StarTalk Radio - Busting Nutrition Myths with Jessica Knurick

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Are seed oils really that bad? Are people getting enough protein? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Paul Mecurio, & Gary O’Reilly cut through the noise on health myths, food misinformation, and the forces making it harder than ever to eat well with nutrition scientist, Jessica Knurick, PhD.  NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:  https://startalkmedia.com/show/busting-nutrition-myths-with-jessica-knurick/ Thanks to our Patrons Rand Richards, Robert van de Walle, C jones, Abbie Dorable, Dave Guhlke, Kyle Ditzig, Ryan Mulcahy, Emil Brandin, David Neris, Michael v. D., Davy Molhoek, Barry Ginsburg, ÆfelRound and find out, Chris Straley, Sumit, Aaroncavelero, Shaunte Martinez, meanbeanmachine, Jeremy Bolduc, Carly Schwartz, Andrew G. Williams, Sharptooths, Areich Richardson, Daniel Weber, Jerry Agrinzoni, Bryan Woodruff, Martynas Jonaitis, Chris sides, John Carmel, Larry Welch, Ryan Morton, Hayden, AstroAigle, Karl Meier, Ryan, Yair, Patrick Hagerty, Chiara, Jess, April Walsh, Pat, sailing dreamweaver, JohnH, Jason Sterling, Donna Friedman, immi white, Marieke Folbert, Shadow, BL, Austin Cobb, Jacob Nicola, Tom Hardgrove, Alexandre Codina, Ian Stafford, vincent oldershaw, Psyonik, BoothBees, Adrian Strehlou, Juan Fernandez, trustabe Cat, G J, Alex, Daniel Ramirez, Sergei Mnatsakanov, Dan R, Destiny Morris, Jraché, Tom Malcolm, KenG, Devin Ulin, Ken San, Ken, ft, Tim Potkay, Matt Anderson, Dejan Fortuna, Jordan Dziedzic, Damein Alexander, Jeb Enoch, Catherine, Cleric Rufio, Aleem Salami, Gfjsyughj, Jesse Hanrahan, Poob, Jayanta Banik, LawfulnessLast, Paul Eibe, kruz, Lucas, Sally Young, Jeff Valle, Eli Blezard-Revill, Connor Simonton, Renée, James Fitzgerald, Guillaume "gee-YOHM", Parent-Teacher of the Abyss, Eric Varela, Shelby Jenkins, and Josh Duncan for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio ad-free and a whole week early.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gary, you got another good one lined up. We do. On our nutrition, not only the good, the bad, but also the ugly. I guarantee by the time we finish this, you're going to be hungry. Are you going to start eating kale after this? You put hot fudge on it, I will. A little whipped cream. A lot of whipped cream.

Coming right up. StarTalk, nutrition edition. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk. begins right now. This is StarTalk's special edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here,

you're a personal astrophysicist, and when you hear special edition, you know who's to my right. Hello. Hello, Gary O'Reilly. Hey, Neil. And I got with us, Paul McCurio. What's up?

Good to see you again. Fresh off the Daily Show. Yeah, yeah. Been the Late Show and all that good stuff. Daily Show and the Late Show. Yeah. Late Show counting down the minutes. Yeah, we're counting down.

Okay, counting down. So what have you cooked up today? Okay, that's on the food scene. That's your fault. All right, so America has long been struggling with its health and especially nutrition. But now it feels like it's even harder to navigate with viral food trends, a Zen pic. It's never felt more complicated to make healthy choices. We're going to discuss, yes, we are popular health myths and how to deal with those in power

and how they are pushing misinformation. So, Neil, if you would introduce our guest. Okay, so you know what you need for that. You need a nutritionist. What a good idea. And over here, we value PhDs. We do. We got a PhD nutritionist.

Even better. What do you think of that? We've got with us, Jessica Nurek. Jessica, welcome to Star Talk. Thank you. Happy to be here. Yes. So you're a professional nutritionist,

and you have a huge online following, very important. And so that makes you, I guess, an influencer. I suppose so. Yes. And because you are sharing your expertise with people who not only seek it because they don't know, they might seek it because they wonder if they're doing the right thing or not. And there's so many people in that situation.

Of course, not only domestically, but surely around the world. Yeah. It can't just be American folks who want to be healthy. So we're here to pick your brain and find out what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong. So Gary led off by saying, you know, America, we're kind of in a nutrition doldrums. But that bates the question, was there ever a time when we were healthier? I mean, I look at old ads for food, and I look at things people were eating and movies and TV shows. None of that looks good.

I think we have made some progress, haven't we? Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what we mean by healthier, right? Because if we're talking about life expectancy, we're certainly doing as good as we've ever done. If you're talking about infectious diseases, we're doing as good as we've ever done without the last year, maybe. But if you're talking about the effort to combat infectious diseases based on knowledge we've gleaned in recent years. Yes, thank you. Not like not getting infectious diseases. Right.

Combating infectious diseases. But if you look at lifestyle-related chronic disease, we're certainly in a place where, The vast majority of Americans have at least one chronic health condition, something like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cardiomatabolic disease. And a lot of that, again, is related to lifestyle. So things like your diet, your physical activity, your stress levels, your sleep levels. And so that's where we are kind of missing the mark in this country. And we could be doing better. Use the term cardiometabolic.

What would that be? Those are things like cardiovascular disease. So people are having heart attacks, type 2 diabetes. Right, so we heard that, but then he's used cardiometabolic. What does that mean? I was just using the all-encompassing term for what I had already said. Oh, okay, okay, got it, got. She's very smart, and you need to keep up.

She's shown off these words. Does things that have to do with your heart and your metabolism? Thank you for dumbing it down for me. So when you talk about we're in a better place, when you look at the numbers, our population is that much larger than it was 50 years ago, Do the statistics, the percentages stack up equivalently or have we moved in a better direction? Yeah, it's relative. So the percentages are higher now. So people who have type 2 diabetes significantly higher, people who have cardiovascular disease. But, you know, as I mentioned,

we're living a lot longer now. And so part of chronic disease is it takes quite a few decades to see chronic disease on average. And so the longer someone lives, the more likely they are to get a chronic disease. What seems strange to me is that the advances in medical science and researchers have been in the last 50, 100 years incredible, and yet our lifestyle outpaces that, right? Like, yet still we have type 2 diabetes in these issues. It seems a little counterintuitive to me. I would think that given how sophisticated we are scientifically, especially when it comes to nutrition, that we would sort of be able to sort of stem that tide a little bit. Well, I mean, we have great medical advancements and medical technology that help people live longer with those conditions.

Yeah. I want to eat bad and just have medicine save me. Yeah. Okay. That checks out, right? Okay, so here we are. What you've landed on is the quick fix solution, which is our GOP 1. So all I do, I pay, I find some money, I get my once, whatever it is, self-injection, take a shot, take the tablet. When was the last time the quick fix was the solution? or are we just kicking this can down the road? Well, it depends on what you mean by the solution.

If the solution is to live longer, a lot of these medications help us do that, help people to live longer. And so they are effective in that way. If we're talking about prevention, we're looking at more lifestyle-related things, things like your diet, things like your activity, your sleep, your stress.

And that's where we would look at preventing these chronic diseases or at least mitigating them so that you wait 10 more years until you get some sort of chronic health condition. So these sort of weight loss drugs that I guess came to us from diabetes treatment. Yeah, very fascinating secondary utility of those medicines. We have some benefit of track record for their use in the diabetic community, but now it's widespread for people just simply want to lose weight.

But they haven't been around for 20 years. How can we know the long-term effects of a miracle drug over a period longer than the time the drug has been around. Yeah, I mean, in humans, we don't have great long-term date, obviously, because it hasn't been out. So you have to look at animal models that kind of can accelerate long-term trials. Oh, because mice don't live that long, so you get multiple generations out of them and see. Exactly. Okay, so what have we found? Do they grow three heads? They have a crazy lifestyle. They party a lot, a lot of drugs. What happens to the GLP mice? A lot of smokers. Smoking mice. It's very stressful to be a

What happens to them, you know, over the long-term effects on humans, I guess we have to infer that, like you said, from these other animals. What have we learned? In order for a drug to come to market, it has to pass many different stages of clinical trial. It's very difficult. Over 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials. And so in order for it to come to market, we know that it has proven its safety, right? It's shown its safety in these trials.

Within some acceptable limits. Within some acceptable limits. And I'm not well-versed in what those limits are or those trials. but that's how it came to market. And so there's a good estimate by scientists that, or a good assessment that it's safe long term. And there's obviously follow-up studies as well. And so they'll be testing this and they'll be monitoring as time goes on.

And also today we're testing on all kinds of people. I mean, there's a day they only tested on men or on, you know, or white men or black man, whatever. But now can we feel better that the testing regimens better represent people of all types. Yeah, just in general. Yeah, I think we're getting there. I think you're right for a long time.

Testing was just done in men on many things, and they just assumed that women were swall men. Wait, they're not? Exactly. Come on, why is people not, why are people keep me up on this stuff? I do have a question about nutrition in the context of these drugs.

So is it quantity versus quality? In other words, you're losing weight, but does it address diet quality in the context of those drugs? Are people getting the right amounts of protein and fiber, et cetera, in nutrients? Or does that fall off the charts or not address in the context of using these drugs? Yeah, I mean, what the drug really does is it helps people to eat less, right? Because it kind of suppresses appetite a bit for people. And so there's nothing inherent in that that says you have to choose high quality foods now when you choose what foods to eat. But there is some understanding.

I think when I have just, and this is just anecdotal, when I've talked to people on these drugs, it gets them into the mindset of eating more healthfully. And so that's what they do. They'll opt for more health. That was my next question is, does it, or do we not have enough evidence yet? Does it rewire the brain? If I get off that drug, am I rewired? going forward because it seems to me, okay, it doesn't make me want to eat more, but it's not sort of affecting the quality of what I'm eating.

So it isn't addressing the elephant in the room, which is the quality of our diet. And so isn't this sort of a panacea in some way or a false hope that like, I'll take this, I'll be fine, I'll get off it and I'll continue to be fine, but that's not the case? Well, I would argue that probably the most important thing, if I had to choose the most important thing, is the amount of food that someone eats. And so I think that it is addressing kind of one of the most. Well, what does she know? Would you a nutritionist?

Oh, wait. Okay, sorry. I guess you're right. Yeah, it is addressing that aspect of it, which I think is probably one of the more important aspects. And so if someone can be on it and then they kind of get a sense of what that feels like to be eating that amount of food and also trying to, obviously we always want people to improve their diet quality, but it is addressing kind of one of the more important

things. I tweeted some years ago, I said, if a diet book were really, written by a physicist, it would be one sentence long. Consume food at a lower calorie rate than you burn it. That's it. That's it. And then everyone responds, no, it's more complicated than it. No, it's not.

Yeah, exactly. If that happens, you will lose weight. It's a basic math equation. And so now we have a drug that fulfills the one-sentence physicist diet book. But is it the too good to be true? So let's get back to that. So I remember when I was in seventh grade, I wrote a paper on Ponce de Leon. And he was an explorer, I think was Spanish, who came to the new world looking for the fountain of youth.

And I remember thinking, I'm 12 years old, and I say, was he an idiot? You think he just drink from some gush of water from the ground, and then you live forever? He's got to be an idiot. What's going on here? And then I got older, and I realized people are always looking for the quick fix. Yeah. And it's something endemic within us. And now I'm blaming him less for this urge.

Now that I see it prevalent in our society and advertisement, there's the miracle. Cale! This is the miracle. There's a pill to grow more here, literally. Yeah. So are we just so lazy? We will not accept the possibility. that to be healthy requires a little more work than one magic solution.

So could you just address people's urges to have instant fixes? Yeah, I think that it really speaks to this idea that we see the wellness industry flourishing right now and supplements, right? Because people are just, they want something that is flashy, exciting, but also kind of easy to do, right? Taking a supplement, taking a medication is pretty easy. I think it's one of the more difficult things. when I got into this field, I started really trying to understand what can we do to reduce risk of chronic disease.

That was really my goal when I first started graduate school. And what I realized really quickly was we have actually a lot of great data on how to prevent and reduce risk of chronic disease. What we don't have is people actually adopting those behaviors. And so I think one of the things has to do with it's difficult to get people to adopt. you know, it's a difficult thing to do and to adopt healthful eating and to get eight hours of sleep a night and all of the things that we would say reduced risk of disease. But also more than that, you kind of have to look at the systems in our country because we have to look at our systems set up for more people to succeed or for more people to fail.

And a lot of times people are kind of swimming upstream trying to make these healthful decisions. And so I think that plays into it too. So it's human. operating against their desires. Yes, exactly. Advertising presumably as well. And the issue is in the food science world, can you work on having kale tastes like fried chicken?

Because if you can, then I think we're going to solve a lot. That's the solution. My food scientist colleagues are working on. I think my job is done here. Get the scientist on it right now. They probably are. In all seriousness, that's part of the quick fix, right? It is work, not just in terms of physical work exercise,

but like you literally have to sort of turn away from they make a crookie which is a croissant and a cookie right that's evil it's it's amazing though yes it's called a crookie oh you're making this no there's a here yeah in the urily you want one yeah she's in from colorado it hasn't crossed the mississippi into the mountain time zone yet there's a french pastry shop in my neighborhood across you're going to come and i'm going to get your crookie okay I'm Nicholas Costella and I'm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Let's unpack this and get into specifics.

There's a lot of bad press on what's called ultra-processed foods, right? And I'm trying to understand. I've yet to hear anyone explain to me why ultra-processed foods would be bad for you. It's just declared. And even if it is bad for you, Why is it bad for you? I'd like to know that, please. Yeah.

Because I'd like a lot of different kinds of ultra-processed foods. Yeah, so ultra-processed food, that definition, first of all, we don't have a regulatory definition for what that means. So I think the FDA is trying to establish some sort of definition. But in the science world, we do have a definition. It comes from the Nova classification, which is a research group out of Brazil. And so if you ever see research studies talking about ultra-processed food, it's most likely using that definition.

And so it categorizes foods into four different foods. So there is unprocessed, minimally processed, processed, and ultra processed. And the definition of ultra process is just simply, it includes an ingredient or a processing method that you don't have access to. So you can't replicate it in your kitchen. Gotcha. So what? So that's a huge variability of food, right?

So that could be a Dorito chip or that could be a yogurt, right? That's got a lot of protein and good nutrients in it. And so there's a lot of different foods within that category that nutritionally, we would say some are much better than others, right? Some are going to be really high in fat and salt and sugar, which makes a food really satiating and hyper palatable and low in fiber. And so it's going to be really easy to overeat those. But others are going to be very nutrient dense within that category.

And a lot of times just adding a preservative that we don't have access to would make something ultra processed in the scientific definition. And so the idea that all ultra-processed, processed foods are bad for us is kind of more of like a moral argument. It's like you're moralizing food at that point. But that is part of the problem is that for the average consumer who doesn't have time to drill down on this because they have family and work and six kids and blah, blah, blah, it's like it's become muddied in a way for people, right? And so almost that term is like a villainous term now. Right.

Right. fiber-enriched bread is not necessarily bad for you, but would fall into the category of ultra-processed. So how do you get the average consumer to differentiate between the very bad ultra-processed food and the not-very-bad ultra-processed food? Yeah, I mean, I always try to just talk about like the nutrient quality of the food, right?

So look for foods that are higher in protein, higher in fiber, lower in added sugar, right? So looking at those types of foods that you can, can make better choices because a lot of the reason, the reason we have so many ultra-processed foods is because we have a food environment that relies on these pre-packaged foods that have to travel far, that have to sit on shelves. And so, you know, we've gotten away in this country from like local foods quite a bit. And so, so that's why, you know, up to, by some estimate, 70% of our food environment are these ultra-processed foods. And so now, if you're telling

it and just people, you shouldn't eat any ultra-processed foods, it just loses kind of the, the So it's sort of like this, like there are people, if it's natural, it's healthy. Well, arsenic is natural. Right. No one's going, bro, you've got to try this organic arsenic. Right, right. It's organic arsenic.

Yes, oh, please, you don't want to go just regular arsenic. Stepping back from the arsenic for a moment. Yeah. For a moment. You go online, there is protein, protein, must have raw meat, this, this, this. Why all of a sudden has protein become? Feel very faddish, actually. Yeah.

What's driven now? Is there a fad and nutrition? That never happens. Oh, exactly. So is there, is there strengths behind this, or is this just, it's the next fashion statement I'm wearing a suit made of a prime rib? And why is your field so fad susceptible? I think because we all eat at least three times a day.

And so it's always on our mind, right? Like, not everyone's thinking about astrophysics, but people are always thinking. Excuse me? Wow. I mean, I have you. She's slamming the host. Blood drawn. This is great.

I'm not. No, she's right. She's right. I mean. You know what you need a crooky. That was awesome. Because what I heard was that people who are on the GLP, one, it diminishes the food fog that we might live in. You're always thinking about when is my next meal.

What am I going to have? And so I agree. It's an appetite. Just the total immersion, especially in this country where there's no shortages of food everywhere. Yeah. That it's just people. Probably, I will concede, think more about food than about astrophysics. Okay.

So pick it up from there. Go ahead. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're constantly thinking about it, and food, by the way, is not just nutrition. That's how I think about it as a nutrition scientist. But, you know, it's also culture and it's also how people show love. And it also, it's integrated in our lives. And so people are constantly thinking about it.

And so I think it's very susceptible to these fads because, particularly with social media, people like kind of scary claims, you know, things that are going to be very eye-catching. And so people, click baits. So people will do that on social media. And it's very of interest to people because they're thinking about food and they want to be healthier. And so I think that that's why it's so susceptible. So pick up the protein angles now. Well, in terms of that, study shows most people are getting adequate amounts of protein from red meat.

And isn't this sort of more of a marketing story than anything else? Yeah, I think right now what we're seeing is a. fad with protein. I think if you look at all of the data sets, you know, from N. Haynes and other data sets, it shows that most Americans on average are getting adequate amounts of protein. Some demographics... From red meat or anywhere else. Yeah. That's not the sole source of protein.

From anywhere else and probably overconsuming red meat, to be honest. Is this driven by the menosphere and the bros you just want to bulk up, make the muscle happen? Yeah, I think a large part of it on social media is certainly driven by, you know, this, like, carnivore movement and, yes, the manosphere, as you say. I think also you have to think about in terms of protein, what types of protein you're getting. And so, and there's certain demographics that are maybe a bit deficient in protein. You know, older adults we tend to see could use a bit more protein. People recovering from injuries or surgery could use a bit more protein.

And under-informed vegetarians, too. Under-in-formed, like, yes, because if you're going to follow like a vegan diet, you certainly can get enough protein and adequate protein, but it takes a bit more like knowledge in terms of what sources you're getting that food from. And so those specific demographics we're looking at. But on average, Americans get adequate protein. So then the question, touching the manosphere, if necessary, there's what the nutritionist would say is the right amount of protein.

If I give myself more than that, what happens to my body? Well, it depends how much. Obviously anything, if you're consuming over-consuming anything, it can be detrimental. but most people aren't over-consuming protein and could probably, you know, they just raised the like recommended amount of protein in the latest dietary guidelines. And that falls in line with research.

Like there's not a huge like concern there for the average American, but it is a bit higher than what we've recommended in the past. No, but if you get more, does that make my muscles bigger? I mean, what are people getting out of, out of exceeding the recommended dose of protein in a day? What are they getting out of?

It depends on the rest of your diet, but they're just over-consuming calories at that point. So there's a limit to what... If you're doing resistance training... If I do resistance training, and then adding the protein. And my muscles have to rebuild. That's right. I need more protein than your normal amount in order to bulk up. Is that correct?

If you're physically active and you're doing a lot of weightlifting, you are probably going to want a bit more protein. And it's physically active picking up a remote control. I'm just curious. It can be. It can be. Depends how many times you pick it up. It depends on how much your remote control weighs.

That would probably not necessitate more protein, though. If you glued your remote control to the barbell, yeah. Which I have. Makes sense. All right, going back into something you just said a little while ago about the layers of different processed and ultra-processed foods, are we into that food pyramid? Because I thought like the pharaohs,

we'd got rid of that some time ago. But it's back? What sort of, is it inverted? And it's been flipped. Wait, the pharaohs had a food pyramid? I didn't know. Oh, they just had pyramids. There you go.

Okay. Yeah, I heard someone call it the new pyramid a food tornado because it's a flipped pyramid. Oh, okay, so they flipped it. I grew up, there was no food pyramid. That's how old I am. Then they put in a food pyramid. Yeah. And I found it confusing because the top of a pyramid, that's the pinnacle.

Right. And there was like red meat at the top of their pyramid. And at the bottom, I don't care about the bottom of a pyramid, that was oats and grains and things. So the message to me felt a little weird. It was sponsored by the cattle farmers. cattle farmers. By how I look at a pyramid, that food pyramid versus how I think about pyramids. So there's a new pyramid today.

When did that come out? Nobody told me. Yeah, so it's the dietary guideline. So the pyramid is the visual representation of the guidelines. So the first food pyramid came out in the early 90s, which is funny that you say that, because I was in elementary school when the food pyramid was out. And so that makes sense to me as a pyramid that the smallest amount eats sparingly, because To me, that's like the most cherished amount right at the top.

I had a completely different sense of it. And he dresses as a pharaoh when he eats, which is a totally weird thing when you go out to dinner with him. It's very awkward. Walk like in Egyptian. Oh, no, you did the dance. I had to do it. It does it in every restaurant. Yeah, so we have dietary guidelines that come out every five years.

That's mandated. It's a group of scientists that get together. They work on a scientific report for two years, and then they present it to the USDA and HHS. And then we have new dietary guidelines that come out. And the, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Yes. And health and human services. Yes.

So those two departments kind of work on it together. And there's always a visual representation of the dietary guidelines. The original one was the food pyramid. In 2005, that changed to something called my pyramid that no one knows about. But it was a very confusing pyramid, even more confusing than the first one. And then in 2011, under the Obama administration, we got my plate. And so that was a plate that had half your plate, fruits and vegetables, a grains grew. a protein group and then milk.

Oh, so it's a, that kind of feels very doable. It feels intuitive because that's how you eat. Exactly. Yes. And as a, as someone who taught nutrition. It's a pie chart. It's easy to teach, too. Except it's not a pie.

It's just a chart. Yeah, don't say pie. It's fruits and vegetables is half of them. Fruit and vegetable pie. Yes. So. Brussels sprouts. It sounds delicious.

Oh, man. So we've had that since 2011. And that seems like a sensible. It was sensible. It was quite sensible. And what was that? Tell me, how were those angles? It was half fruits and vegetables.

And then a quarter grains, a quarter protein, and then dairy. And then a fork. That was the visual representation. So we had that. Dairy was separate from this circle? Yeah, it was like a cup of milk. A cup of milk. Yeah.

It just kind of showed. Dairy lobby got in there. Yes, it did. And so again, this is a visual representation of the dietary guidelines. So you have dietary guidelines. It feels very, very easily interpretable. Yes. And as someone who taught nutrition, it was easy to teach, right, to kind of show you a plate.

It was intuitive for people. So in 2026, the new dietary guidelines came out, and they changed that. So we no longer use my plate, this year. And now we have a reverse pyramid. So the top is the biggest part and the bottom is the smallest part. And what's happening there? And so what they did, it's very interesting. if you go and you read the dietary guidelines, the actual guidelines themselves aren't all that

different than our previous version of the dietary guidelines, which had my plate as the visual. And so they say to get a variety of proteins from plant and animal sources, they keep saturated fat to less than 10% of calories. They say to limit added sugar. So a lot of very similar things. But the visual representation is very different. And so if you compare like my plate to the new pyramid, the new pyramid really only shows animals. proteins. I mean, they have like, if you look at it, they have a couple of beans, I think, on the, it's just kind of a bunch of foods on the pyramid. And animal proteins are very,

like, very visible at the very top. And then also vegetables at the top. But it's the top of an inverted pyramid. It's the top of an inverted pyramid. So now you're talking about the widest part of the pyramid. But they're promoting much more animal protein over plant based. And it sort of, it almost makes it feel like what they're telling you is that just go with natural anti-processing because nothing says healthy like steak and butter every day, right? So that's where the confusion comes in. Yeah, so many of the people who worked on these dietary guidelines have conflicts of interest

with the beef or dairy industry, which is interesting. Wouldn't that have been true before? Yeah, so if you look before, this is kind of a narrative that has kind of always been present, like conflicts of interest with different industries, many different industries. But if you look at the previous scientific committee who worked on the dietary guidelines, they actually had very few conflicts of interest. So I have a question. Who selects the scientists who are on these committees who make these recommendations? Yeah, so usually it's the current administration.

And again, it's the USDA and HHS who kind of work on this together. So a committee of, it's about 20 scientists are usually chosen. And they're like... Why don't scientists choose themselves? Why is it connected into government agencies? Because they're government guidelines that will come out. And so it's an independent group that's chosen. And then they work, again, for like two years on a report, on a scientific report.

So they look at all global nutrition science. And then they formulate kind of the scientific report that is meant to inform the dietary guidelines. And those people on that panel are all reided up guys who only eat meat. No. Not traditionally. Yeah, but any bias among those scientists becomes a bias in the final. recommendations, correct? I mean, I suppose if there is

bias, the idea is that it's independent, that they're just looking at the science. Has that been maintained going forward? Yeah, so the scientific report is usually pretty unbiased. That comes out, but then what happens... Then it has to become policy. Then it has to become policy. Then it has to become

the actual guidelines. Okay, so what's happened lately? So between, well, this is traditionally how it's always worked. So the scientific committee will submit the report, and then there's this period time, usually like a year, where they will take the scientific report and then they will create the dietary guidelines. And in between those two things happening, there's usually a lot of lobbying that happens by the beef and dairy industry and the corporate food industry. And so they

sometimes will water down language. I don't think there's a lot of examples where they actually completely change the guidelines previously. It's more like the foods that they tell you to eat, they'll talk in our language that we speak, like foods. And then the foods they tell you not to eat, they'll change it to like nutrients that we don't really think about, right? So like eat less saturated fat instead of eat less meat, those types of things. So some of that can happen. But then it's promoting foods that are high and saturated fat. So this is where like it puts a lot of focus on what to avoid but not much clarity on what to prioritize,

which is great because nothing helps people eat better than being stressed out about what you eat. You just end up standing over the sink stress eating because I'm not sure. jerk this, I should be, I need a crooky. Like, you know, it's... Well, in these guidelines, the problem with these guidelines right now is that, as you say, meat is very present on the visual representation and in the lexicon and how we're talking about it. And when you look at the actual guidelines, they actually keep the recommendation to keep saturated fat less than 10%.

And it's virtually impossible to eat most of your protein from animal meats and keep saturated fat less than 10%. So the visual representation is very confusing because it's very difficult even as a nutrition professional to devise a diet that actually follows all of those. That confusion is intentional. Yeah. So what is going on there? Why would they intentionally want to confuse people on that issue? I mean, I can only hypothesize that it's because if you look at the scientific evidence, you look at global nutrition research.

There's no scientific rationale for increasing. to recommend more saturated fat. The recommendation of less than 10% is globally recommended, and that's in line with scientific evidence. Just to be clear, it's 10% of your calories. 10% of total calories. But they want to be promoting more meat, right? I mean, some of the people leading our agencies

have identified as carnivore people, and so it's kind of an ideology. So it's ideology overriding scientific evidence, essentially. And they're clashing. And maybe the law, the strength. The lobby is the strength of the lobby. Yeah, of the lobby. So I think now that you mentioned, I have seen this inverted pyramid, and I didn't know what to make of it.

I mean, it looked like just shelves. Didn't you try to eat it because you thought it was a piece of pie? No, it just looked like shelving, right? And it looked like a picture with food on shelves. Well, that was the original pyramid. The original pyramid. No, but the inverted one, I feel the same way. The inverted one is just a bunch of foods thrown on, like on clip art.

Yeah, oh, yes, yes, clip art. On a triangle. Yes. It's clip art. Yeah. So I don't, you know, I can't. They've invested so much time and effort in there, haven't they? Just clip art.

I was so confused because it really looks like 1990s clip art. Oh, God. Yeah, I just, I like the pie plate, even though it's not a pie. Only because there's still a little bit of math in there because you're communicating angular fractions on a circle. It's true. Whereas just clip art, pastiche onto a surface. We've discussed what can and cannot and maybe the biases and the carnivores are ruling the earth.

What about the police lineup and the villains? Using this lineup, I'll start you off with seed oils. Okay. Oh, don't get me going about seed oils. Maybe we go. Maybe that would be a trigger. Oh, hold me back. So if we just get specific here, that would be fun to know what the latest thinking is on all of this.

Yeah. Seed oils are quite villainized right now. What's an example of a seed oil? A seed oil are oils that come from seeds, sunflower oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, which is rape seed oil. Those types of oils are polyunsaturated fatty acids. Is there sesame oil? Mm-hmm. Sesame oil?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, what's wrong with that? There's nothing. Nothing wrong. You put toasted sesame oil? Oh, you have to. As a last dressing on top.

Why don't you bring some in? So tell me what has been thinking about seed oils? Yeah. Yeah, so in nutrition science, the thinking has been that they're polyunsaturated fatty acids and their healthful oils to include in your diet. So there's three different types of fatty acids that we eat. So you have saturated fats. Yeah. If you let bacon grease sit, it hardens, right?

Because usually animal fats are saturated fats. Okay. So they're hard at room temperature. So that's saturated fat. And you have mono-unsaturated fats. Those are things like avocados, avocado oil, olive oil. Those are mono-unsaturated fats. And then you have polyunsaturated fats.

And that chemically just means there's multiple places where you're missing a bond for a hydrogen bond. Okay. And what's an example of that? Polyunsaturated would be seed oils. So regarding the seed oil, what is sort of the knock on it and is there data that backs that up? Yeah. So in nutrition science, we have pretty strong data to show, again, global nutrition science data to show that diets that are relatively high in polyunsaturated fatty acids to saturate.

fats. So you're eating more mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids and less saturated fats are heart healthy, are more healthful dietary patterns. We see this in longitudinal epidemiological studies. So longitudinal is across populations? Yeah. So when you're looking, well, when you're looking at populations, like large populations over time, and you're looking at their dietary eating patterns, and then you're looking at health outcomes. That's what we tend to see. We see this in studies that replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats or mono-unsaturated fats. We see that improvement in health outcomes. Everything you said sounds positive.

So why would there be a resistance to seed oils? There tends to be this thing in nutrition where, and in the way that misinformation spreads really quickly, is they take a mechanism of action and then they say that that's going to happen in a human model, which we know that that's not. really the case. Most mechanisms, most hypotheses based off of mechanisms don't actually end up doing what we think they're going to do. So these are people who say that these are bad for you. Yeah. So what's a list of what's bad for you that they would claim? So seed oils are rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Linolayic acid, alpha linolinic acid. Linolayic acid converts to something called

arachadonic acid. And arachidonic acid can be inflammatory. They can have pro-inflammatory markers. And so this is where this comes from. But the problem is, is that when you look at the conversion of linoleic acid to eracodonic acids, it doesn't convert effectively at all in the human body. It's less than 1%, usually closer to 0.1% conversion. And so if you're just looking at that conversion and saying, well, this can convert to this and this can cause inflammation, that's where that comes from. And it sounds sciencey, and it sounds like they know what they're talking about,

except for when you actually look at it in a human, it doesn't pan out. And we actually see the exact opposite, which has to be. happens all the time in science. But what is the motivation for doing that, for taking that leap to push people to think a certain way about something when the data shows otherwise? And I know I'm asking you to sort of read tea leaves here, but you're the expert. Yeah, I mean, I think that it has to do with this anti-science movement that we're living in right now. I think it speaks to this idea of like, oh, the scientists are wrong, the government is wrong, they're lying to us, because seed oils have been recommended

because they're polyunsaturated fats and the science shows that they're quite healthful. But it means you have counterparts online who would also be judged as influencers who people are listening to in this regard. So I now know nothing about anything and I see you over here and... Yeah, because if you got a ring light, then you know everything.

And the inflammation people over here, how am I going to decide? It's a good question. And I think as scientists, we've been failing that we've been losing that war, so to speak, because we haven't been going to spaces where people are to bring them information. You know, for a long time, it's been quite frowned upon to go to social media or spaces where people are. And if you're an academic or if you're a scientist. Right, right. And, you know, I think that's changing now because we're seeing how important it is. But I think we need more of it.

And so, you know, we need more people to go and it kind of explains. the science because I'll be honest even I when I first got into this field because this has been a narrative for a very long time that like seed oils are unhealthy and so I just assumed they were. I was like yeah, seed oils are unhealthy. And then I learned kind of the science behind it and what the evidence actually shows and I changed my mind and realized that they're not actually unhealthy. But a part of that comes from this idea that seed oils are cheap and they're flavorless relatively. And so they're in a lot of these low nutrient ultra-process foods. That's the oil that these food companies are using to put into all of these foods.

And so we do tend to over consume these oils. So some guilt by association there. It's a little bit. I believe so, because it's very easy to kind of villainize them because they're in all of these foods that we would recommend people to consume less of, right? Which is a very different way to consume them than if you're just doing what my mother-in-law does, who's from Romania, who just uses, you know, corn oil or seed oils in her stir fries, right? Or whatever food she's cooking, which we would argue is a healthful way.

to use those oils. But you know, you can lead a horse to water, right? In terms of, we make the argument here, educate people. But do they want to be educated on some level? Have they shut down? Because there's a movement out there. Like canola oil is like uranium. Meanwhile, these same people are eating deep-fried cheeseburgers wrapped in donuts.

And I know because I had six of them on the way here. You know what I mean? It becomes a larger question, I guess, beyond your expertise of just anybody's. It's like, what's going on in? our society where people are just shutting down on full explanations on things? I think that we have all, we all kind of understand that we have an issue in our country with chronic disease, that we see chronic disease rates increasing, and we see more than half the country having some sort of chronic disease. And so we all kind of understand the issue.

And I think when you can point to something like seed oils, then I think that that's easy for people to kind of understand. And they're like, yes, let's get the seed oils out. And it's an easy swap, right? So if you tell somebody we can switch seed oils out and put beef tallow in and you can still eat fast food French fries and be fine, that's an easier sell for people than saying, hey, we should probably eat less French fries. And it doesn't really matter the fat. Is this the same thing with food dyes? They're not really creating chronic disease. There's other things that are doing that, but there's a war on food dyes. I mean, probably not a great idea to give your child lots of bright, colorful candy.

Because as a parent, you're probably not going to like the results. But I just think, are the attacks on certain food groups or supplements, just misguided when there should be other areas that need to be focused upon? Yeah, I think food dyes is a really good other example. So these synthetic food dyes that we have, we have five of them that are really prevalent in the food supply. So red 40, blue one, blue two, yellow five, and yellow six. Those are the five.

They've all been deemed safe by the FDA. They've all been deemed safe by EFSA in the European Union. They've all been deemed safe in Australia. all been deemed safe in Canada. I think that's a big misconception, and that might come as a surprise to some people, because there's a lot of narrative out on social media that other countries have banned them. There are other foods that are touted, and as a scientist, I tilt my head and I say, huh? You know, nowadays, you know you're earning too much money when on your shelf you have four

different kinds of salt. Okay. So what does the nutritionists say about the various kinds of salt that are available? Because, you know, a chemist would say sodium chloride, but a nutritionist would have to say something about the color and the Himalayan air

in which it was crystallized. It was brought down a mountain by sheep. Yes, yes. Or alpacas. Yes, in the mic. Yeah, I don't think there's sheep in the Himalayas. Just play along, buddy. You can't just play along.

species of animal right for the part of the world. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, salt is salt, right? So salt is going to enact the same things in your body as any kind of salt. So pink Himalancey salt or sodium chloride, the white iodized salt. I think where a lot of these, like, new salts come from is this idea because we fortify salt in our country with iodine and to help, you know, reduce risk of goyters, which has been extremely effective and extremely effective public health kind of movement. So there's some health kick movements that are just based on belief systems rather than on scientific evidence, it sounds.

Many. Yeah, many on social media are based on belief systems. Many. Or fallacies, like the naturalistic fallacy. Right. That would be like raw milk or something like that. Yeah. What about the raw movement?

Yeah. Tell me about raw milk. Yeah, I think this, again, kind of is this idea that natural is better, right? So milk comes naturally raw. Coming out of the utter, I would suspect. Yes. It's processed by mammary glands. Correct.

I also learned that there's a misconception. It's cool to have the social media following that I have because I can interact with a lot of people. And so I found that there was a big misconception of what pasteurization is. Many people thought that we were adding chemicals to milk in the pasteurization process. And they didn't realize that it's literally just heating milk.

These are people who didn't pay attention in middle school when you learn about this. Yeah. I can't imagine why they would get bored by pastime. pasteurization at the age of 12. So that's interesting. They thought it's an additive. Yeah,

so I made a video about how it's just, you know, there's a couple types of pasteurizing, but the most common one is heating milk to about 165 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 seconds and then rapidly cooling it. And that's it. And that's the temperature of most people's morning coffee.

Right, not even boiling, right? Not even. Not even. Yeah, and so it kills pathogens and it makes your milk safer. And it doesn't meaningfully change the nutritional content of the milk. And so, you know, I think when people learned this, they, they, some people were more accepting

of pasteurization. So again, knowledge is power, right? We can. So when they're advocating raw milk is more natural, they're really saying they're accepting a higher risk of known pathogens for the benefit that hasn't been clearly demonstrated in data yet. I think that's correct.

That's correct fact. True fact. True dat. And how do you? I'm going to hear you say that. Say true dat. True dat. That was good.

That was good. That was awesome. That was, but you said that before. That was not a Colorado chewed at. My girl's been up in the hood a few times. She's another side to her. So if they believe in this raw milk thing, it just sounds like a herd looking for a shepherd.

Exactly. That's exactly right. I mean, they say it's ruining milk. Yeah, well, I mean, but there are pathogens. It's ruining milk like the way, you know, 19th century tradition of dying from E. coli got ruined. Like, that's what you want. You want to sort of eliminate those.

problems, right? Yeah, I mean, this is kind of a larger issue of what we're seeing right now in terms of, like, attacks on public health interventions that have, that we know have worked. And we forget the years before the public health interventions were implemented. Is it because it's so effective? It's a victim of its own success. It's a victim of its own success. Just like vaccines, just like food fortification, just like pasteurization. Okay. So what do we do about this? Because there are people who turn to government for their guidance more than they might turn to scientists. Or even so, there might be people who turn to online scientists who are either charlatans or are lone wolves in their view relative to scientific consensus. In your attempts, efforts to reach people, are they responsive when you say this is the scientific consensus? Because I know some people say it's not the consensus. Is this one person who says the consensus is wrong? They must be right. Because you interact with your followers.

where are they before they arrive at your corner of the block? I think a lot of people arrive confused because they hear one person saying one thing, another person saying another thing. Even with pedigree. That person might even have pedigree. Yeah, which makes it more insidious and more dangerous because then they have that perceived authority. And so what I've tried to do and what I've realized is a lot of people don't know what scientific consensus means. And so trying to explain the difference between just me telling you, don't listen to me because I'm telling you and I have a PhD.

like I'm going to give you information and then you go look if that's actually accurate and I'll give you the places to go look and understanding what scientific consensus is. So in nutrition especially, because nutrition science is like a baby science. And so, you know, relative to other sciences out there. And so a study can come out and it can say something completely different than what the consensus says. But that's a single study. And so if you just cherry pick that study, right, which people, that's a big thing, cherry picking studies, you take. You take that one study, and you say, especially if it resonates with a pre-existing,

if it confirms your bias. Confirm a bias. Yes. Then you're like, that study says this. But what do the 72 other studies say that have also looked at this question and are kind of going in this direction? That's an outlier study, right? So we have to look at everything together,

and that's what consensus does. So when you look at some of these medical organizations or these scientific organizations, that's what they're looking at. They're looking at the thousand studies that have been published in this area, not just one. And then one new study may be published, and it may be very interesting, and it may lead us down another path.

But that one study is not going to refute consensus unless we build upon that and we see more and more studies come out. Are you finding that this guided discovery approach for an audience is better than you're wrong? Oh, yes. Yeah, I don't think that people respond well to your wrong, traditionally. So I posted a little explainer video attempting however feebly to guide. guide people how when and where they can find objectively true information on the internet or to have the highest chance of it being objectively true. And one of them was websites that are either academic, so dot edu or dot org, provided it's not a lobbying group, tend to have more reliable information than just somebody's fly-by-night blog.

And at the time, this was like days before. before things changed, I said, dot GOV sites tend to be honest and accurate. And then like a week later, the CDC changed their vaccine guidelines on their website. And it was like, damn. And so what's a person to do at this point? Yeah. Other than just tune into you, maybe that's all they should do. That's it.

That's it. Just follow me. You landed there. landed there. I'm going to make a motion that we get rid of the CDC and replace it with you. Don't do that. But, yeah, I think we're living in a really tough time right now when we're seeing medical organizations combat what the CDC is saying, which we never, which never happens.

Never, ever. Like, I think people need to really understand how unprecedented that is. And so what I would recommend is kind of look at global scientific consensus. So look at kind of these global organizations, look at these medical organizations. like the AAP, which is the American Academy of Pediatrics, or ACOG, which is for gynecology, gynecologists and obstetrics, look at these different medical organizations, see what they're putting out, which is difficult when you're just one person to kind of like go to all these different areas. So I understand that that's, it's not the greatest kind of solution at this time, but we are seeing.

Maybe no other path. We are seeing misinformation coming out of our government websites right now. This goes back to someone wanting the quick fix. I want a one-stop shot, give me all the solutions I care about. And that's how people are praying on it. The simplicity of it is dangerous, right? If you take a 30,000-foot view of the nutrition discussion, it's let's go back to the old days.

Let's do red meat and raw milk and not processed foods. Well, you know, the old days you died at 42. So maybe we rethink that a little bit. And that's where people sort of miss that step, I think. I kind of felt the same way about the paleo diet. Yeah. You know, let's eat the way cavemen did. Right.

Yeah, and die at 30, you know. Right. Really? With a spear in your back? Doing bad art on a wall. You know, that's not good art. It's a guy who's a caveman who drew something and it's not good. Can I share with you my own nutrition guideline?

Sure. Here we go. I eat whatever the hell I want and I exercise for health. And if I judge that my vitamins were not quite complete that day, I'll take a vitamin supplement. that's how I live because I'd like food. How do you judge if your vitamin's supplement? Oh, I know.

I know vitamin contents of all the food. Oh, okay. I'm very knowledgeable. He's a scientist. You literally read it. I read nutrition labels. You know, protein, carbohydrates, fat, and I know how my metabolism does it.

But I eat for pleasure and I exercise for health. And which of these two, I know you'll probably say both, but I know when I'm exercising, oh my gosh, I'm king of the world. I never feel that way after I eat kale. Yeah.

I'm just being honest with you. But you do after Cheetos. Come on. Oh, Cheetos? The Cheeto high? Nothing like it. So no, whatever I just told you notwithstanding, what's your advice going forward here? Yeah, I mean, exercise is great.

So keep exercising. I think that it's really important to understand in nutrition science that the basis of nutrition science, like the basis of what we would explain to you as a healthful dietary eating. pattern is pretty unchanged for over the last many decades. And so for how much we always are like, oh, nutrition's so confusing, it's always changing. It's actually not just the discourse about it is constantly changing because people are trying to manipulate the narrative. And so, you know, if you're thinking about a healthy dietary eating pattern, center your diet on plants, right, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, get a variety of protein from animal and plant-based

sources, eat as many kind of like whole nutrient dense foods as possible and limit kind of these low nutrient ultra-process foods. But again, there's some variability in that definition. And so that's why I kind of say low-nutrient ultra-processed foods. And kind of, you know, understand that there's not a lot, all the sensational claims about nutrition. It's usually someone who's trying to sell you something on the back end of those sensational claims. And so if you can kind of avoid getting down that path. So like if a video starts and says, are you poisoning your kids? That's not going to be good information.

That person is not going to give you. I'm selling liver enhancement pills on my website. There is going to be a list of supplements to sell you in the link in the bio, almost certainly. Right? And so just kind of like look for those things that people are doing on social media to kind of get your attention and then sell you something on the back end and understand that from a nutrition perspective, it's pretty boring.

It's pretty like not that complex of what we would say is a healthful dietary eating pattern. And how do we find you online? I'm on Instagram. Is that your biggest exposure to your following? Yeah, Instagram, yeah. And you have a substack. And I have a substack that I publish which I don't know if you, I feel like

we bonded. Could I get a free nutrition plan from you? Like I don't want to be charged. Sure. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Wow. There it is. And it's free.

Pretty much it. You go what you're paid for. So when is your substack becoming a book? It's a ways out yet. So the hope is early 2027. Okay. Yeah. My gosh, all right.

We'll look for you. And maybe get you back. Yeah. We'll talk about the book. That'd be great, yeah. All right. Maybe bring a little food next time. Yeah.

This little snack for us. Didn't you tell me I brought Twinkies? You started this. You sounded bitter now. After your free food plan. Well, I got my free nutrition plan. And a pizza, a pepperoni pizza? Yeah, right.

Me and pepperoni go way back. So thank you for joining us here on StarTalk. Thank you so much for having me. and enlighting our StarTalk special edition audience. Gary, always good to have you. Pleasure. And Paul, always good to have you. And you have the title Baron.

Yes, I was knighted in this room. Yes, I have to work on that. Yes, please. We'll get that going. I don't see a red carpet anywhere. It's very upsetting. That's fine. All right, this has been StarTalk Special Edition.

The Nutrition Edition. Oh. See what I did that. Yeah. That was clever. Rolls right off the tongue. Until next time, Neil the Grass Tyson. here. Keep looking up.