was so funny cause actually, you know, I, I did a lecture in Australia just this past summer and I was there I was there with Alan Aragon and Brett Contreras and Brad Schoenfeld. And on my flight, I didn't even know this, I was on the airplane. And I looked back,

and actually Brett was on my airplane, I didn't even realize that. And so I sat down, we were talking. And we were talking about the same thing. We were like, if we really wanted to make a lot of money, we could just we could just totally make up some bogus thing and just make it remotely sound scientific and just sell tons of money and totally take advantage of people. Of course, we're not like that. We would never do that. But it's the nature of the industry, and I think the whole grain thing is a typical example of that. you can take these certain isolated studies where you know there's there's a few papers here and there that that would show that grains may you know stimulate some certain types of inflammatory responses um in the intestine or something like that you'll find a few isolated studies like that

and so people will take that and say oh you gotta avoid the grains you know yeah and you have to look at you got to look at the whole picture you got to look at what is the weight of the evidence you know alan has talked a lot about this i talk about this all the time you can't take some isolated study especially a study that looks at something like uh an immune cell reaction to something i mean that doesn't that doesn't tell you what's going on in the whole body and what's going to happen over time. Right. You got to look at, I mean, your gold standard are going to be your randomized controlled trials on humans. And then, you know, that's, and meta-analyses and things like that. That's kind of the, the, the, the best evidence. And then below that you'll have like observational data, epidemiological data, things like that.

Case studies. When you look at, yeah. So when you look at the randomized controlled trials on grains, And then below that, you'll have like observational data, epidemiological data, things like that. Case studies. Yeah. So when you look at the randomized controlled trials on grains, when you look at the observational data on grains, it's almost unanimous that there is either a health benefit or at least a neutral effect. There's no evidence that there's some negative effect. And so anyone trying to sell this idea that grains are somehow harmful it's it's it is not based on best evidence uh and and it's simply not it's not it's just not based on the best evidence that exists and and we're so so you know some of the things that people hear like for example wheat is particularly demonized these days as as this is this is the

real like yeah you know you should eliminate these the other grains but if you eat wheat then it's really a problem um where you know for example i some of the things you just hear is that today's wheat is very different like than you know it was a hundred years ago because of genetic modification and stuff like that oh that gets into the whole gmo thing again there's no evidence for it there's no it's like yeah i get so frustrated when i hear people say these things it's like that it's it's not based on any solid scientific evidence at all i mean it's just people it's either people that are just fear-mongering or they they'll take some small

thing they saw in a study totally out of context and and just run with that you know and it's you know i yeah there's so many things you have to consider i mean let's just hypothetically let's say you see a study that shows some ingredient or some component of wheat stimulates some inflammatory reaction in a particular type of cell, for example. Let's say, you know, so you get these fear-mongering people who take that study and they'll say, look, wheat causes inflammation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No. That was under very specific conditions and you have to consider what's the dose. You know, I mean, that's one thing that a lot of people forget about is, you know, what is the dose? Because sometimes with a lot of, you know, I can take almost any substance and show some type of problem with it if I use a high enough dose.

I mean, a perfect example is, I mean… Go drink five gallons of water and see how you feel. enough dose. I mean, perfect example is, I mean, go drink five gallons of water and see how you feel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's a condition called hyponatremia, which can actually kill you if you drink way too much water. Right. So there's a, there's a, you have to consider the dose in the context of whatever you're talking about. And when people start talking about wheat and things like that, again, they'll take some of these isolated studies. When you look at the amounts that people consume and what are the overall impacts to health, again, the impacts are either neutral or positive. And that's the thing, you can't separate out the positive benefits either.

I mean, you know, I'm going to use beans as an example, for example, certain types of beans, there's, there's a, actually, no, I won't use beans. Let me use peanut butter as an example. Peanut butter contains something called aflatoxin. It's actually toxic, right? Yeah, the bulletproof guy is all about this, right? He says his coffee is like, I know it's, it's a story. But yeah, that's where a lot of people probably have heard of this. Yeah, yeah. So aflatoxin is found in peanut butter. It's found in all peanut butter, and it's a toxic substance.

It's a toxic substance. But here's the deal. The amounts are so small that they have no physiological consequence to your body. Again, it's a dose thing. Another example is methanol. So I bring this, you know, aspartame, for example. So, aspartame, NutraSweet. Aspartame, when it's broken down in your body, it's broken down into its component amino acids, phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and then also methanol. Well, methanol is wood alcohol. It's actually a toxic substance,

but here's the deal. You will get more methanol drinking orange juice or eating fruit than you would ever get from aspartame. And again, it's because our body can handle certain amounts of methanol. No problem. It's, it's,

if you consume, you know, if you, if you consume huge amounts of methanol, that's where it's a problem. So you have to consider the dose and the context. Um, and you also have to consider the dose and the context, and you also have to weigh also the positive benefits of something. So, for example, we talk about wheat.

Well, most foods with wheat also have a high fiber content, for example, things like that, which can actually have benefits. And so you can't just isolate these. And if it's not highly processed, it will have nutritious value as well. I mean, yeah, maybe Wonder Bread is not the best thing to eat. You could make a better choice. Yeah, you can make a better choice. But even Wonder Bread, yeah, it might not be the best choice because it's refined. But you know what? I mean you can still – if you have a few slices a day, it's not going to do anything.

I mean you can fit it into an overall plan. If you looked at the average person on the average, kind of the standard American type of diet, and this is something even with the low-carb craze that I've said many times myself is that, okay, if you're an average person, you are overweight, you're sedentary. You know, you drink alcohol semi semi regularly, you probably you probably smoke as well. So you have a lot of things that are kind of working against your overall health. And so you know, what I've seen just with people reaching out to me is that you have people in that they go from that situation to maybe they read grain brain or wheat belly. you know their normal diet is like carbs carbs carbs and it's just refined crap and they eat the wonder bread and then they eat pasta and then they maybe have croissants and donuts and shit and whatever and they so they go from that to

then they go oh okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna stop eating that stuff and they go what am i gonna replace those calories with and and then they happen to make some better choices and and then feel better maybe they lose a little bit of weight and and but you happen to make some better choices and and then feel better maybe they lose a little bit of weight and and but you know they misattribute what they don't understand what actually just happened there they thought it was they cut out the wheat and all of a sudden they lost you know over the next x number of weeks they lost 10 pounds and they feel better well it's like yeah but that's not because the wheat was was holding you down it was that yeah your diet as a whole sucked and you were eating too many calories.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, and that's – I mean that gets in line too with, you know, yeah, people that switch to low-carb diets or anything like that. I mean, you know, especially, you know, you had mentioned pastries and those types of foods. You know, some of these foods like cake, things like that that I mean they're very energy dense right and so yeah of course if I eliminate foods like cake and cookies and things like that oh what happens to my energy intake it's going to go down because I'm no I'm no longer eating these energy dense foods and also these foods are typically very palatable you know

they're highly palatable they taste good They actually encourage us to overeat or override our natural appetite signaling mechanisms. So, yeah. So if you reduce those food, those types of foods, well, yeah, then, of course, you're going to start to lose weight and you're going to start to feel better. ingredient, you reduce the energy density of your diet and you possibly reduce the palatability to a point where you weren't feeling like, you know, there's always, there's a reason why people always feel like they have room for dessert and it's got nothing to do with, it's got nothing to do with some hormonal effect of sugar or something like that. It has everything to do with palatability and dessert tastes great and it stimulates the reward mechanisms in our brain and so yeah so we're going to eat it even if we're not hungry and so you know the whole palatability thing is a totally separate issue that's a excuse me it's a major it's a major driver of obesity I mean you know all of a lot of the foods we eat nowadays

the processed foods things like that eating out i mean these are we would almost call hyper palatable foods i mean yeah they are basically engineered sugar high fat yeah delicious yeah they're engineered to just encourage us to eat more even when we're not hungry you know so and i would say that probably then when we're looking at grains, type of grains, at least, you know, a lot of the people that again are more in that standard American diet, you know, subsection, the type of grains they're eating are going to be more of these highly refined, highly palatable foods. It's, I don't think these are the average person in that crowd. They're not like, you know,

eating Ezekiel bread or something for breakfast. Like that's not, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, yeah, the, you know, they go to get their coffee and they're eating three pastries with it as well. So I think that's another, just a good point to make that we have to look at the overall picture here and say, okay, so what types of grains are they eating and how are they living? Yeah. But I think if you took those people to your point, you're saying, yeah, okay, if you ate a couple slices of Wonder Bread a day, it doesn't really matter. I would say to the person, like if your diet on the whole makes sense, you're not like starved for nutrients and you take care of your body.

I mean, would you agree? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, you know, I'm a person I favor kind of a flexible dieting approach, kind of similar to, you know, if it fits your macros. But at the same time, people tend to misrepresent that as saying, oh, are you just saying people can just eat whatever they want? You know, as long as it fits their macros, you could just live off candy and protein powder all day. And it's like, no, I'm not saying that because, I mean mean it would be very hard to stick with something like that simply because you probably feel hungry all the time you know i mean theoretically yeah you could get you could get lean and ripped on as long as your protein intake is up on you know it probably doesn't

matter but but it's more the adherence factor you know you're not gonna be able to adhere to something like that simply because you know some of these foods are just not as satiating. So especially if you're in an energy deficit, you know, you're still going to want to have most of your diet coming from whole foods, you know, things like that. Yeah, I mean, I wrote an article recently about clean eating and basically kind of saying that even as someone that, you know, I also recommend flexible dieting as I think it's, it's, it's, it's the best overall approach. I think for, for most people, I have come across people that have problems, um, regulating their, you know, they, they, they really do need to cut out sugar for a bit because you know what I mean? They just like, once they start eating it, they feel like they can't stop and so forth. Yeah. And there's people like that, you know, it's like, you know,

you have to have an individual approach, but like you said, for most people, it's going to work fine. Yeah. Yeah. But how that, the intelligent flexible dieter though, looks, I think more like a clean eater than, you know, your average IFYM Instagram bro that, you know, posts nothing about, you know, every, every other meal is like like candy or or ice cream yeah yeah some bullshit because when you when you really look at it if you're going to get the majority of your calories

from nutritious foods i mean then your meal plan starts to kind of look it looks pretty clean in a sense because reading yeah yeah you're eating a lot of stuff that you know you're gonna have fruits and vegetables and whole grains and so forth um so on on the on the point of grains, then what type of grains then would you say are the best ones to choose from and which ones are of, you know, I would say lower nutritive value or that you should not necessarily limit your intake on, but like, okay, so here, these are the grains that you're doing yourself a favor. You eat these grains. These are the grains that are neutral. If 80% of your carbs were coming from these, probably not a good idea. Yeah. I'd say really it just comes down, I think, whole versus refined grains. I mean, if you really want to simplify it. Big thing is usually if I'm at the grocery store and I'm

shopping and I'm looking at grain foods, the thing that I really look for is actually I'm not as concerned whether it's whole or refined grain. Typically, I'm actually looking at the fiber content. So because you can have some whole grain foods that are actually pretty low or almost non-existent with fiber, for example. And you can have some more refined grain things that still have a decent amount of fiber in it. So yeah, I mean, if you want to jump in real quick and explain why that is, that's a good point. Something fiber is, you know, a lot of people, as they start to get educated in this space and learn about calories, they learn about macros, but fiber is something that's not talked about much. And why does it, you know, why is that important? Why do you pay attention to your fiber intake? So, so the reason I pay attention to fiber

intake is number one is, um, there's some evidence, although it's, I will say it's not totally, um, consistent, you know, it depends on what research you look at, but obviously there's some evidence, although I will say it's not totally consistent. You know, it depends on what research you look at. But obviously there's some evidence that fiber helps with satiety. So it's going to help you feel fuller. And then there's possible other health benefits. I mean, we know that there's some data, observational data. Now, again, there's limitations to this data that suggests that, you know, higher fiber intakes are associated with a lower risk of colon cancer and lower risk of heart disease and

things like that. If you're someone who has problems with blood glucose regulation, so either you have type 2 diabetes or let's say your insulin was maybe you don't have type 2 diabetes but you're insulin resistant which means you're on your way to type 2 diabetes, fiber helps slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream so that's going to help you with your blood glucose control so so there's a number of benefits to fiber and and typically when i talk when i think of whole grains usually whole grain foods are usually higher in fiber than refined grains and that's not always the case but it's it's usually

the case and that's so usually i'm more looking at the fiber content of a grain food. So for example, when I buy pasta for myself, you know, I usually, I use, I look at, you know,

I usually just buy the Barilla brand and I'm, no, I'm not paid by Barilla here, but they have different types of pasta, you know, although they, and they have a whole wheat pasta. If you look at the fiber content,

it's actually got a pretty reasonable amount of fiber it's something like five or six grams per per serving so compared to the more comported the regular white pasta which I want to say is probably two grams or something like that so so I go for the whole grain pasta or the high fiber pasta you know based on those those reasons because of the superior fiber content. Makes sense. And then what about like rice, for example? I just also have been written about this, you know, white rice versus brown rice. And then you have variety in there.

That's an interesting one, you know, because, you know, brown rice, you know, I mean, conventional wisdom would say that brown rice is definitely better than white rice because um because the shell hasn't been removed from the rice and right but but if you actually compare brown and white rice from a nutritional standpoint they're not that much different i think brown rice has a little bit more fiber but it's not a whole it's we're talking like usually one gram per serving or something like that so it's not a it's not a huge difference so i think in're talking like usually one gram per serving or something like that. So it's not a, it's not a huge difference. So I think in terms of rice, you know, whether you do brown or white, it's probably not as big of a deal. Um, you also have to consider it in

the context of an overall meal and an overall diet. Right. I mean, unless like, what are you eating? Uh, you know, two pounds of rice a day. Well then, yeah, then, then we, it probably is relevant, but then there's a bigger problem here. yeah that's the thing it's like you know again you know let's talk a bit again about like blood glucose control things like that well there's a lot of things that affect you know how fast glucose enters your bloodstream from whatever meal you eat and if you're eating a mixed meal with protein and vegetables and everything like that like the type of rice you're eating probably really isn't going to make any difference because you've you've got some other things you know you've got the vegetables you're

eating so you're providing fiber from the vegetables things like that you've got your protein intake all those things are going to also impact so so it's like you said if I'm just eating pure rice all the time then yeah yeah, whole brown rice is probably going to be better than white. But if I'm eating mixed meals, do I need to be eating brown rice versus white rice? It's probably not going to matter. Yeah, go with whichever one you like the most. Yeah. And that comes down to adherence.

You know, I mean, you have to think about the adherence factor with any type of dietary strategy. I mean, again, that's why I typically favor flexible dieting because… The best diet is the one you can stick to, right? Yeah. Whether it's low-carb, paleo, I don't care what it is, adherence is by far the biggest predictor of fat loss success. By far. I mean, by far.

And so it's what you can stick to, you know, you know, you look at these randomized controlled trials, comparing low carb to high carb and stuff like that. And a lot of studies sometimes may show small differences in the average weight loss and stuff. And then you get, you know, people in the low carb camp, you know, the point of this one state and they'll say, Oh, look at that. See, low carb is the best or whatever. And it's, and you know, and it's something like a two-pound difference over a year.

I mean it's some ridiculously small number. And in a lot of cases, protein isn't controlled for in those. So like the protein intake is different and you can't – you're not comparing apples to apples here. You're comparing a high-protein, low-carb to a low-protein, high-carb. That's not – that's useless. Yeah, that's exactly – that's what happens whenotein, low-carb to a low-protein, high-carb. That's useless. Yeah, that's what happens when people switch to low-carb is usually their protein intake automatically goes up. And in fact, there's research showing that most of the satiety benefit from low-carb dieting actually comes from the high-protein part and not the low-carb part. Yeah, I've written about that extensively.

So I've written about that extensively. And, you know, I, and also there, I think it's kind of ironic that a low carb diet has become popular in the fitness space in particular, because there's no question that a high carb diet is better for gaining muscle and strength that I don't know how there's, there's plenty of evidence for that, both published and then just anecdotally, like go, go follow a strength training program for a year on a low or try try i don't you know six months on a low carb diet and then start eating you know carbs and see how you feel and see how your training goes yeah you don't even need to any scientific research you can just go do it yeah yeah unless you're training like all super low volume you know we're not really tapping

into your glycogen stores um but if you're training with any decent amount of volume yeah it's you're not going to be able to do it on a low carb diet for an extended period of time. Yeah. Um, so on the grains, what do you like? Um, other, you know, so we have oatmeal obviously is a, is a good choice. Um, yeah, oatmeal is great. Yeah. I like a lot. Um, you know, quinoa, uh, are there any other kind of grains that you like to eat that are again, stuff that you're generally going to be, you know, you're going to be preparing yourself in terms of breads and stuff. Do you say, you know, it doesn't really matter, pick whichever one you like. Yeah. Usually with breads, I just look at the fiber content again.

Um, usually I'm, uh, I mean, most of the time it's going to be some type of whole wheat bread, but I mean, a lot of times, you know, when I get bread, you know, I'll either just go to Costco and get the Kirkland multigrain bread or whatever, which has something like five grams per slice. You know, my wife likes to get these sandwich thins, these oral wheat sandwich thins, but they have a pretty decent amount of fiber per slice as well. I can't remember exactly, but again, usually that's the one thing I'm looking at. Every time I pick out some bread from the thing, the first thing I'm looking at is the fiber content. Yeah, it makes sense. And, you know, I think it's also worth adding that it also coming back to what you said in the beginning of the, of the interview with, with gluten intolerance, and that's obviously a whole nother discussion. That a whole thing right now and yeah from from the i was doing some reading on it even recently that it looks like there it is it is a thing it's just not as

prevalent as you know many people would have us believe i mean you have celiac of course then you also can have people that they just don't do well with gluten and i get asked about this a lot and i'm sure people listening are kind of wondering, even in, even, you know, in the context of grains, how do you know? And what I've told people, and I'd be curious as your take on it is, okay, so if you're eating, if you go eat a bowl of pasta and it hurts and you don't feel good and you know, you're stuck, you have, you get a stomach ache or you're getting gassy or bloated and you find that, you know, that tends to happen when you eat certain types of grains or gluten-containing foods, then just don't eat them. Yeah. And kind of across the board.

Like if there's any food that you're eating, like, you know, some people I've come across people that have a FODMAP sensitivity. They didn't know it and it was confusing to them. And, you know, they would find out like, oh, when they eat beans, they don't feel good. Like they get bloated. Their stomach is just off yeah and so so that's like a an easy way to know if you do well with wheat then do you eat it and you feel totally fine you probably do well with wheat yeah i would totally agree i don't know of any other way beyond getting scientifically tested somehow um you know yeah you just go by how you feel. Yeah, if certain, again, there's no, there's no rule that you have to eat grains or that you have to

eat, you know, this type of food, you have to eat that type of food, you know, again, if most of your foods are coming from whole foods, then you know, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter. But at the same time, you don't need to avoid grains either yes it's like if if you feel yeah if you feel crappy eating grains then or certain types of grains then don't eat them i mean you don't you know there's no requirement you know you're not going to miss out on some magical health benefit or something like that if you don't eat certain grains so but at the same time don't be afraid of not they're not also going to harm you. There's not some evil component in these grains that, you know, if you aren't sensitive in some way, there's not some component in there that's going to somehow cause you long-term health problems. Or, you know, was it Perlmutter?

He made some quote, just ridiculous quote one time. It was something like that grains were like this generation's tobacco. It was just like yeah i was like are you kidding me it's just some stupid comment yeah so yeah it's not it's not this generation's tobacco it's just ridiculous that just that makes for a good headline yeah um all right so now let me pose this to you so this is all something that you know i people people ask me about so you you um, you're talking about misinterpreting research, uh, or misrepresenting it or just taking stuff out of context or whatever.

And, um, so something that, you know, anti-grain people have, have come to me with is the idea that, um, basically the science is stunted in this area and because of the amount of money and essentially the politics of science, which, I mean, that's again, that's a that's a different discussion. I think there are legitimate points to be made, not necessarily with grains, but just in general of, you know, the game of getting published and what it really takes and so forth. what it really takes and so forth. But I know that there definitely are people out there that have at least heard that, well, the reason why somebody like you would say this is not because you're in the pocket of big grain or whatever, but it's just that big grain has a stranglehold on the science and has manipulated things. And I hear this from people that think dairy is also going to kill you. And I'll sometimes send over research on things like this. And then they'll be like, Oh, well, you know, they just don't try to say it's invalid research. Um, and especially if the funding came

from anything having to do with like sugar, I run across this all the time as well. People think that sugar is just, you know, it's, it's a straight toxin and you should never have any. And there's good research out there. There was one study, I think it was a UK Bureau of Sugar. It was a review on the whole subject. And it's a good read. Like if you actually read it, it's good research. I mean, it's a good paper.

But some people will reject that stuff out of hand because of where the funding comes from or just out of like almost like it's a conspiracy theory of some kind you know what i mean so when it comes to funding so i mean the people that say this do not understand research and they don't understand how it works they they they just totally clueless and um and i say that because number one there are literally thousands of scientists across the world studying grains now there's no way that all those scientists are somehow in the pocket of big grain no way there's thousands of them different countries different you know different universities and and so this idea of some massive conspiracy is ridiculous. Because here's the deal. People need to think about the math of conspiracies, right?

And I've talked about this before. The math of conspiracies, if you want to pull off a successful conspiracy, you cannot have a lot of people involved. Because the more people that are involved the less likely your conspiracy is going to be successful because at some point someone is going to blow the whistle or totally screw everything up you can't you know that's why i laugh at people who think that jfk was assassinated by some massive government conspiracy it's like there's no way it's impossible you know anyone who actually knows the history of Lee Harvey Oswald and how he got the job

at the book depository and all that stuff, there would have literally had to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people involved in somehow setting this thing up. And then they would have had to stay quiet for decades after that. I'm sorry, it doesn't, that's not how conspiracies work. Okay.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure actually that is going to, the government documents are going to be declassified in our lifetime, I think. It's sooner rather than later. I honestly don't know enough about it. I haven't read enough about it. I mean, I'm a skeptical person and a cynical person. So, if we're talking government, I look in the history of government and one for one, the worst people inevitably rise to the top and fuck everything up and break it for everybody basically.

So, you know, I, I would say, I don't know anything about that, but if they, if, if people in government could somehow for their own selfish reasons,

their own self gain, do something like that. I would not put it beyond humans to want to do that. But yeah, I totally understand what you're saying. I mean, if you're talking about how are you going to get hundreds of people to all stay silent and all do what they need to do and,

you know, yeah, that's, and that's the thing. It's just like, so, so in the realm of science, which is even,

would even be worse because again, you've got people, multiple people, thousands of scientists across different countries all studying the same thing, coming to similar conclusions. And not all of this research is funded by big grain. So you can't sit there and say, well, you know, they're in the pockets of big grain, because a lot of them are not. They're in the pockets of big grain because a lot of them are not. The second thing I want to say to that is even if a big grain company funds a study, what people need to understand is that that does not mean that they were actually involved in the data collection, in whether or not the results were published, things like that. And the reason I say that is I'm going to use myself as an example. My first study that I

ever published was a study on glutamine supplementation EAS the supplement company funded my study okay but that was the only involvement they had we wrote a grant we submitted it to them they agreed to fund the study they gave us some money and that's all that's all they did there was no pressure from that that none of their people were involved in the study. They gave us some money and that's all that, that's all they did. There was no pressure from that. None of their people were involved in the study. There was no pressure from them to try to somehow produce positive results. You know, they agreed that if we had positive or negative results that we would still publish. And so, you know, these people who, and we published our results and our results were actually kind of mixed.

You know, we saw some positive results and we saw some negative results. And we published both. Now, someone who reads my study, if they just looked at the funding source, they're like, oh, no, we can't listen to this study. EAS funded it. Yep. But. Without actually analyzing the research and. Yeah, they weren't actually doing all the work.

They were not involved in any step you know the only thing they gave us was the money to allow us to do the work yeah and that was it now I would say you need to understand that yeah and I'd say because I mean you have integrity obviously that you you did it the way you did it I would say though that theoretically you probably had a financial incentive to uh like if you would have published results that made them very happy, then there's maybe it would be more likely that they would come back to, you know, for more work.

I think it should be said, because I'm going to say that there are like, there's an HMB study in particular. That's a fucking joke that has been used to sell HMB as if it's better than steroids where essentially. Yeah, I know about that. So that kind of stuff is out there and

it gets, I know. And that stuff does exist. I'm not saying that, that you should not pay any attention to funding source. So, so, but what I, what I am saying is that you can't use funding source as an automatic reason to write off a study, right? You know, you have to look at the overall body of work that's out there. You know got to look at the methodology things like that like the HMB study that you talked about the thing is is even not ignoring any funding source if you look at the study the results are so like I mean that's ridiculous absolutely that's right it already starts right there in 10 weeks they gained how much muscle and lost how it was the results are already just so unbelievably ridiculous that that right there, I don't

even need to know who funded the study. That doesn't matter. Just looking at the study itself, that's all I need to know that hey. Dr. A lot of people don't know that though, especially people that are… Dr. And I do understand that. But again, if we have especially a large body of evidence like we do with grains, not all of it is funded by industry. There's a lot of studies out there that are not funded by industry that have similar findings. So when you look at the weight of the evidence, and if I've got some studies funded by industry showing one way, but then the non-industry funded studies are showing the same thing, then you know what?

Then it's not the industry. It's not industry influencing the results. It's just the truth, you know? So, so you got to look at the body of evidence and yeah, I'm not sure what else to say on that. Yeah, sure. No, it's just, I thought that was a point worth bringing up because it's something I do come across that people, it's also then you have some of the anti-Grain. People will say things like that to further bolster their position and further legitimize their argument basically. Yeah. So hold on.

I got to go check the mail. I got to check. I got to go get my check from Big Rain right now. I'm now back. Forgiving that plug I just gave. That's what it is. The wire just hit your account. Yeah, I know.

I actually kind of laugh at some people. Like there was one guy just recently, I got an email from some guy. It was about a presentation I gave on sugar and he like accused me of working for Monsanto and everything like that I'm just like I'm like I'm like what do these people think that we're just getting these massive checks from these companies like I just like I don't know I just thought it was only I know I wish it was true man I must be missing out I must be doing something wrong because I'm not getting anything you're not a part of the Illuminati man I mean just get it um okay great

so yeah I think that is a good kind of just overview of the entire subject I think we've kind of touched on all the major things is there anything else that you come across or that you think should be uh mentioned on it before wrapping up i can't really think of anything else i think we kind of touched on all the major stuff yeah so oh one thing actually that is i think another thing that you know that gets brought up is um this idea of genetically modified grains and that that because that also gets targeted as like okay if you have the special ancient egyptian einkorn whatever you know, grain, then you're fine. But if you're having the genetically modified grain, you know, that's bad.

Yeah, so that's really almost a whole discussion on GMOs in general. We don't have to go down that whole, you know, road for this discussion. But again, what people need to realize is everything we eat is a genetically modified organism or, you know, everything is genetically modified. We ourselves are genetically modified organ. Just the process of evolution is a process of genetic modification. It's just how it's done. There are a lot of ways that we can genetically modify things, whether it's through cross-breeding, which some people would say be the natural way, or through inserting genes directly into things. It's all genetic modification. And so this idea that somehow a genetically

modified thing is somehow worse than something that is quote unquote natural. I mean, it kind of goes into the whole artificial versus natural fallacy, which in and of itself is a whole argument. Um, right. Um, and I mean, as far as I know on this point with wheat in particular, really what we're looking at, we're looking at, you know, the, uh, wheat that has been naturally crossbred and selectively bred and changed. So, I mean, I don't, the majority of the wheat from, again, from what I've read is it's not even like it's coming out of a lab. These are, this is like it's generations of wheat farmers that have continued to, you know, genetically modify their wheat, but done actually in a natural fashion. done through done done actually in a natural fashion yeah and my i guess my stance you know anyone who's going to tell me that the gmo that anything that's gmo is somehow unsafe i'm i'm gonna i would say the burden of the proof on is on them okay you prove to me that's unsafe

show me the evidence that it somehow causes some type of harm because you know the evidence on on the safety of gmos it just continues to grow day by day you know i would say the burden of proof is on anyone who's going to tell me that it's unsafe in some way you know because really it's just more i would say it's just more emotional fear-mongering more than anything else it's not you know it's not based on any solid data or evidence. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a, some, that's an area that I've done a bit of reading on and a bit of research on, and I've kind of tried to look at both sides of the argument and, you know, I don't know, it's, it's tough to, because you have people that you have are very pedigreed on both sides of it actually. And I see the, I guess some of the, some of the more sober,

I wouldn't say they're anti-gmo arguments i've seen have been more along the lines of in specific certain types of modifications and certain types of crossbreeding of different species of animals like these super franken salmon and stuff not that or salmon but it's not that it's necessarily going to it's bad for us but and again this is not an area i would consider myself an expert on at all. But that basically some of the smaller arguments that have made sense to me is that we may 30 years from now look back on some of this stuff that we were doing and say that was probably not a good idea. We should have gone about that differently. Not that there shouldn't be any sort of genetic modification at all. But again, that's something that I just personally don't know enough about to have a strong position on

yeah you could all do it you could do a whole podcast on i know it's something i've intentionally avoided personally because i don't want to represent myself as you know understanding more about something than i really do and you know i've kind of like been in the middle on that one where it's like i mean i i can see both both sides. It's hard for me. I feel like I don't have enough, a deep enough understanding to conclusively say, this is where I stand on it. You know? Yeah. A good guy to, um, he was really knowledgeable about GMOs. I don't know if you've ever heard of Kevin Folta. I'll check. I'm going to make a note. Yeah. So he's, um, he's's he's a very knowledgeable um individual on gmos and the science of it and things like that cool maybe you could introduce me actually if you wouldn't mind i don't know him

personally i just know i follow him on facebook and things and uh he's unfortunately i kind of feel bad for the guy because he's been he's been the target of some anti-gmo organizations you know and he's just doing his work he's just doing his work his science and stuff it's um but yeah kevin m folta i think is i i know his name is kevin folta but okay yeah if you just search for kevin folta gmos or whatever you'd uh you'll you'll come you'll find him so he he was at the he was at the university of Florida, I think, but I don't know if he's still there. I'm not sure if he's still there or not. So. Okay, great. Thanks. I'll, I'll reach out to him. That'd be an interesting discussion.

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, um, I think that, that, that is a kind of wraps up the whole grains discussion. So let everybody know where can they find you? Um, you know, if you have any, uh, specific projects that you're working on that you want to let everybody know where can they find you, you know, if you have any specific projects that you're working on that you want to let everybody know about. Yeah, so you can find my website at weightology.net. And there I have a lot of free articles on a lot of different topics, body composition testing, insulin. I have a very popular series on insulin that I've written in the past. And then I also have a members only area where people pay a really cheap monthly fee of like 11 or 12 bucks per month. And I basically do research reviews on all kinds of topics related

to building muscle or losing fat. And then I also do like video presentations and a lot of other, I have an Ask James section where people can ask me questions. So that's another, you know, thing people might want to check out. And then I have, you know, all the different podcasts I've been on, you know, including this one, I'll post it up there, you know, once this one's ready. And, and yeah, so people can find out more about me there there I've also got a list of all my scientific publications on there more projects on the way I'm collaborating with Brad Schoenfeld on more stuff we got more stuff you know I was actually running some stats last night on a research study for him and I've got two more two more things in the works that working with them and I'm also

going to be setting up a coaching business on my website too um here probably in the next two to three weeks hopefully it'll be up and running so great um so yeah so i've got a lot of a lot of stuff going on and i'm giving some talks this year i'm giving a talk in uh spokane inland empire uh fitness conference in spokane washington um and then later in the year i'll be talking at the afpt conference in Spokane, Washington. Um, and then later in the year, uh, I'll be talking at the AFPT conference in Norway. Um, and then other guys will be there. Alan Aragon will be there. Brett Contreras will be there. A lot of other notable figures in the industry will be there as well. So awesome. That's great. Okay, cool. Well, um, yeah, I mean, I recommend everybody go and check out James's work. I've been reading your stuff. I was reading your stuff before you

had it paid when it was all. Yeah. So I've been following yourself for a while. That's all. I've been reading your stuff. I was reading your stuff before you had it paid when it was all. Yeah. So yeah. Following yourself for a while. That's all. I'm glad to get you on the podcast and be able to talk. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thanks again for taking the time. It was a great discussion. I think people, it's going to answer a lot of people's questions about grains. So it's going to be, something nice that I can shuttle people over to now and say, whenever they ask about grains here, come check this out. I think, I think this will take care of you. Yeah. Thanks. Yep. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and

general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com, where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.