The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1034: Fat-Free Foods | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

On Skeptical Sunday, Michael Regilio dishes out the skinny on fat-free foods and their weighty consequences that led to our 21st-century obesity epidemic! Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by skeptic, comedian, and podcaster Michael Regilio! On This Week's Skeptical Sunday: The low-fat diet trend, popularized in the 1960s and 1970s, was based on flawed science and cherry-picked data, particularly from the selective research of physiologist Ancel Keys. Removing fat from food products often led to increased sugar and refined carbohydrate content, contributing to the obesity and diabetes epidemics in the United States. The American Heart Association and other institutions have been slow to change their dietary recommendations due to conflicts of interest and corporate donations. Consuming healthy fats is essential for proper bodily functions, and low-fat diets have not been shown to prevent cardiovascular disease or cancer. By educating ourselves on proper nutrition, focusing on whole foods, and reducing refined carbohydrates and processed foods, we can take control of our health and potentially reverse or prevent diet-related maladies like type 2 diabetes. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with Michael Regilio at Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, and make sure to check out the Michael Regilio Plagues Well With Others podcast here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1034 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host Michael Regilio. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers. On Sundays, we do Skeptical Sunday. We're a lot of people. We're a rotating guest co-host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about, and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as why tipping makes no sense, circumcision, e-commerce scams, GMOs, toothpaste, crystal healing diet pills, hypnosis, homeopathy, and more. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, cyber warfare, crime and cults and more.

That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now, every time we go to the grocery store, we choose between regular versions of food and low-fat versions. People often reach for the fat-free, 20% less fat or reduced fat choices, but what are these low-fat and no-fat labels actually telling us? Do these products really help us lose weight? Are they actually healthier? And how do we know? Today, skeptics slash comedian slash make-up your mind, Michael Regulio is here. to lay down the facts about fats. Hey, Jordan.

While you're looking fat-free. Well, that's a good thing, right? I mean, we're taught the goal here is to be fat-free, more or less. Now, see, there you go. I mean, with few exceptions, fat has had just a terrible reputation for such a long time. I mean, oh, sure, the fat boys were cool for a minute. Lizzo, she flouts her size, and hey, P-H-A-T will forever be cool, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, but actually, you know, I'm pretty.

pretty sure that PHAT hasn't been cool in like two decades. But yeah, continue. Well, fine. If you ask the average American FAT is bad, right? But in fact, most people equate the fat in your food with the fat in our ass. But the fact is, we've had it exactly ass backwards or back asswards for a long time. I thought the whole saying, a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. Wasn't that about fat? Sure. And the fact is, eating fat and being fat are actually very different things. We need fat, Jordan. Fat is an essential part of your diet. And the notion of cutting fat out of our diet has been just wrong from the beginning. Okay, so what specifically are we getting wrong? Everything. There is very little evidence humans need a low fat diet or that

fat-free products make us healthier. In fact, all the evidence points the other way. Check it out. Our current understanding that fat is bad is actually kind of new. Like, not so long ago, people ate lots of fat and were relatively skinny. I mean, just look at photos of Americans from around the mid-century. The average person is much bigger today. Yeah, that's assuming they're not using an Instagram filter, making them appear skinny. Good point. And you know what?

If that technology existed in 1955, it probably would have flopped because really no one needed it. Yeah, I guess flipping through history books, I tend to notice that most of the fattest people are actually in paintings. Yeah, I mean, the Rubin-esque. I think Rubin may have been the original Sir Mixa lot, if you know what I'm saying. But historically speaking, the thin people in those books you're looking at were eating a diet that by today's standards should have led to weight gain and poor heart health. But there was just no obesity epidemic until recent decades. So what is really going on here? Experts have always recommended a low-fat diet, at least as long as I've been alive, I think. I mean, that's why they label so many products fat-free in the first place, right?

That's the whole thing. Yeah, right. Look, let's take a second and actually define some of those fat-free labels you're talking about. So when you see fat-free on packaging, that means it must have less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving. When you see low fat, that means it must have three grams of fat or less per serving, and reduced fat foods must have at least 25% less fat than regular versions of those foods. So what is a regular version of food? It's just food.

And here's the thing. You really don't even need to bother understanding which label means what, because it's all kind of useless. But buying fat-free labeled products contributes to the same. weight loss, right? I mean, that's the point of the industry, I thought. Ah, yes. Well, one would think. However, it seems that just as the fat-free industry launched, America gained weight. Fat-free eating does not ensure weight loss. That's just not how calories and weight work. In fact, low-fat diets are more likely to pack on the pounds instead of shedding them. How can that be possible? Because fat in food,

it delivers the message to your brain that you've had enough to eat. If your meal has no fat, you can just eat and eat until you're truly stuffed, ending up with many more calories than you would have had if you had just a little fat in the meal. There is just very little science behind a low-fat diet promoting weight loss. Yeah, it seems like there's a rethinking of the effects of fats, and you learn about nutrition, and it turns on its head. It's a fat renaissance over here today. Right, which wasn't Rubin a Renaissance painter? So maybe it's the second fat Renaissance. Maybe. Art history majors, look that one up for me. But fat can actually lower your triglycerides, blood pressure, and weight. For years, we believe the weight loss equation was calories in and calories out. But that kind of appears to be wrong. Plus, fatty portions of foods are where one finds the highest concentration of fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and beta carotene. So when you remove fat from foods, it not only makes it less tasty, but it reduces its vitamin

content. So fat, well, fat is where it's at, at least in terms of vitamins. Yeah. In fact, the three main macronutrients in food are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. And there are, in fact, essential fats. There are essential proteins, but there are just no essential carbs. Essential means the nutrients are necessary to eat to survive. So there is really no reason survival-wise that we have to have.

to eat any carbs, like ever. Oh, come on, man. All you can eat breadsticks at Olive Garden? So many memories. Look, man, don't tell me. I love carbs. More than anyone, my favorite food has consistently been just bread. In fact, I like to say the only carb I avoid is on monoxide.

Oh, I see what you did there. Carb on monoxide. It's questionable if I'm going to let that joke stay on the podcast. It might end up on the cutting room floor. Fine. But look, I enjoyed it. And just like we all enjoy carbs and sugar. And that's in large part due to the food pyramid. Ah, yes. The food pyramid. Man, we all had to draw that thing in kindergarten. I'm old enough to remember the four food groups and somehow eggs were in the dairy section, which I still can't get rid of in my head somehow. But yeah, the food pyramid. A lot of poster board went into those

creations. Yeah. And the largest food group at the bottom, the foundation on which the entire food pyramid is built by aliens, I might add. What are you talking about right now? Oh, sorry. Actually, wrong podcast. No, no, no. The foundation of the totally not built by aliens food pyramid is all carbs. And we enjoy all these carbs because for 40 years, the food pyramid said carbs should be the main thing in our diets. But actual research shows we should flip the pyramid. We kind of got it all wrong. All right, so we got to flip the food pyramid. Hey, we might actually need to call the aliens back for that. That seems like quite a heavy lift, no pun intended. So somehow it's so American that we have the food pyramid upside down because of carbs, big carb, basically. Yeah, raise your

toast coast coast to coast. Land of the Fat Free, Home of the Bread. Yeah, saluting the gluten, baby. America, baby. The thing is, we need essential fatty acids like omega-6 and omega-3 for many important functions, like keeping us warm, especially in winter, because of the breakdown of fats creates heat. The diet of Inuits gets about 60% of its calories from fat, and on their native diets, they don't have heart disease anywhere near the rates we have in the U.S. Inuits, otherwise known to your racist Uncle Frank as Eskimos, but we don't use that word anymore, folks. Anyway, that's actually really amazing. I had no idea that they didn't have chronic heart disease, at least not in the same measure as we do. That's quite incredible if they're all just

eating tons of seal meat or whatever. Which is exactly what they're eating. And that's because we need fats for proper hormone function, especially for women. Fat keeps our cell walls strong. Fat also affects the nerves. A low-fat diet may even contribute to depression. And like I said, we need fat to absorb and store the fat soluble vitamins. Plus, when you remove fat from food, like I said, it makes it less tasty. Our federal dietary guideline is broken. Eating fat does not make you fat. And the science that says saturated fats cause heart disease, that's just plain misleading. I hear a lot about saturated versus unsaturated fat. So what are those? What is the difference? Well, technically the difference between saturated and unsaturated has to do with the individual

bonds between carbon atoms in saturated vis-a-vis unsaturated fats. But since I, I studied music in college, and they didn't cover that. And yet you still turned into the kind of person that says vis-a-vis, unironically. Jordan, using erotite words is my milieu, my man. Okay. I get the point. All right, so I get the point, but I need a dictionary to get it. I don't suppose you could define saturated and unsaturated fats just in like regular-ass English, could you?

Fine. For our purposes, let's just say saturated fats are usually solid at risk. temperature and come from animals. Unaturated fats are usually liquid and from plant sources. Unsaturated is considered the good fat, but as we'll see, both of these fats have a role in keeping us healthy. So are we unhealthy because we trusted the frickin' food pyramid? Because I, again, we all had to learn that, and it was like you've got to make sure you're getting enough cereal every day or whatever. And it's going to be kind of infuriating if that just turned out to be a bunch of bologna deliberately handed to a bunch of kids. It's just like, it's

criminal. Well, yeah, I mean, the word deliberately there, we'll see about that. The history is really interesting, but the fact is something has caused two out of three Americans to become overweight. Before processed food, fat-free propaganda, and high-carb diets, we were like a lot skinnier. Over the last 60 years, obesity rates in the U.S. have more than tripled. In the early 1960s, roughly 13% of people were considered obese, the current national obesity rate is closer to 43%. Jeez, what is wrong with everybody, including myself? Because I also lost weight recently. What is wrong with me and the rest of America? And I'm in current need of losing a little weight, and trust me, it's the carbs, which gets me to my next point. Obesity is sometimes portrayed as a result

of poor self-control, but we can see that it was actually the system with setting people up to fail. Obesity is just not a lack of character. It's a hormonal disease. Since the 1960s, certain experts started advising people to eat less fat based on the belief that a high fat diet led to high body fat. Obesity was pretty much on a slow rise beginning in the 1950s and in the 1960s, but then in the 1980s, man, it really took off. What happened in 1980 besides my birthday and what, Caddyshack? Well, when you put it that way, Jordan, nothing of that magnitude happened in 1980. But the U.S. government told all Americans to cut back on fat and increase their carbs. And out came the fat and we replaced it with sugar and refined carbs.

And boom, there's an explosion of processed foods. Reduced fat brownies and frosting and cereals were busting off the shelves like the buttons on the shirts of the people eating this crap. So it was like a switch gets flipped in 1980, igniting the sharp upward trend in obesity? Kind of. It was more like a dimmer switch, slowly being turned up. Let's back up just a little bit. The first processed foods were cooked up with the cereal craze of the late 1800s, which, by the way, side note, John Kellogg, the father of breakfast cereals, he was a devout Seventh-day Adventist and invented cornflakes in 1894 because he believed it would keep people from, masturbating.

Does that work? I mean, asking for a friend and all that, but like, I can't really follow the logic. I'm going to make a cereal that nobody really likes. And in return, they're going to stop flogging the log. I just don't get it. Well, for one, you can tell your friend that nothing works. And the fact is, the Kellogg legacy, despite the masturbation thing, what's really significant about it is it's rooted in the...

the using of dextrose and sugar encoding the cereals. That is to say it was the first processed foods. And by the 1950s, fast foods and processed foods were taking over. Americans really weren't cooking at home that much anymore. And we slid down the wrong processed path. You know what else is PHAT, Michael? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our sponsors does keep the lights on around here. All the links, deals and discounts. codes, ways to support the show are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also email me. I would love to surface a code for you. It is that important that you consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. How did we get it so wrong? I mean, we have scientists, right? Right. Well, the turning point really was happened because people used to care about the president. In fact, people liked Ike, Jordan. People really liked Ike. Okay. Once again, what are you

talking about right now. Talking about in 1955, President Eisenhower had a heart attack and was out of the Oval Office for 10 days. The entire nation collectively freaked out and people started asking, why? Why did this elderly four pack a day smoker have a heart attack? Some thought it was from vitamin deficiencies. Others figured it was because of the boom of cars on the road and all that auto exhaust. But in the end, they looked through the clouds of cigarette smoke that hung over the United States of America and they spotted the real enemy, cholesterol. If they really liked Ike, it just seems to me they could have looked a little bit harder. Right. Look, the fact is, in the 1950s and 60s, cigarettes were in. You could smoke on planes and elevators. Cigarettes

smoke wasn't in the air. It was the air. Yeah, doctors smoked back then famously, right, and recommended it for throat pain. Like, oh, is your throat dry? Have a camel. Yeah, it's It's true. Oh, man, those old ads are hilarious about which doctors. They used to advertise, like, do you ever get that oversmoked feeling? Not with, I can't remember who it was camels or whatnot. It's like, that oversmoked feeling was your lungs shutting down. Yes. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Right. And Eisenhower, who apparently didn't get that oversmoked feeling because he smoked four packs a day, which is 80 cigarettes a day. Rates of cigarette smoking and heart disease actually rise together. But the tobacco companies were like, nah, bra, it's not us.

Yeah, no. The worst part is everyone's like, well, okay, well, they said it wasn't them. They stood up and said it wasn't them, so never mind, let's keep looking. Well, they had the bias of they really loved smoking. And they also listened to this guy, Ansel Benjamin Keyes. He was a University of Minnesota physiologists. And he ignored the correlation between smoking and heart disease and focused on fat. Ansel Keys, believed that cholesterol and saturated fat was building up and clogging our arteries. I can't, all right, I can see how that would make sense to some people. Right, but what doesn't make sense is blaming ancient foods for modern disease.

Ooh, yeah. I mean, how have people eaten butter for the last few millennia, and it's only since 1960 that it causes heart disease? It was pretty crazy. There's this saying coined by H.L. Mencken, for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple and wrong. And that's kind of just what Ansel Keys was. He was just wrong. Okay, but why wasn't he proven wrong? Is this we just didn't have the science or did he have his thumb on the scale? This dude, for what I understand, he was like really headstrong and incredibly persuasive. And in truth, it's not a bad theory.

I mean, it makes sense. Like, I heard somebody say that they considered it like dumping, you know, hot wax down a cold pipe. like the cholesterol would just solidify there and clog things up. And it wasn't just conjecture. Because Keyes, he went out and he found a correlation when he analyzed the diets and heart disease rates of six different countries. So he backed up his ideas with data then? Well, kind of. But see, the problem was that at the time, there was data on 22 countries. But it looks like Keyes just ignored the data that showed no clear relationship between saturated fat and heart health, and he just pushed his diet heart health hypothesis anyway. So it's like cherry picking? Is that the right term? And everyone just bought it?

No. Actually, he was criticized at the time by statisticians who accused him of, like you just said, cherry picking. Why cherry pick when you have the data? Just do good science. I don't get it. Is this all, like, I just have to be right about this. Is that what this is? Just chalk one up for humorous, ego. I mean, scientists are people too. And one thing is for sure this guy Keyes, he was like really determined to be right. Like even when they came at him with other information, he then went out and said, okay, fine, forget the six country study. And he went out and did another study. Only this time he studied seven countries, Jordan. This is like that scene in whatever movie where they pick up the hitchhiker and he's like, seven minute abs. And he's like,

oh, is that like eight minute abs? And he's like, no, seven, seven, seven being. Something about Mary would be that movie. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, good memory. It just sounds like his argument as well, seven is more scientific than six because there's one more country. So then again, I'm right, even though I cherry-picked the data again. Right, which he did, actually, because he intentionally left out the countries that he knew, like Switzerland, France, and Germany had lots of saturated fat in their diet but didn't have high rates of heart disease. Oh, man, that's so disheartening. Ansel, you are doing it wrong, but you're doing it wrong on purpose, which is so much worse.

Right. And it wasn't like there weren't other voices. In England, there was this guy John Yudkin, proposed the alternative hypothesis that it was sugar and not fat causing poor heart health. In fact, Yudkin wrote, quote, if only a small fraction of what we know about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned. And that sounds reasonable. Yeah, well, guess what? Yudkin paid a huge price for it. He was bullied right out of being a nutrition scientist. Keys personally went after him, like viciously in the press and in scientific literature, and so did the food industry. And Yudkin died in 1995, like just a forgotten man. Ansel Keys clearly didn't want the competition to be right,

and he had the sugar industry on his side. Since there's sugar in pretty much everything now, I'm guessing the sugar industry must have been pretty powerful even back then. Bingo, they're not as sweet as you might think. Oh, man. Okay. Well, that joke may have to also be erased from exist. I might have to cherry-pick jokes that aren't deliberately terrible. Fine. In 1965, the sugar industry paid Harvard researchers tens of thousands to produce articles. It said sugar was good, but fat and cholesterol were bad. Did Keyes work for the sugar industry directly? Like, was he on the take from these guys? Or was he just like, hey, they're, they're saying I'm right. And that's the sweetest sound in any language. So here we go.

Another sweet joke. You can get away with them, right? I didn't even mean to do that. But thank you. Dad jokes are now automatic completely for me. So, well, he didn't actually work for the sugar industry, but that's not to say he wasn't compromised in some way, because he was appointed to the American Heart Association Board in the 1960s. And pretty much, At that point, his hypothesis about fat and whatnot, the die was cast. And with Keyes' dishing out bad heart advice, the entire cast was probably going to die. That one was on purpose. No, no.

I like that one. I like that one. That stays, please. Right. And it's actually worth noting that the American Heart Association pretty much just started as this modest organization in 1920. But then in 1948, the equivalent of $20 million today was given to the American Heart Association by the makers of Criscoe.

oil, Procter and Gamble. This donation was huge and turned them into a national organization, and not surprisingly, the AHA then endorsed vegetable oils. And with that, Americans went from eating natural butter to eating partially hydrogenated oils, which are trans fats. Side note, because they come up all the time, I do think that there's a correlation between people who ingest a lot of trans fats and people who have transphobia. It's like always the guy eating a frozen pizza and donuts for breakfast who that wants to argue about who's allowed in public bathrooms. Okay, that's an interesting theory. I was wondering where you were going to go with that. By the way, that makes a hell of a lot of sense, right? Butter, you know what Chrisco looks like,

by the way? Yeah. Yeah, it looks like butter, right? That hard sort of buttery-looking stuff. So once when I was little, it just looked really yummy. I thought it was either going to be butter or cool whip, and I just took a mouthful of Crisco, and it was probably one of the worst things that I've ever tasted in my life. and it is shocking to me that we would use that instead of butter when butter tasted better. But if people were lying to us

and telling us that it was healthier, now it all kind of makes sense. Yeah, in fact, just today, I was at the grocery store and I came across a tub of vegan butter. And I was like, okay, I'm interested in this. And I picked it up and I looked at the label. First ingredient was vegetable oil,

partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. I was like, why? Why? Oh, that's awful. Yeah, so we're just replacing things that are natural-ish with things that are not in order to be vegan or be healthy or be whatever. And it's, oh, man. So why don't we define what trans fats actually are? Because we've been saying fats are actually okay, but now trans fats are not. Those are the actual bad fats? Yes, trans fats are made using an industrial process that adds hydrogen to vegetable oil, which causes the oil to become solid at room temperature. I see, like saturated fats, as you explained before. Right. Okay. Exactly. This partially hydrogenated oil is cheap, by the way, cheap as hell and lasts a long-ass time. So stuff made with it has an extra long shelf life. Ah, okay. So that doesn't sound like a winning combination for food in some ways. It's bad for you and it's been on the shelf for 18 plus months. But it's great for producers because they can put something in a crate in a warehouse like Twinkies for half a decade and still sell them and they taste like they were made yesterday. Exactly. I mean, with that stuff, who needs healthy and fresh foods? Restaurants as well use partially

hydrogenated vegetable oil in their friars because it doesn't have to be changed out as often as other oils. Unhealthy, old, and fried and oil shared with 10,000 other French fries and fried items. That is revolting, actually. Or is it? I don't know. Fried with the taste of 10,000 other French fries might be good, but... Yeah, you might be right. Anyway, so with the American Heart Association, approval, trans fats became hip for all the cats. That's not a joke. That's just a good rhyme. The American Heart Association ran ads pushing vegetable. The American Heart Association ran ads pushing vegetable oils as heart healthy. And with Ansel Keys on the AHA board in 1961, the American Heart Association offered the first recommendation in the world for people to cut back on saturated

fat and cholesterol to prevent heart attacks. And the entire country, just followed this recommendation? Yeah, it's pretty weird that until the 1960s, half of Americans calories came from fat and then just one day everyone just agreed to go on a low fat and I'm going to put quotes around this, quote, heart-healthy diet. I can't believe Americans actually ever agreed on something. But of course, of course, it was actually just disinformation. Right. But disinformation, well, I don't know which one's better, but disinformation is maybe even better than no information, which gets me to my next point, which is what we got with the Minnesota coronary experiment. And look, this experiment today would be considered pretty unethical,

but the patients at five Minnesota mental hospitals were put on high and low-fat diets. The hospitals were chosen because they were highly controlled environments. The patients' diets and health were monitored from 1968 to 1973, and it was found that as cholesterol went down from a low-fat diet, heart disease and deaths went up. And here's the thing. The results, they were never published. What? Why wasn't this published? Because it didn't support the Key's low-fat diet heart hypothesis. That is not only unethical to subject people to the experiment in the first place, but also highly irresponsible and unethical to not publish the data because you don't like the results. Yeah. Ridiculous. Well, they buried the evidence. And the study actually

wasn't published until decades later when a family member found it. I mean, who knows what the alien food pyramid would look like if it had been published? So our dietary guidelines are just basically a failed experiment based on marketing? No, our dietary guidelines are based on ignored experiments. Look, man, Jack Spratt was dead wrong to eat no fat and his wife was onto something by eating no lean. She knew that fat is essential. Stop. Look around for a second.

Look at the average size of a person in our society. Clearly, something is wrong. It's the wrong advice or being sold the wrong things. You know who won't slowly kill you in your entire family in exchange for corporate donations?

The fine sponsors that support this show. We'll be right back. Once again, the deals are all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also email me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. I'll find the code for you. If you can't remember the name of the sponsor, you're too lazy to find it. That's how important it is for you to support those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. It's obvious it's having a devastating effect on our

health. I mean, the stats are awful, but also you see young kids getting diabetes at like age 17 from eating nothing but Twinkies and Pizza. Oh, younger than that. And that gets me to my next point. that this obesity epidemic goes hand in high end with that other huge epidemic we're having, which is diabetes. All those years of getting fat out of food has caused the diabetes epidemic. Type 2 diabetes is brought on by insulin spikes and crashes, and it's proven that of the three macronutrients, carbs, spike insulin, proteins give a slight rise, and fats do not raise insulin levels at all. Really? There's no, right. You know, actually, I kind of knew that. We have a sponsor called Nutrisense, and it's a glucose monitor that you put in your skin, and diabetic people

are probably laughing at me for using it, but I found it really interesting because you can eat something like sashimi, and it shows your blood sugar, and there's barely any change, and then you can eat something else like rice, and you just watch it go straight up into the red zone like you're about to croak, and it's that insulin spike, which is, it's actually not that big of a deal you try and temper it by adding protein or whatever it is. Nutrisense, they give you like nutrition coaching inside the app, which is pretty cool. But I would imagine if you're just eating nonstop, simple sugars and junk, you stay really high all the time and then your insulin spikes and then eventually your pancreas is like, I give up or whatever. Right. Well, it's not even just keeping it

up all the time. It's the going way up and then the crashing and then you crash. I see. And so you have to eat more carbs to get back up. It's this roller coaster effect. Because if your insulin is not skyrocketing every time you eat, it's just easier to not overeat. But like I said, that happens when you remove the fat and you add sugar and carbs. You overeat. In the 80s, the American Heart Association actually cashed in on the fat-free craze and food companies paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to feature, and maybe you remember this, a heart-healthy check symbol on their product. Oh, I do remember this. Right. And all we had to do was have no fat. So if cookie crisps are fat-free, they were labeled heart-healthy, even if the sugar content was like through the roof.

To be fair, that was the catchphrase of cookie crisps. Now with sugar content, that's through the roof. Yeah, that's because they're great. Let's not go to the memory lane of breakfast cereal catchphrases because we'll be here all day. But I love breakfast cereal catchphrases. You might even say, I dig them. Ooh, good deep cut. Deep cut. Thanks. Let's not forget the original cornflakes slogan. Keep corn flakes on your shelf. and keep your hands off yourself. Yeah, or you might go blind or get diabetes or, which, by the way, as it turns out, is caused by not eating fat, so.

Right. There is basically no relationship between eating fat and diabetes. Huh. But all the sugar on the shelves is related to why one in three Medicare dollars today is spent on diabetes because 38% of adult Americans have diabetes or are pre-diabetic. That is so... Wow, 38%. I mean, damn, that's almost, we're on our way to half the country being diabetic or pre-diabetic. That's crazy. Right. And we all know people that are pre-diabetic. And sadly, they're not hard to spot. I mean, it's people that are dealing with weight problems. That's one of the first things that the doctor will tell you as you start getting heavier and heavier. You are now pre-diabetic. You have to watch the weight. And type two diabetes comes because of those insulin spikes and crashes, which is actually really, really the proper measure of food. It's not how much cholesterol. It should be how much it raises

your insulin response. So what exactly is insulin? Is insulin a hormone? Yes, of course. Yeah. Insulin is our fat storage hormone. And it keeps cells from burning their stored fat. High insulin levels are problematic and carbs spike our insulin levels. The carbs are like kindling on a fire. They burn really fast, spiking your blood sugar, and then they go out dropping your blood sugar, and then you need more carbs. Whereas fat is like putting logs on a fire. They burn long and steady. Diabetes is a condition caused by raised blood sugar. So it's a bad idea to eat the one thing that spikes it. And this has led to an enormous surge in type 2 diabetes. In just one generation, we've gotten ridiculously less healthy. There has been more heart attack.

more strokes, blindness, and amputations than ever. Well, I will say, Dr. Kellogg was trying to prevent strokes. Man, that cornflakes fact has just dominated this episode. I mean, if people are going to take one thing away from this, it's that cereal was invented to stop people from whacking it. What about all the diabetes medications? Are those making a dent in things at all? I mean, we have, like, that's got to be the main thing,

Ozempic and stuff everywhere, all these peptides. Right, no, because you can put, this one in the bank, you can't throw drugs at a dietary disease. And this is worth repeating, you cannot throw drugs at a dietary disease. You can tell that a disease is misunderstood if we just can't prevent it or properly treat it. But there are tons of treatments for diabetes, though. That's what I'm saying. There's all kinds of medications and stuff like that, or is that not what you're getting at? No, you're 100% right. And watching cable news, which I love to do, that's all you see is ads for diabetes medications. I think we've probably

be all fallen asleep at least once to the OZempex song, which you know, don't make me sing the OZempic song. Right. Which, by the way, now the music snob in me needs to jump in and say it's not the OZempex song that was magic by the Scottish pop group pilot. But fine. OZempic is a good example, though, of how we treat diabetes, the idea that just take these pills and change nothing else about yourself.

By the way, if you haven't gotten the OZEmpic song in your head, let me help you with that. Oh, oh, oh, Zampic. That's the one, man. The American Diabetes Association used to recommend diabetics eat a carb-based diet, which was literally the cause of the problem. But fortunately, things are changing. I was actually just on their website, and they have a lot of low-carb options, and a really good explanation of how carbs spike insulin levels.

Diabetes is a state of carbohydrate toxicity. Insulin resistance is a state of carbohydrate intolerance. Carb intake is the biggest factor in your blood sugar levels. By the way, a little side note here. The American Diabetes Association seems to care about people not getting diabetes or learning how to manage diabetes, but the American Heart Association seems to be primarily concerned with getting money from brands and really just not giving a crap at all

about the health of Americans' hearts, which is really disappointed. That would be like finding out the American Dental Association endorses jolly ranchers or some other hard candy that rots your teeth out. And they're just like, oh, yeah, no, we just sell the label on the toothbrush. We don't actually care about your teeth. It's really disheartening. Yeah, I mean, it's turning the battleship around. It's a slow, I mean, people have had this idea, and they're not just in our heads, but in the heads of the American Medical Association and other, that this correlation between cholesterol and heart health, and it's changing, though.

It is changing. It's really gross. You mentioned carbon intake is the single biggest factor in our blood sugar level. So is there anything we can really do about diabetes? I mean, I know you can take insulin, but that's not what I'm going for here. Right. Well, I mean, there's type one and type two. Type 1, which runs in my family, that's a genetic.

And there's really nothing you can do about it. But type 2, which is brought on by, you know, the sugars and the carbs. it can go into remission. It can't be reversed. You can't get rid of it, but it can go into remission, which means people can go off insulin. Wow. Which is good news.

Since in recent years, a lot of the people becoming diabetic, as you said, are children and really young children. I've read about this. Yeah. Like as young as six, I read. Oh, man. That's really a shame. That's almost, I would say almost child abuse at that point,

depending on if they're just really unlucky or if it's caused by the diet, period, like a ridiculous diet. Right. And look, anywhere that this USDA diet is followed, there are weight and health issues. And there's pretty much no better example of this than in the public schools. Yeah, the USDA recommended school lunches were never appetizing. I mean, I'm talking about like gross bread that's burned to the side of the carton with some cheese and pepperoni slices that are definitely, and that was the pizza. And kids ate that every day. Yeah, for sure. And it's not just your observation, but I mean, there's the actual rates of obesity among children are going up, up, up.

Health problems and kids is just really sad to me. And it's not just the kids, though. There's these, we're having the same problems in the military. And in fact, it's the largest disqualifier for entering the military right now is obesity. In fact, there was a report issued by the, I think it was the Army. The title of the report was too fat to fight. And that was the official report. Yeah, that's scary.

This is supposed to be our strongest people to do. defending us, which is, so that's, yeah, unbelievable. And look, not to mention, as you mentioned, that the American Heart Association is taking money from these organizations. They take money from big pharmaceuticals. They take money from sugar, and they are still maintaining that saturated fats are bad and vegetable oils are good. Why do they insist that this is a good guideline? I mean, Ansel Hees has to be, that guy probably died back in the 70s of the 80s. Why are we still dying on this hill? Why are they still so adamant that this is a good guideline? Well, I mean, the USDA is also in on this a little bit because they were founded in 1862 to provide

information to the American public about healthy eating, but a lot of people accuse them of supporting the American agricultural industry. And look, the fact is, our top crops, wheat, corn, sugar, and soy, they're just not that good for you. So basically the things we produce domestically are not good for our diet, but the USDA has to support the farmers. And so they try and get those things included. in stuff like cereal and then say, uh, yeah, you have to eat 12 bowls of this every day, because we got to do something with these crops so we can keep subsidizing this voting block or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I looked for a direct link to this like we have with keys,

ignoring data, and with the AHA accepting money from Procter and Gamble and whatnot. And it's really more speculation that the USDA is supporting American agriculture, but it does seem that way. And as a result of the USDA guidelines, Americans have increased their consumption of seed oils made from our biggest crops by nearly 90% from 1970 to 2014. They label vegetable oils as heart-healthy because they lack fat, but vegetable oil is made in a factory, and they use heat and chemicals. And when you eat oxidized oils, they create free radicals, which are highly inflammatory. And inflammation is probably at the root of most of the conditions that affect Americans nowadays. And free radicals and inflammation cause heart disease?

Right. So you're seeing the disconnect here. But it is connected to many other dietary trends like the popularity of antioxidants which combat free radicals. When vegetable oils and seed oils are heated and reheated in deep fryers, restaurants compound these issues. Like, they've actually taken fries from fast food places and looked at it in the lab and they are just covered in toxic particles. Oh, they told me that was truffle powder. The fact is, you can literally power a car with this crap. Yeah, eating these oils is bad.

So, okay, avoid fast food. I think we all understand that. Is there a better solution? And this is where I guess we don't want to give out medical advice. But what's on the table from anyone but the American Heart Association? Okay. Well, I've seen testimonials, and there are statistics about the keto diet. and diabetics. There are many instances of type 2 diabetics going on keto and losing a ton of weight

and getting completely off insulin. Lobe carb diets in general have similar positive effects. Right. Okay. So here's where my lawyer brain says to make a little bit of a note. So one, if you want to try a diet like keto and your diabetic or not, for that matter, anyone, talk to your doctor because this stuff, it's not for everybody and they have better insurance than I do. And two, yes, our body can make glucose or carbs. I don't want, you know, people are going to be like, wow, you're wrong, you do need carbs. Yes, you can make the carbs. We don't need to eat carbs to survive, but that doesn't mean that you should just never have any carbs at all. You can drink water from a puddle outside, right, if you're dying a thirst, but I recommend the faucet over the puddle any day if that

analogy makes sense. So if you're going to change your diet up, goes to your doctor, basically. Anyway, it sounds like things are getting maybe a little bit better these days. Yes, there are baby steps. In fact, in 2015, the American Heart Association did drop much of their concern with cholesterol. In 2019, the American Diabetes Association updated their website to start talking about low carbs. And I would, like I said, I was just there. And it's pretty good. They are definitely all on board with the low carb thing. Are people trying to get the word out? Because I know I've seen stuff like this on Instagram or whatever, but, you know, that's different than, hey, we need to overhaul our entire education system when it comes to food and nutrition. Right. I didn't actually see it, but there is apparently a South Park episode about like flipping the food pyramid. Oh, well, good. That's how it starts, right? Always starts with Trey and Matt. Yeah. And there's another organization, Low Carb USA. They're a company promoting to flip the food pyramid. But what we need to do is you've got to get doctors to implement it in their practice. Rates of obesity and diabetes are not sustainable. And if we change the

foods, we could pretty much solve the problem. With all the fad diets and ever-changing opinions, I just, I sometimes wonder if nutrition, all this nutrition stuff isn't a bit of a scam. I mean, not that nutrition itself is a scam, but there's so much scammy stuff involved in it. Right, which is why I got to look at the science, because science is not a scam. Right. How the human body interacts with food is really complex, you know, so people can be forgiven for trying to figure this stuff out. We are literally powering an incredibly complex. supercomputer robot with the stuff that grows out of the ground. So it's a miracle to me that this works at all. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. We really are like a supercomputer robot

eating things that are made from dirt, which is, yeah, impressive. Low fat was a dietary mistake. How do we know that low carb isn't another dietary mistake? Because the low fat diet became popular because the evidence was ignored. The low carb diet is seeing the light of day because, because the evidence is kind of irrefutable. And I'm not saying low carbs, as we understand it now, will be the ultimate understanding of nutrition. But I bet you it's a step on the ladder up the knowledge tree. Should we expect institutional change at some point soon? Well, in 2006, the Journal of the American Medical Association delivered a blow to the theory of low-fat nutrition, and they published the results of the Women's Health Initiative trial.

The results of the trial showed that a low-fat diet failed to prevent cardiovascular disease or cancer in women even when followed continuously for eight years. If eight years of study doesn't convince you, why are institutions so resistant to this? Well, they have a lot of reasons to be resistant, like billions of reasons, which is how much in corporate donations the American Heart Association receives. All right, money. That always explains it. Well, thanks for telling the confusing story of how we went low-fat and fatless.

And if we were to name that story, I would call it fatless shrug. All right. Well, let's go eat a wheel of cheese, Regulio. Bree on me. Thanks, Michael. Thank you all for listening. Topic, suggestions for future episodes can come straight to me. Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com.

Show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts are in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show. Once again at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Michael Regelio is at Michael Regelio on Instagram. Tour dates up now there as well,

and we will have that linked in the show notes because nobody can spell Regulio. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Melio Campo, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear.

on the show. Also, we might get a few things wrong here and there, especially on skeptical Sunday. If you think we really drop the ball or something, please do let us know we're pretty receptive to that. You all know how to reach me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time. What a master of the art of communication.

Charles Duhigg, author of Super Communicators, reveals key strategies for enhancing your connections and conversations and this enlightening podcast episode. Why do some people manage to connect with everyone else so effortlessly? And then there's times when I talk to my wife, and like we cannot connect with each other. And it turns out as just a set of skills, right? Like it's just literally a set of skills that super communicators know

and that any of us can learn and become super communicators ourselves. Looping for understanding. and has three steps. The first is ask a question, preferably a deep question. Secondly, repeat back what you just heard the person say in your own words. And thirdly, and this is the one everyone always forgets, ask if you got it right. And the reason why this is so powerful is because it proves that I'm listening to you. It's really easy to stop thinking about how we're communicating.

It's really easy to stop thinking about what's going on until we get in the habit of it. Communication isn't something that happens just one-to-one. it's one to many, but the same principles still hold up. You're still having practical or emotional or social conversations. Laughter is actually one of the non-linguistic ways that we connect with other people. There's been studies that show that in about 80% of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to something funny. It's because we're basically in a conversation and we're saying to someone, I want to connect with you. Nobody is born a super communicator. That's what feels tiring is when you feel like you want to connect and you can't. Right? This isn't a behavior. This

isn't a personality type. This is a tool that once we learn we can use when we want to use it. Learn how to categorize conversations, improve active listening, and overcome communication barriers to build stronger relationships. Tune in and transform your interactions into meaningful connections on episode 963 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard. right, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know

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