Part 56 - Nina Teicholz on Meat, Butter, Bread, Cholesterol, and Fat: How Did We Get Them So Wrong?
Description
Hello, hello healthy people. Have you been eating a sapien diet recently? Are you feeling better than ever? Or is it just me? Many people are probably doing it without even realizing it. It’s basically just a high animal food, high fat, low carb, low antinutrient diet with a condensed eating window.
We talk a lot about why this way of eating is so beneficial and so misunderstood today with the legendary Nina Teicholz. She is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, the Executive Director of The Nutrition Coalition (a group devoted to evidence-based nutrition policy), an investigative science journalist and author of the must-read book Big Fat Surprise. Just go read it now. Seriously. She spent almost 10 years researching and digging up studies to blow the top off one of the biggest mistakes in human history. Yes she says it. Demonizing cholesterol and human health foods like red meat and saturated fat has truly been a catastrophe for the health of our world.
She got in this early and made waves, woke people up, and got the movement going. She and Gary Taubes have been instrumental in getting the word out to the mainstream. Listen up everyone, she’s awesome!
I have a few more things before we start, though. We’re actually still looking for a story or two to weave into the film. If you know a family whose kids have lost a ton of weight, I’d love to hear from them. I’m also interested in connecting with an LA based editor and videographer that can help make some more youtube content with us. We have a lot of things cooking and not enough chefs!
Do you have pets? We’ve got the healthiest pet food possible at http://NoseToTail.org It’s grass finished ground beef with all the organs in it, specially made for animals. Get some for yourself while you're at it. We make it for humans too. We also have high omega 3 pork and chicken that’s pasture raised and fed a special diet. The meat and fat are loaded with possibly the best omega 3 to omega 6 ratio in America. Get it delivered to you with a few clicks at http://NoseToTail.org Restocking on friday so I’ll add the products back in stock wednesday (which is when this episode is coming out) and we always ship on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Please support the film on Indiegogo by clicking though the show notes or http://FoodLies.org
We’re about to make another order of the “It’s what else you eat, not the meat shirts.” You can get one with a preorder copy of the film.
Support this show on Patreon and get the extended show notes on http://patreon.com/peakhuman
And subscribe to the new SAPIEN show on any podcast app or youtube. We film video and audio at Evolve Healthcare in Los Angeles with Dr. Gary and some really interesting guests. Just search for Sapien.
So here we have it, the ex-long-time-vegetarian turned eater of meat, butter, eggs and cheese, Nina Teicholz.
SHOW NOTES
- Nina is a journalist who spent nearly a decade writing her book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet
- She thought she was writing about science but realized she was writing about politics
- She started Nutrition Coalition to bring an alternative point of view to Washington to try and get government support to change the dietary guidelines
- Turns out Americans follow the dietary guidelines, but are still getting sick
- Consumption of red meat, butter, and whole milk are down
- Consumption of grains and vegetable oils are up
- Ever since the dietary guidelines were introduced in the 1980s diabetes and obesity rates have exploded
- No one can prove that the guidelines caused these epidemics, but we have a body of science that show if people ignore the guidelines and eat high fat low carb they can manage and reverse their diseases suggesting that the guidelines are no promoting health
- Quote from Nina’s book: “But like lost languages, lost skills, and lost songs, it takes only a few generations to forget”
- It seems normal that everyone has a disease, but it’s not normal
- Challenging the idea of low-fat plant-based diets is extremely difficult because it is enshrined at the highest levels and there is a lot of corporate interest behind it
- The main ingredients in the grocery stores are sugar, grains, and vegetable oils
- Food only became medicalized in the 1950s when people were suffering from heart disease
- Diet-Heart Hypothesis introduced by Ancel Keys claiming that saturated fat and cholesterol would clog your arteries like hot oil down a cold pipe and that would lead to a heart attack
- The first dietary recommendation in the world was to limit saturated fat issued by the AHA in 1961
- It wasn’t until 1970 that all fats were demonized and not just saturated fats
- The AHA recognized that they didn’t have all the answers but they couldn’t imagine any negative unintended consequences but in reality, the unintended consequences were two-fold
- By cutting down on saturated fats we shifted to PUFA vegetable oils which turned out to cause higher death rates from cancer
- Since 1960 we have increased carbohydrate consumption by 30% and have decreased fat since 1965 by around 30% and protein has stayed relatively constant
- They tested the diet-heart hypothesis after the dietary recommendations had already been made, and were never able to support it by science
- The majority of studies that couldn’t confirm any health benefits to low-fat diets were largely ignored and considered “silent studies” it was too uncomfortable for anyone to admit they might have got things wrong
- The Minnesota Coronary Survey study wasn’t published for 16 years because the researchers weren’t happy with the results since they didn’t support a low-fat diet for reducing risk of heart disease <li style="f