The Food Medic - S9 EP9 The truth about carbs

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Our guest today is Layne Norton - a self-proclaimed nerd who lifts heavy things, he has a BS in Biochemistry with honors and a PhD in Nutritional Sciences with honors.Since moving away from online coaching, Layne has focused on writing books (Fat Loss Forever, The Complete Contest Prep Guide, The Complete Reverse Dieting Guide), developing Carbon Diet Coach, a nutritional coaching app, and creating certification courses offered through the Clean Health InstituteThis episode covers: Low carb diets & weight loss Insulin resistance and carbohydrates Continuous glucose monitors - necessary? “Sugar causes inflammation” Oat milk and blood sugar Seed oils and plant-based m*lks Artificial sweeteners and the microbiome If you loved it you know what to do - leave us a review, a rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with someone you know will love it too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. This is the end of the show. and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Hello and a very big welcome back to the Food Medic podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Hazel. I'm a medical doctor, nutritionist, personal trainer, author and founder of The Food Medic. I'm really

excited for you to hear today's episode as this guest takes no prisoners and accepts no BS when it comes to health and nutrition. Our guest today is Lane Norton, a self-proclaimed nerd who lifts heavy things. He has a BS in biochemistry with honours and a PhD in nutritional sciences with honours also. Outside of academia, he is a competitive powerlifter, including two USA powerlifting national titles, 2005 Arnold Classic champion and an overall silver medal at the 2015 IPF World Championships. Since moving away from online coaching Lane has focused on writing books, developing carbon diet coach, a nutritional coaching app and creating certification courses offered through the Clean Health Institute. If you don't follow

Lane, you might have heard him already on the Joe Rogan podcast and the Hubertman podcast. I could ask this man a million questions, but I'm going to pick his brain on some of the most confusing and polarizing areas of nutrition, starting with carbs. So let's dive in. Today's episode is brought to you by Whoop. If you're a weekly listener to the podcast, you already know what Whoop is because I'm always talking about it. So you probably already know that Whoop is a digital health and fitness coach that specializes in breaking down your recovery, sleep and workouts via a non-invasive wearable device and companion app. But it's probably also worth talking about what

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thefoodmedic to get started. You'll get your first month on me. So Lane, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me Hazel. I appreciate it. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to speak to you today. We've kind of bumped into each other a lot over the last couple of years on social media. and you recently came back into my sphere when I seen that you were on the Huberman podcast and I was like let's get Lane on let's speak to him about all of the topics that you have a lot of knowledge you've myth busted a lot online I know that my community and audience are really interested in what you have to say and so am I so when I was sitting down to write the questions and plan

this episode, I was like, there's so many things that I could ask you that I know you would be able to really dive deep into. But one of the things I really want to focus on, I think deserves a podcast episode in itself, is carbs and just really tease it apart and some of the myths and misconceptions that come off the back of carbs and sugars and set the record straight. So before we jump into all of that, let's just kind of lay the scene, who you are, how you got here today and like what you're passionate about. Well, if I have to give my like 10 second elevator pitch, I tell people that there's two ways that I kind of go by. And that's one is a meathead who loves science or a science geek who likes to lift heavy things. And you can pick which one you prefer.

I got into bodybuilding when I was a teenager. I got picked on. Didn't really get attention from girls. And so I picked up lifting weights to try and solve those problems. Lifting weights didn't solve either of those problems, but I fell in love with lifting weights. And here we are 24 years later. I got to college. I knew I was into the sciences. So I started out doing a biology degree. I switched that to a biochemistry degree as I got into bodybuilding. I was starting to compete in bodybuilding. I loved it. Wanted to learn more about the human body. I did my first show, won, fell in love with it,

had a pretty successful competitive natural bodybuilding career. And then when I was kind of finishing up undergrad, just felt like I didn't really know much. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And that was circa like 2003, 2004, when if you want to make money in the fitness industry, you kind of had limited options. You could open a gym, start a supplement company, try to be Mr. Olympia or be a personal trainer. And I wasn't really with any of those. And so I was like, what do I do? Well, I'll go to grad school because I'll delay the real world another six years or whatever it is. And I went to grad school for a PhD in nutritional sciences. And my area of express interest was protein metabolism and body composition. So did that, continued to be successful in bodybuilding. I also started

my coaching business, online coaching. So I was one of the first people to really do online coaching on a large scale. I took my first client in 2005. And then by the time I was finished grad school, I was kind of doing that full time and got the powerlifting as well. Turns out I was actually better at powerlifting than bodybuilding, won two national titles, got a silver medal in 2015 world championships, set a world squat record. And then this past year, I went back as a master's and actually won the gold medal at worlds. And then I've started up various businesses, you know, like a nutrition coaching app. I have a wild one coaching team that I've, you know, trained.

I've got a supplement company. I've got courses, written books. You know, I've got a research review. Kind of done the whole deal. So I just really jumped headfirst to the fitness and entrepreneurship. And 20 years later, here we are. Yeah, what a journey. Yeah, I get very fatigued thinking about it.

But it's good because you've got your own personal experience and anecdotes to bring through, but you've got the research and background, but also the experience with clients. So basically the trifecta of what you want when you are kind of speaking on these platforms and giving advice. And one of the topics that you often weigh into is conversations around like low carb diets. And it's something that I think has recently reared its head again, it's become a bit more popular. And there's like quite a few, maybe doctors in the States, especially who promote that kind of low carbohydrate approach, primarily for cardiac, cardiometabolic health, and also weight loss. So let's discuss that first and foremost,

what does the evidence say? Yeah, so the evidence says on balance, it's certainly not worse than any other kind of diet. There do appear to be certain trade offs. So it really depends on like, you know, what are your risk factors? What are you trying to improve the most you know i think one of the big problems is like the rhetoric around different diets and the need for each different diet tribe to make their diet be the best diet and i mean there are some things that seem to be like somewhat unique to low carb and you know one of the big confounders with comparing these diets is the weight loss itself. So when you don't equate calories between studies, what you find is in the first three to six months, low carb outperforms other diets in terms of weight loss.

But there's a couple of caveats to that. One, people in the short term just tend to eat less. But over the long term, it doesn't tend to perform better than any other diet because of the recidivism. And they're not losing more weight because it's some kind of magic. They're losing more weight because they're just eating less. So it does seem to have a satiety effect for some folks. And the other thing to keep in mind is if you're not measuring body composition, low-carb diets do produce more water loss. So if you look at the six six month data for weight loss on low

carb diets, they tend to outperform other diets by like a half to two kilos, but you can easily lose that much water from a low carb diet. So I think on balance, they're really not that much better than other diets. Now they do have a couple of things that even when you account for weight loss, it appears to be better with a low carb diet. So your triglycerides tend to drop a little bit lower with a low-carb diet. And your HbA1c, it appears most of it's due to weight loss, like 70, 75% is due to weight loss. But you do get an extra benefit, it appears, from doing a low-carb diet. But a lot of people have their LDL go up. So this appears to be somewhat consistent even if you're eating reduced saturated fat. So there is something with a low

carb diet and LDL. Now, over time, if you lose weight on a low-carb diet, your LDL will go down just from the weight loss. But in terms of compared to a low fat, higher carb, high fiber diet, that will reduce LDL more. So again, all these markers improve with weight loss. I think that's the biggest thing. And they all significantly improve with weight loss. And so really the diet you should be choosing should be more based on what is sustainable for me? What is long-termterm sustainable for me? If that's a low carb diet, fantastic. If it's something else, then fantastic. But if you're somebody who specifically is trying to target LDL, low carbs, probably not the best approach for you. If you're somebody specifically trying to target HbA1c and triglycerides, it might

be a little bit better than you, but I will still say, always say that kind of takes a backseat to what can you actually sustain? If a low carb diet isn't something you can consistently have a lifestyle around, then it doesn't matter what's best for HbA1c or triglycerides because if you can't stick to it, it's not going to matter. And then the other thing to keep in mind is on a calorie per calorie basis, does a diet perform better than another one? And we do have quite a few studies on this now. You can find isolated cherry pick studies where low carb will outperform another diet or another diet will outperform low carb. But on balance, there was a meta-analysis in 2018 by Kevin Hall where they looked at

different studies that held calories and protein the same. And that's important because protein, a lot of like low carb studies were actually just high protein where protein was increased in the low carb group and it wasn't in the low fat group. And they say, well, look, this low carb diet does better. That's a protein effect because protein is thermogenic and also improves satiety. So when they hold calories and protein the same, and then the other big caveat was they were either in a metabolic chamber where all the food is being provided, you can't cheat, or all the food was provided to participants.

If it was free living, they still provided them the food. So very well-controlled studies. The overall effect when you summate these studies was basically that there was no difference between these diets in terms of actual fat loss. So to me, do what you prefer. That's kind of the take home. And I think there's a lot of rhetoric around insulin and carbs. And well, if you eat high carb, you can't lose fat because insulin blocks fat burning. I think one of the things to keep in mind is fat burning is an essential process of fat loss, the loss of body fat, but the two one of the things to keep in mind is fat burning is an essential process

of fat loss, the loss of body fat, but the two are not the same thing. So the loss of body fat is the balance between how much fat you store versus how much fat you burn. Both processes are always occurring at the same time. It's the relative rates of each that are going to determine what the net deposition or loss is. Now, if you eat a low-carb diet, you absolutely will have increased levels of fat burning or fat oxidation. The issue is the body doesn't really store carbohydrate as fat. Of dietary carbohydrate, very little winds up in actual adipose tissue. And that is because dietary carbohydrate has to be preferentially oxidized in the case of excess. Now, what that does do is it spares the dietary fat you need

to be stored as fat. But dietary carbohydrate really isn't stored as adipose. Like de novo lipogenesis, which is the conversion of glucose to fat, doesn't really account for very much stored body fat. So on a high carb diet, you're burning less fat, but you're also storing less fat because you're eating less fat. On a low carb diet, you're burning more fat, but you're also storing more fat because you're eating more fat. So really the overall balance is going to come down to like how many calories are you consuming? Yeah, absolutely absolutely that was really well put and i think the other kind of thing that's often not discussed when it comes to low carb diets well firstly there's you know a spectrum of what people consider low carb in terms of

percentage of energy intake but also if you're reducing one nutrient naturally you're increasing another or another group of foods. And so what that is will also determine health outcomes, which is what I found that really interesting when you mentioned, you even see increases in LDL cholesterol, even if there's no increases in saturated fat. And I wonder whether that's something to do with our lack of fiber and foods that we know can reduce cholesterol profiles. Yeah. And I have seen people who on a low carb diet have lowered their LDL. Of course, if you lose weight over time, that LDL is going to decrease. But you make a really great point, which is people don't just increase or decrease something in isolation. If you are increasing

something, you're usually decreasing something else. And that is the problem with a lot of some of these kind of epidemiological studies. And I'm not somebody who just hates epidemiology. There's something we just completely dismiss it flat out, which I think is a bad idea. But it is something to acknowledge like the limitations, which is, for example, you have these studies that say, well, red meat causes cancer because this. And I'm like, well, the hazard ratio is pretty small and it's not a consistent effect across studies and the real problem is well if you eat people eat more red meat it's not like like those people are like eating lean sirloin like on on the whole you know like it's not like

they're choosing lean cuts of meat they're typically eating fatty cuts of meat typically from processed food sources and they also have a bunch of other behaviors like they tend to eat less fruits and vegetables. There was a study in Canada from 2020, Alberta, Canada, and a hundred thousand people. And I thought it was really brilliant what they did. So they kind of tried to answer the question about cancer incidents in red meat. And is this an effect of meat or is this an effect of overall reduced diet quality? So they looked at, I think they had four tiles, so four different levels. It might have been tertials, it was either three or four. Differing levels of red meat intake, but also three or four different levels of fruit and vegetable intake.

And what they found was that at low levels of fruit and vegetable intake, red meat did have an association with cancer incidents. But at high levels of fruits and vegetable intake, it did not, which to me suggests it's not about the red meat that you're eating. It's about what you tend to replace it with, which is people who eat high amounts of red meat tend to displace fruits and vegetables. But if you replace those, if you're actually eating a healthy amount of those, since there's no association, to me, what that says is it's not so much red meat is a cause, it is a symptom of overall poor diet.

Yeah, I agree. It's such an important factor and something for everyone to consider when reading research, but also individually. Quick one. I have a new and exciting membership coming out, and I want you to be the first to hear about it. I started The Food Medic over 10 years ago, and my mission has always been to bring evidence-based health and nutrition information that's easy to follow and practical to implement. And if you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to make an assumption that you're someone who prioritises their health and seeks out high quality information from trusted sources. So that's why I'm inviting you

to join our new and exclusive membership, the Food Medic Hub, which allows you to take charge of your health with support from the most trusted experts in their field. Inside, you'll get access to hundreds of easy and healthy recipes including breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts and snacks so you can enjoy nutritious delicious food every day. A library of expert written articles on nutrition, health and fitness to help you cut through the noise and implement the latest scientifically proven advice. A rolling full body strength program to keep you feeling strong and energized in your body and with our Food Medic Thank you. the Food Medic Hub will continue to grow with new recipes, articles, workouts and webinars so that you're always at the forefront of wellness. Whether you're just starting your journey or

looking to elevate your health, the Food Medic Hub is your number one support system and resource to achieve your goals in 2023. Head over to www.thefoodmedic.co.uk to join now from £9.99 per month. One of the things you mentioned I want to circle back to was glucose and insulin resistance. And right now it's super trendy for people to monitor their own levels with CGMs. And even with people who aren't diagnosed with insulin resistance or at risk, it's become like more of a biohacking thing, let's just say, especially over here in the UK. I see it's, you know, more pop ups and more, you know, startups doing it now as part of like personalized nutrition. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Because I wonder whether we're pathologizing a normal response to consuming carbohydrates. Yeah. I think you have to be very careful when you look at short-term responses and try to

project long-term outcomes. Because I can make an argument that every single macronutrient is detrimental to health based on short-term responses. If you eat a high-fat meal, it decreases flow-mediated dilation in the short-term, which should be a risk factor for heart disease. If you eat high carbs, you increase insulin,

and you increase blood glucose, which blood glucose is toxic, you know. And if you eat protein, you increase mTOR, which, you know, is going to give you cancer. So what are we, which, by the way,

I don't think mTOR, you know, stimulation in isolation is going to give you cancer. So what are we, which by the way, I don't think mTOR, you know, stimulation in isolation is going to give you cancer or any of this stuff in isolation is going to give you cancer. So basically you shouldn't need anything. Like that's what I always say to these people who like project these short-term markers. There is a huge, enormous difference between a short-term, the amount of scientists who don't understand this actually blows my mind as well. There is a huge difference between a short-term truncated response that is part of a natural neural response versus long-term dysregulated signaling. Those two are very, very, very different. So for example, let's just take exercise for example let's say you knew

nothing about exercise and i said i'm gonna have you do haze i'll have you do something that increases your heart rate increases your blood pressure increases your inflammatory status increases your reactive oxygen species production uh what do you think? You'd be like, that sounds terrible. Don't do that. But it also increases mTOR stimulation. But what happens with exercise over the long term? You get healthier and stronger and it's great for you, right? Now, I'm not saying that, okay, you should purposely try to do these things. What I'm saying is trying to project long-term outcomes on short-term markers is, I think, one of the poorest ways to do science there is. I'm not saying it should never be done, but we really should be very, very, very, very careful about how we talk about it.

Because there was a study done a while back looking at genetic polymorphisms. I think it was a Mendelian randomization trial. They looked at people who secreted more insulin or less insulin and tried to project their long-term risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity. And they basically found that insulin contributed like 1 to 10%. There may be a small contribution, but it's mostly driven by energy balance. So getting back to the topic of CGMs, I think if somebody likes to gamify things, I'm not going to be an over-the-top CGM hater. In general, if you're eating things that don't spike your blood sugar, it's probably not a bad way to eat in terms of like you're

going to have a relatively good diet quality, but you can take that too far. I mean, if you're guzzling bacon grease and butter because you're like, oh, well, I'm not spiking my blood glucose. You're really missing the point. That's like people who eat a plant-based diet, but they're eating like plant-based ice cream and mac and cheese and chicken wings, you know, and like, it's like, no, you're kind of missing the point. You know, like the one thing all these successful diets have in common or all these healthy diets have in common

is they really limit the amount of processed food and they focus on, you know, high fiber intake. You know, I think relatively high protein intake. And that's not to say, like, I'm also very careful how I talk about processed foods because processed foods, it's not like there's something inherently, like all food is processed these days to a certain extent, unless you're literally growing and picking it out of your backyard yourself. So all food is processed to some extent. And the processing in and of itself is not like some magic thing that just makes you piling on body fat. They show in studies when you switch people from a minimally processed food diet to an

ultra-processed food diet, you spontaneously increase your calorie intake by about 500 calories a day. So it's an energy effect. It's an energy toxicity effect. But the point is, regardless of what diet you're going to do, keto, plant-based, Mediterranean, whatever, if you're doing it, but you're putting in a bunch of processed keto snacks or whatever it is, you're really missing the point of what the purpose of that diet is. And the purpose of that diet is by practicing dietary restriction, you're improving your overall diet quality by limiting your energy intake. But if you've gone to the store and looked at some of these keto ice creams, I mean,

they got more calories than the regular thing. But people go, oh, but it's keto. And it's like, well, it's not actually helping you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think just to clarify for people who don't know what CGMs are, continuous glucose monitors, but I do think they're quite like becoming a bit more mainstream. And I guess the question also is, do you think there's a place for them? Is it more of a kind of disease management monitoring point of care as opposed to like what I see is it's used like how people are using it is almost as a way to prove what they're doing is beneficial for their health but like you said looking at something in isolation in short term doesn't really prove anything and one thing in isolation doesn't disregard everything else that we do in our lives

and obviously our genetic environmental factors as well. Yeah. So I would say if it's working, show me the, okay, where's the long-term stuff? Show me your blood work. Show me, I mean, see you losing weight. And hey, if it's working for you, great. All forms of different restriction can work and that can certainly work. If you're keeping your blood glucose low and you're i mean seeing losing weight and hey if it's working for you great like you know all forms of different restriction can can work and that can certainly work like if you're keeping your blood glucose low and you're not just like dumping a bunch of butter on your food and oil you can certainly like lose weight doing that and get healthier uh but it's not any you know i guess my thing would be if you find that less invasive than like tracking your caloric intake, okay, you know, it doesn't guarantee you'll be in an energy deficit, especially if you're just adding a bunch of like added oil and butter and whatnot.

But if you're not doing that, like if you're doing like a low carb diet the appropriate way, which is, you know, like healthy fats, you're still eating vegetables, you're focusing on like still trying to limit your saturated fat, then I mean, it probably won't work. Like you probably lose weight if you're limiting your blood glucose because you're just not consuming many starchy carbohydrates, which you're going to consume less energy, you know? But what I would say is like, you can do all those things without having to monitor your blood glucose so you certainly don't need to but if seeing your blood glucose like stay flat after a meal gives you a little you know victory sort of feeling then i mean i don't judge what helps people be compliant

and for some people gamifying stuff can make them more compliant so i don't i'm not one of these people who's kind of you know you're using cg you're a POS because you're taking it away from, you know, people who need it. I don't think they're that difficult to obtain. I think in certain areas, they're a little bit difficult to obtain, but you know, if somebody wants to buy it with their money, that's their business. What I would say is like, I just think all this like kind of gymnastics around just tracking your caloric intake when you can literally have an app and scan something and then have it in your phone and it takes two seconds while hand wringing over just like doing the direct measurement. You know what I mean?

For sure. I agree with you. I think it might be I'm biased because of the community that I'm kind of seen on social media. But what I'm seeing is a lot of this isn't related to calorie restriction or weight loss. It's more about like, the fear, this like, huge fear around what sugar does to the body and insulin. And that like, I feel like that hasn't really gone away. People like yourself have tackled it. And even you know i discuss it i shared a reel around the research related to sugar and its relationship with pms and we actually have no causative links and i have like people coming for me in the dms because sugar causes inflammation and sugar causes diabetes and how you are, you know, so problematic as a doctor

to promote these things. And I'm not telling people to go out there and shovel sugar down their throats, but I'm trying to reduce the fear around this and also like get people to put it into context. Like that, that's it. It's a lack of context. And I guess I would actually love to explore that a little bit more with you. That whole sugar causes inflammation because when I was responding to it, I linked to your YouTube video because I was like, Lane's just going to explain this so much better. I do not have the patience for this. And it was great to have something to point people to. But if you could kind of dive into where that idea comes from and what we know yeah so what you'll find is a lot of the quote-unquote bad science out there um is usually whether it's vegan zealots fasting zealots seed oil zealots sugar zealots they all have the same playbook which is i'm gonna find some epidemiology that agrees with my preconceived notion. And what's funny is they'll all, you know, I can remember like Paul Saladino, a carnivore advocate,

has a video that's where the title is Epidemiology is Garbage. And then literally every video he cites different epidemiology studies to support his point. I'm like, well, but wait, wait, wait, is it garbage? Or is it like, you know, but all this study that agrees with you is not as the best thing since sliced bread. Okay. That's what we call a cherry picking folks. So they'll find some piece of epidemiology and epidemiology is basically where you're looking at groups of people at correlating health outcomes based on their dietary intake. All right. That's super problematic for multiple reasons that we just discussed because there's all kinds of confounding variables, but they'll find the epidemiology. And by the way, like, did you know there was a study that showed that eating anything at

any time is associated with colic cancer? So it's like, you know, okay. Like if you want to find my my phd advisor used to say if you torture the data enough it will confess what you want it to confess so you know you can find epidemiology for almost anything and then they'll also go to like in vitro animal or like uh peach cell culture research if i walk when they expose these cells to sugar inflammation went up and when they fed rodents a bunch of sugar inflammation went up well yeah because they gained weight and they put on excess body fat and excess body fat is inflammatory okay would you look at the research

that the direct and I love I would like to emphasize human randomized control trials, which are the gold standard for research, because you're randomizing and then you're controlling other variables to limit confounders and decrease the risk of bias. When you look at the human randomized control trials, where they equate calories between people eating more sugar and less sugar, you do not see an increase in inflammation. So what that suggests is the increase in inflammation is due to people who eat a high sugar diet tend to over consume calories. They put on excess body fat and excess body fat secretes adipokines, which are inflammatory. If you reduce that body fat, you have a reduction in inflammation. So there was a study done in 1997, which I really

like because it was very well controlled. They supplied all the meals to participants and they looked at, I think both groups were getting like a 1200 calorie diet and the proteins, carbs, and fats were the same. Calories were the same. Only difference was one group was getting over a hundred grams of sucrose per day. Another group was getting about 10. So 10 times difference. Both groups lost the exact same amount of weight, exact same amount of body fat, and had very similar improvements in their health markers. The only difference in their health markers, both groups, all their health markers improved because they lost weight. The only health marker that approved a little bit better in the low sugar diet was LDL, which does not surprise me because the high sugar diet would

have not been consuming very much fiber. So what you're probably seeing there is an effective lack of fiber as opposed to high sugar. But the point being, where are all these health markers going crazy that should be going crazy if sugar is an independent factor for a disease. You don't see it. And also, if sugar is an independent factor, why don't we see these on just high-carb diets in general? Because it all breaks down into glucose in the body. And why don't we see this with fruit? Some fruits are very high in sugar. Well, the reason you don't see it with fruit is people don't over consume it. And it's also, you're also getting the sugar with a lot of fiber as well. And what I'll tell you is after looking

at the research data, I think the negative effect of sugar on the diet is typically people who eat a high sugar diet, one, over consume calories, and two, do not eat a lot of dietary fiber. So again, it's kind of that you're replacing something with something else. But as far as sugar being like independently inflammatory, there's not really any research to support that that I'm aware of in humans. For sure. I would agree with you there. I think like the term inflammation is often used in the context of nutrition a lot lately that we've tackled before but it comes up especially when it comes to like I even seen it on a really big US podcast today which isn't anything to do with nutrition but they had a nutritionist on and they were talking about

how seed oil is in everything and these people have huge platforms and have lots of people listening who really trust in the guests that they get on. So I would love to talk to you about that and kind of the fears that people have around it, but what we actually know. Yeah. Cedars have become like sugar was about five to 10 years ago, which is if you talk about the research that's in opposition to the claims, they'll basically just kind of act like you just said that satan was okay you know well you can't tell me that sugar is good is good for you and i'm like well i'm not saying it's good for you but i'm saying that your claims are false you know so seed oils it is the exact same playbook it is look at this epidemiology of people who consume seed oils are fatter, sicker.

And now look at this in vitro cell culture where animal data showing when we feed a bunch of fully unsaturated fats what happens. So do I think seed oils are completely innocuous? No. But for the same reason, I don't think sugar is innocuous. The biggest source of calories, the increase in calories, I believe in the last 15 years, is from added oils. So we are consuming more of those oils and it's contributing to our overall energy toxicity.

Now, if we look at replacing various fats with other fats, what do we see? Well, we do know that if you replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat, you get a decrease in LDL cholesterol. Now, not LDL cholesterol denialists out there, but what I would say is that they are very strongly opposed to a plethora of research data. And listen, I was somebody who used to say things like, I don't think LDL cholesterol matters. I think it's the ratio of HDL to LDL, but I'm also intellectually honest. And when research comes out that refutes a previous point that I held,

I will admit that I was wrong. And when the Mendelian randomization studies came out, where you're basically Mendelian randomization relies on genetic variability. And you can look at people who have genetic polymorphisms where they either secrete less or more LDL throughout the course of their life and look at, okay, well, who dies first? Who gets heart disease more often based on like how much LDL they secrete over the course of their lifetime? And it is a linear effect. It is actually impressive how linear it is and how tightly associated with heart disease it is.

So I would say that to people who are LDL deniers, I don't know how much research data you need. Because if any seed oils are negatively contributing based on weak epidemiology and cell culture. We have strong epidemiology for LDL. We have strong mechanistic data for LDL that penetrates the epithelium. And we have all human randomized control trials as well as really long, well-done cohort studies. So where is the gap other than you picking out so a few different random human randomized control trials to go like one or two years which is not enough to see differences in heart disease incidents like how much more data do you need but oh seed oils have like i don't know a hundredth of that data and it's a proven thing so the intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency is

pretty high and the cognitive dissonance is pretty high amongst this group. Now, if you look at inflammation, it's kind of wonky. Monounsaturated fats tend to lower inflammation more than polyunsaturated fats and saturated fat. And then with polyunsaturated fats versus saturated fat, it's not really consistent between the studies, which affects inflammation more. But what I would say is it's definitely not clearly in favor of saturated fat.

So I think the point I'm making is if you add anything on top of your normal caloric intake, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, sugar, carbohydrate, and you're creating an energy surplus, you're going to have negative health outcomes associated with that. And so I think this whole focus on seed oils or the focus on sugar, quite frankly, a lot of it is people attempting to completely dismiss the individual responsibility for their own behaviors and actions. Now, I'm not somebody who says, you know, metabolic health and obesity, it's completely the fault of the individual. And there's no, you know, food companies have no liability. No, I think that there's multiple, like all these things

could be true, but just saying that, oh, the government and food companies made us sick. That's like saying, well, you know, big media is evil because they show us so much negative news. They show you negative news because you watch it. Because that's their product. And I promise you, if people all of a sudden said, we're not going to focus on negative, we're just all going to tune in when it's positive, guess what? They would change the way they do things

because they care about money a lot more than what they put out. And the same thing goes for food companies. If people simply stopped consuming these food products, food companies would stop making them simply stop consuming these food products, food companies would stop making them, or they would make more of the healthy foods, right? But they are simply reacting to customer demand. Now, do they try to make things more palatable? Of course they do. That's their product. If I was a food company, why would I not want more people to use more of my product? You know, I think people have to get over the fact that there is no perfect solution to this.

And any solution is going to involve some level of personal responsibility and personal accountability. And I think when people try to demonize individual nutrients, one, it's intellectually lazy. Two, it lacks, completely lacks new ones. And three, I really feel like it's an attempt to you know kind of say none of this is my fault it's all circumstantial based it's kind of that like victim mentality now if you eliminate seed oils can you get healthier sure i mean but when you're eliminating added oil you're eliminating one of the biggest sources of calories out of your diet

but it's not because seed oils are inherently evil. It's because they are an easy, palatable form of energy. Sorry, guys. That's the facts. Come for Lane, not for me. But I completely agree. I like a fight, you know. You do like a fight.

And one of the reaction videos you did actually came to my mind when you were talking there. And it was in relation to, I won't name the person, but they were in a supermarket with oat milk. And I've seen hundreds of these videos on TikTok and I'm sent it all the time. And I mean, I love the video that you did. What a lazy way to get content. It is so lazy. It's just, you know, shouting about different ingredients at the back of a carton. And they'll be like, seed oils, emulsifiers, added salt. Yes. Why do you think people are so angry about oat milk? And do you think it's justified?

Because they don't understand the concept of dosage makes the poison, which is literally the first thing you've learned in toxicology class. So all these, there's a lot of like doctors. Well, well, solely as a psychiatrist. Not that psychiatry isn't a reputable profession, but they don't, they're not nutritionists. Learn about nutrition you know all these guys i'm like did you i'm not a toxicologist but i've had basic toxicology i mean the kinetics can be you know complicated but the concept really is it which is um there's usually a dose of any poison that you could take that will not harm you now some of those things can have a

very low threshold you know like some things are very powerful poisons but there's also very few compounds that are completely innocuous when you feed extreme amounts of them now i believe the particular video you're talking about he was going after oxalates talking about how those oxalates and oats you know it's going to leach perils and all this kind of stuff do you know how little oxalates are in oat milk it is minute and i can literally go to any food product any food product pick an individual compound that exists in that food and make it sound scary i could absolutely do that in fact i have a a diagram i put up of a like organic banana and all the chemicals in an organic banana and their chemical names and i'm like look how scary this sounds you know because everything sounds like scary and man-made when you use its chemical name

but so many people are worried about these chemicals and what they should be worried about is taking a basic chemistry class uh because when you say stuff like this you show that you were either asleep in general chemistry in high school or you failed it because once you've had like basic chemistry you understand that like everything is chemicals this mic made up of chemicals the air around you made up of chemicals this phone made up of chemicals pin chemical you know like everything is made up of chemicals and just shouting about chemicals that are in food is just a really silly thing. Now, if you want to take something like mercury in tuna and talk about that and why we limit to a certain amount of intake per week, well,

that's because things like heavy metals are very slowly metabolized out of the body. But most things in food, oxalates, these sorts of, or like now the new thing is like look at these vegetables and look at these compounds of our vegetables that are going to make you sick they're in such low amounts and they're and they're they're metabolized out of the body very very quick and what i find completely disingenuous is a lot of this is out of the carnivore crowd and i was in i actually did a debate with Paul Saldino like five years ago. And I wish I'd made the point on the podcast,

but one of the things he said was, you know, he was talking about these toxic compounds in vegetables. And I said, okay, well, what about heterocyclic amines in meat? And he was like, oh, well, you know, that's when it starts going on about hormesis, which for those who aren't familiar,

hormesis is basically when you give a controlled dose of a stressor, like exercise, your body gets better at handling that stressor. I should have been like, well, wait, so these toxic compounds in vegetables are bad for you, but these toxic compounds in meat, oh, well, that's just hormesis. You know, like this sort of intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance where they're literally like arguing against themselves without realizing it is very raked throughout these populations and again i would just point out that you can literally go to any food i can go to a piece of fish and i could promise you i could

find something in the fish in a trace amount that is carcinogenic and all this sort of stuff like you might as well just not eat anything if you're worried about that kind of stuff yeah well pat um i hope we've got time for just one more question i want to squeeze in but it is it is opening pandora's box um you probably already worried my god call these people out here lane's just dropping names left and right you know probably come after me at my lane you could come after me leave her alone the big topic is and i have discussed on the podcast a number of times alan flanagan was on last time discussing it with me.

And that's artificial sweeteners. Alan's great. Artificial sweeteners. Do they cause cancer? Do they make you consume more calories? Are they harmful to the gut microbiome? Okay. I'm going to take those in a little bit different order than you asked, just by ease. Do they cause you to overconsume calories? No, not based on the averages that are reported in the data. In fact, the opposite is probably true. The best study on this is a network meta-analysis where they looked at, I think it was like a million subjects in total, of human randomized control trials. And they were comparing substituting artificial sweeteners in place of sugar-sweetened beverages or substituting water in place of sugar sweetened beverages. Then they compared water to artificial

sweeteners head to head. Okay. This is going to be a very, very, very unpopular segment because what they found was substituting water did not cause weight loss when substituted for sugar-sweetened beverages. Now, it's not that, like, they just, so they didn't lower their caloric intake. And what that suggests is they were seeking out that sweet taste somewhere else. The group that got, I say artificial sweeteners, they termed them non-nutritive sweeteners because technically, like, stevia is not artificial. So I'm just tossing that in that category, but non-nutritive sweeteners, they actually saw a significant weight loss

when it was substituted for sugar sweetened beverages. And when head to head versus water, they outperformed water by a little bit in terms of weight loss. So again, like I tell people, I'm like, if you think the artificial sweeteners will make you eat more calories because it makes you hungry, then you are actually saying that they're a fat burner. Because if those people are eating more calories and losing more weight, how else would you explain that? So artificial sweeteners are not fat burners.

And when people lose weight on them, it's because they eat less calories. So no, they do not cause people to overconsume calories. Now, there might be certain individuals that say, well, when I get a sweet taste, it makes me want to eat more. Well, if you know that, then don't have them. But in terms of the summation of the data, it's pretty darn clear that the effect of artificial sweeteners on caloric intake is either neutral or positive in terms of positive being it lowers caloric intake. Now, let's take the next question, which is the gut microbiome. And I'm doing this one because there's a little bit less research on it. I can summarize a little bit faster. So right now, there's only two real studies in humans that I would say really support the idea that artificial

sweeteners have an impact on the gut microbiome. And it wasn't every artificial sweetener. I believe it was sucralose and another one. I can't recall exactly which one. But basically, the strongest study on this was published in Cell and it was a two-week study. And the problem with it that I had was, it's not a problem, it's just a limitation. So, it actually, you could argue it's a strength and limitation of the study. That is, so they found, they wanted to find people who had never really used artificial sweeteners and see what happened when they gave them artificial sweeteners. And so they screened like 1,500 people who said they had never used artificial sweeteners. They

did such thorough recalls that they actually eliminated 90% of those people. I think it was 91% eliminated. They were left with like 130 subjects. So most people don't realize that they actually consume artificial sweeteners. They just don't know it because they're all over the place. So just because you're not consuming diet soda, that does not mean you're not consuming artificial sweeteners. In fact, I always chuckle at people in the fitness industry saying they avoid them and they're having pre-workout like all these other things. I'm like, what do you think's in there? And so the issue with that is in order to not consume them, you pretty much have to purposely avoid them. And so these folks that they got were likely people

who already believe that artificial sweeteners are bad for them and are subject to the placebo effect like they and they said in the study they were not able to uh they were not able to appropriately blight the subjects because of the taste differences like i like the taste of diet soda now but if you've never had it before you know if you go from regular regular like coke to diet coke you're like what is that you know um so these folks knew they were getting artificial sweeteners if they already have a negative connotation on that we have shown that the placebo effect is not just in your bite it will change your physiology as well the other issue is they showed changes in the gut microbiome in terms of like the different populations of bacteria so they increased these populations of bacteria but they also of like the different populations of bacteria. So they increase these populations

of bacteria, but they also increase like the production of butyrate and propionate, which are short chain fatty acids produced by the gut microbiome. If you look at the research on butyrate and propionate, it actually has positive effects on metabolic health. What I will say is it appears that artificial sweeteners, at least some of them, are not neutral to the gut. They do appear to change the gut microbiome. What we don't know is, is that change negative, positive, or neutral to health? We don't know that because we don't know enough about the gut microbiome. So what I will say is, if you want to avoid artificial sweeteners because you're worried about gut health, fine.

But if you're somebody who needs to lose 50, 60 pounds, and you find that replacing, you know, your soda intake with diet soda or whatever it is, or just using artificial sweeteners helps you get there. And by the way, every time I post about this, I will have two or three people in the comments say I lost 100 pounds just by using diet soda instead of regular soda. You can say whatever you want. I have a very hard time believing, even if there was negative changes to the gut microbiome, that those folks are not healthier by losing 50 to 100 pounds than whatever else is going on with the gut microbiome. Because guess what else is bad for the gut microbiome? Obesity. Okay. So we have to really grade like what's most important here. And I really try to

get people to pick up the big rocks first. And so it's very damaging when people say things like, well, diet soda is just as bad or worse than regular soda. No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. That is objectively not true based on a plethora of research data showing that people's cardiometabolic health improve, their risk factor for cancer is going to improve because they're not obese anymore. It's just simply not true. Now, is it innocuous? That we don't know, but I have not seen compelling data that it's negative to health. And then as far as cancer goes, first off, the effect is not consistent. So there are some studies that show an increased risk of cancer when you consume

artificial sweeteners, but there's also studies that don't show an increased risk of cancer when you consume artificial sweeteners. And here's the other thing that's really interesting, is in order for us to really have confidence that epidemiology or cohort data is probably causative, because it's really hard to draw causative conclusions from epidemiology, you really need to show a dose response. So that's important. And a dose response is basically, as we increase the levels of whatever dietary component we're looking at, we see the risk of whatever disease we're attempting to observe go up as well. And you don't see that with artificial sweeteners. In fact, there was a study that came out,

I think it was the Santee cohort, which was out of France. And they actually showed that the higher intakes of artificial sweeteners had lower risk factor for cancer than the low intakes of artificial sweeteners, but the low intake of artificial sweeteners had a higher risk than no intake. And I'm like, people are talking about the, they're just talking about blanketly that, well, this increases risk. I'm like, well, hang on, then why are we burying the lead here? Which is why does the high group not have greater risk than the low group? That doesn't make sense to me. If something is a risk factor for cancer, you should see a dose response

and we don't see that. And then only the really, again, it's epidemiology and it's mechanistic animal data where they're feeding 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 times the dosage of artificial sweeteners you'd ever get from the diet. And so to me, I just don't think there's really compelling data that artificial sweeteners cause cancer. And the other thing I should touch on as well is, we report things like risk ratio or odds ratio or hazards ratio. And these things are expressed as what the media will typically say is, this increases cancer risk by 10% or 20% or whatever it is. They're talking about a relative risk.

And this is a very important distinction. Because let's say, I think the absolute risk of cancer is something like 5% and over a 10-year period or something. When they say a 20% increase, they don't mean you go from 5% to 25%. They mean you go from 5% to 6% of an absolute risk of cancer because 20% of 5% is 1%. So 5% plus 1% is 6%. People don't realize that. So when they like the risk factors for artificial sweeteners are like relative risk of like 10, 15% from the data I've seen. So even if it was true, you're talking about going from the absolute risk of 5% to 5.5%. It's not a massive increase. Now, I'm not attempting to totally dismiss it either, but I will say, one, the data isn't

consistent. Two, I don't believe it's compelling. And three, it's a relatively small increase in risk. Yeah, absolutely. Before you go, I'd love to ask you three questions, which we ask every guest. And the first is, what is one thing you've changed your mind about? And actually, I think you might have a few things because you did a post on this quite recently. Oh, yeah. So we already talked about LDL cholesterol. I used to say it didn't really matter. It was more about the LDL to HDL ratio.

I changed my mind on that a few years ago. Submittal branched-shaded amino acids. I used to be an advocate for submittal branched-shaded amino acids. I even sold supplements that had BCAAs in them, but now my supplements no longer have BCAAs in them because I can't reasonably hold that position that they're worthwhile supplementing. Things like years ago, sugar, I used to say sugar was fattening independent of calories. Now, this is back when I started grad school. And then I just looked at the research and I'm like, oh, wow, there's actually no human randomized control trials I can use to support this point, so I got to change it. I used to say things like fasted cardio was better than fed cardio because you burn more fat.

And now when you look at the actual fat loss data, you don't see differences between fed cardio and fasted cardio. Fasting even. I used to say fasting is bad for muscle mass. You shouldn't do it. Now, I think the more extreme forms of fasting, like alternate day fasting, or if you're going 20 hours fast or one meal a day, I do think those are not optimal for muscle mass. But if we think about the traditional 16-day form of intermittent fasting, there are now a few studies showing that it doesn't really seem to negatively impact lean mass, especially if you resistance train. So I've kind of changed my mind on that. I still would say small differences in muscle mass are really difficult to pick out over a 12, 16-week study. And obviously, you can't do multi-year randomized control trials for

resistance train. Well, it's really, really difficult. As well, I tell people, like, listen, when you ask, why didn't the study measure this, this, and this? Or why was it longer? Why was it more people? Money, money, and money. That's why. I will say, I don't think that forms of fasting, if you want to be the most muscular human being you could possibly be, I think forms of fasting are not the best way to go about it. But do I think for people who are just looking to add muscle and aren't worried about being

a bodybuilder or professional athlete, I think the intermittent fasting is probably just flying for that. So yeah, those are some of the things that changed my mind. Others, but others, but I think that's the hallmark of people call you a flick-flopper. And even this happened today on a post I made, like somebody was talking about a person who I've called out recently and like, oh yeah, they changed their mind on this. And I'm like no no we should i we should actually encourage that that should be encouraged not yeah for sure you should not shame people for changing their mind now when people change their mind and it annoys me is the again the pricey little stuff on this but uh

you know paul saladino a while back added fruit and honey back into his diet he's like oh i feel so much better but he wouldn't acknowledge it it was the carbs. He was like, well, it's the electrolytes. And it's like, electrolytes? There's not even been any electrolytes in that stuff. And he kind of did this mental gymnastics to not admit that it was the carbohydrates making him feel better. It was the electrolytes. So that was annoying because it was kind of like, well, I still want to keep my narrative even though I changed this sort of thing. So I think anybody who's willing to change their mind and not just dogmatically feed into a narrative, I think that's a really great sign of somebody who's intellectually honest.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really admirable to be willing to be wrong. And in research, it evolves all the time. And so opinions may change. This podcast may be outdated in five years and we'll have new research to change your opinion again. I hope so. I love to be right, but being wrong is a beautiful thing because if I'm wrong about something, it means I have to do everything I possibly can. If I'm right about everything, then this is as good as it's going to get, right? So I actually kind of like to be wrong because then there's stuff I can change. Yeah, I agree. The second question is, what's a non-negotiable in your day? Some form of activity. I train four to six days a week, resistance train four to six days a week. But on days I don't train, I still go out, I'll go for a walk, I'll go for a bike ride, something, get my body moving. Nothing will make me feel more tired than just laying down all day. Now, I'm not saying I never have done that. If I'm sick or whatever, yeah, I'll rest. But for the most part, I get in some form of activity every single day. I like to get outside to get outside. I think that's important. You know, even if it's just walking like down the street,

I think that's important. I agree. I'm there with you on that one. And the final question, we are a food podcast. What would be your death row meal? You know, I'm a, I'm a basic dude. So I probably have my favorite thin crust pizza, a bag of popcorn and some ice cream pre-death and wash it down with a really good beer. That would be my pre-death meal, I guess. Sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty tasty. Well, thank you so much, Lane, for giving us your time today.

It's been so great to properly connect and have a good conversation. I'm sure off the back of this, listeners will want to know where to find out more from you. So where are the best places to direct everyone? Yeah, so I'm on social media. I'm Biolane on pretty much everything. B-I-O-L-A-Y-N-E. That goes for Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube. And then my website is biolane.com. And I think Instagram is kind of like now everybody's like

digital business card. So I always felt like you want to find out what I do and the products I offer and all that kind of stuff. You can go to Instagram, click the link in my bio, and that'll take you to the page where it has all my courses, my nutrition coaching app, our one-on-one coaching services, our workout programs, our research review, our books, everything we sell, you can find through there. So I think Instagram's the easiest way, but I have it on pretty much every platform with the name Biolink. Well, thank you so much again, and hopefully we'll see you in the flesh in London soon. Yeah, it was great talking to Hazel and hoping to meet him

in person sometime. Lane Norton, everyone. I think he answered most of your questions, but if you do want to hear more from him, make sure to check out his social media channels

and his YouTube is also super helpful. I'll pop it all in the show notes. If you love this episode, you know what to do. Please leave a review, a rating,

hopefully five stars and share it with someone you know will love it too. That's all from me. See you again next time.