[soundtrack]
[Michal Siewierski] On June 3rd, 1997,
the World Health Organization defined obesity as an epidemic.
That definition was crucial for food and pharmaceutical companies,
because once this became a medical calamity,
then everyone could profit by providing a cure.
The very food companies charged with making us fat,
began making money by trying to help us lose the weight.
It was the beginning of the golden era of the weight loss industry.
In the last 30 years, hundreds of diet programs were created.
Thousands of books got published, and billions in products were sold,
creating one of the most profitable industries on the planet.
In the meantime, people kept getting bigger and everyone got to be blamed,
from fast food, carbs, sugars, fats, to genetics, lack of exercise, and even fruits.
With so much conflicting information,
an escalating global health crisis emerged,
leading millions of people into a never ending cycle of yo-yo dieting.
It is now estimated that by the year 2030, 42% of the American population will be obese
and 80% overweight, so we've decided to embark on a journey
and look for answers.
So I don't think of obesity as causing disease.
I think of it as sort of like that canary in the coal mine.
It's something that starts happening well before the diabetes
and the heart disease are so bad, that we know about it.
Over time, it catches up to you, and it leads to our number one killer, heart disease,
high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes.
And people get autoimmune diseases.
It's a comorbidity to so many other conditions.
That's why when you look at the charts of obesity and diabetes in America,
they go just like this together. And then if you look at
high blood pressures, with stroke, they all rise together.
Not because they're different diseases, but they are caused by the same problem,
and they're caused by the kinds of things that we're eating.
We are humans living in, most cases, in what we call a very toxic food environment.
An environment of highly palatable, very processed foods
that keep us addicted and interested in those foods,
and serve us a huge number of calories, without making us feel full.
It's important to lose weight, not only in ways that help us lose weight,
but in ways that don't mortgage our health. I mean, there are lots of ways
you can lose weight that aren't good for you. Amphetamines used to be
a very popular way of losing weight. I wouldn't recommend it.
And so it's important that when we're talking about weight loss, we're talking about
how to lose weight in ways that enhance our health, rather than mortgage it.
To try to blame a broken metabolism,
or hormones, or menopause, or,
"I have a knee injury and I'm not working out anymore",
or, "I used to work out and I'm not working out anymore".
I'm not saying those don't have contributions, but they're not the main problem.
Think about it this way. The average adult human eats a ton of food in a year.
A ton. Now explain to me how anybody could claim
that putting a ton of food through your body,
a ton of anything, wouldn't have a profound impact on your body.
Of course it's going to. Eat garbage, garbage in, garbage out.
Eat something fabulous, you get health as a result.
And food addictions are so common today,
that people aren't even aware they're addicted because: "Hey, everybody does it,
so I'm not an addict. I'm just doing what everybody does."
You literally are what you eat. I always say that.
You know, your mouth is your first and most consistent access to the outside world.
And you put food from nature into your body,
and your body knows what to do with it when it recognizes it. You know,
It knows how to process it and metabolize it and take care of it,
and it helps promote optimal health,
but when you're consuming things that your body doesn't recognize,
that's really refined and manmade, if you will, it's so destructive.
It's so difficult on the body and it really does lead to
the disease promoting processes that occur, when you consume these foods.
[Cronise] What other species that's ever walked the planet,
had obesity as a symptom of poverty?
It's not from deficiency. It's not water deficiency.
It's not sugar deficiency. It's not protein deficiency.
It's chronic overnutrition and no one wants to deal with it.
I kind of wish the entire weight loss industry would just disappear overnight,
because it is rife with lies, misinformation and products
that are not connecting people more deeply with their food choices and with themselves,
but ironically leading them away from that.
[Siewierski] Nowadays, you can find a study to back up practically any theory.
In 2015, a journalist and associate scientists from Harvard University
published a hoax study to prank reporters and show how easily the media can be fooled.
The study proposed that by eating chocolate, people could lose weight.
Of course, that was not true, but the media bought into it,
and the story was featured in major publications
and news stations all around the world.
What's shocking is that none of the reporters took the time
to investigate the facts. So if we can't trust the media,
how can we, as consumers, navigate this confusing world of diet and nutrition research?
Medical journals are so cluttered up with junk,
that you can find a study to support almost anything you want to say,
and by the way, you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,
because there's a lot of great stuff in medical journals too.
But, a good example that I think is easy for people to understand
is that if I wanted to give a lecture today
on the fact that smoking is actually not as harmful as we thought,
I can find some studies in major medical journals,
saying that smoking is beneficial,
it relaxes people, takes away our anxiety.
Okay, so if I cherry picked a dozen studies and talked about this for a half hour,
I'm sure some people in the audience would be thinking, "Boy, have I been misinformed!
I mean, I really believed all these people who said, smoking is harmful."
The problem with that is that in presenting those studies,
I'm ignoring the larger body of evidence that clearly shows that smoking is terrible for you.
There's a lot of junk science out there, so you have to be very careful.
And if you read magazines or see TV news, it is generally very unreliable.
You need to find someone who is very good at analyzing research,
and then be very careful because there is a lot of wrong information out there.
I see these people going on these shows now, posing as experts.
These people have never studied statistics. They've never sat in a scientific meeting
where we review the research at detail.
More importantly, they've never sat across from a patient
and followed a patient for years and seeing how they respond to diet,
and yet, all of a sudden, these are the experts that are on TV talking about diet.
[Siewierski] In the month of January,
millions of people from around the world
set their New Year's resolutions
and decide it's time to lose weight.
During that month, gyms experience an astonishing 18% increase
in new member signups, with numbers plummeting down in the subsequent months.
So why is it that so many people fail at losing weight through exercise?
What happens though, when you exercise is you get hungrier,
so remember, your body is basically saying
the amount of stretch in my stomach means I've eaten enough.
And when you exercise, it's going to say you need a little bit more.
So what I find is that some people that are exercising
are still eating the bad standard American diet.
They wind up overshooting by even more calories,
because the food they're eating, they're going to want their bodies
giving them signals to eat more of that. Another problem
is you have someone that hasn't exercised in years,
you know, they're sedentary, all of a sudden they'd start doing things
that their body's just not ready to do. They can get hurt.
So I think there's lots of things that are connected to exercise
that make exercise health promoting,
but simply running on the treadmill longer
so that, you know, just to burn more calories, is not the answer.
I think diet and exercise go together.
I think exercise is very important for promotion of health.
I do not think that alone as a standalone, it's very effective with weight loss.
So I think again, it puts people into this cycle of extreme frustration,
which is, now they're incorporating exercise and they're getting up
and they're moving, and they're either not losing weight,
or they're still gaining weight.
So you really have to put your diet right first.
Inside each overweight individual is a lean, fit individual.
They just, sort of, have a fat suit, you know, to think about it that way.
Now if I took that fat suit, the 40, the 60, the 80, the 100,
or one of my clients, the 180 pounds he was carrying around,
and I handed their lean person inside that 180 pounds and said,
"Carry this around all day long, every day."
Why would that not be called exercise?
And why are we telling these people that they need to move more
and they're not in the gym enough.
I'm not saying exercise is wrong.
I'm saying it doesn't matter if they're carrying around a 100 pounds
of steel all day, every day, or carrying around 100 pounds of body fat.
They may not notice it because of the distribution,
but they're spending the energy to do it.
Well, when you weigh 500 pounds,
uhm, you spend a lot more of your energy in managing your body.
What I mean by that is, uh, it's harder
to go up and down stairs, it's harder to do anything.
It's harder to move, to walk, whatever, and it's exhausting.
So, what I would do, because I was cooking,
I would have a private chef, or a personal chef's service at the time,
so I would get up in the morning and go to the store and come home.
And I would cook for three hours then I would have to take a break.
So, I'd be taking these hour long naps or sit downs in between cooking.
And I only cooked three days a week, and then let my body rest the rest of the time.
So, I wasn't fully participatory in my own life.
Exercise is clearly important, but most studies show
that exercise alone, is hard to lose weight and keep it off,
but if you can combine exercise with a healthy diet,
and meditation, and stress management, and love and support,
and getting enough sleep, those are the things that really make it sustainable.
You can't out exercise your mouth,
unless you're maybe doing these ultradistance, you know, runs 100 mile,
you're running marathons, but most people, including professional athletes,
are having a really hard time meeting their ideal weight.
In fact, if you went out and ate a burger and fries and coke,
you better run 13 miles to lose those calories.
You can't even do that, because even if you burned off the calories at the gym,
you are not reversing the deleterious effects that bad food had on your gut microbiome,
and on your insulin spike, on your hardening of the arteries,
the inflammation that was caused. So, I mean,
I can go on and on, but it's not just the calories that you ate,
you are also really affecting your metabolism in such a bad way
that there's just no way to exercise that off.
Most of our society is not agrarian.
They're not going out into the fields and hunting, gathering, farming,
doing the things that we've done for centuries.
And so now, we have much more leisure time and people are actually sedentary.
And it is true that the chair is the new cigarette,
but if those are our jobs, then we have to adjust our diets
to try and make sure that we're not always in positive calorie balance.
I used to be 220 pounds and I used to think
that working out at the gym was, you know, the only way to lose weight.
I would be at the gym for two hours a day.
I would, you know, my diet was very unhealthy.
I wouldn't lose much weight.
I'd always yo-yo between 5-10 pounds,
but it wasn't until I focused more on my health that the weight just started shedding.
For those who don't exercise, if they increase their resting calories,
that's beneficial, such as taking the stairs when you can, walking more when you can,
instead of parking the car as close to the entrance as possible.
[Siewierski] About 15% of adults in the US have used a dietary weight lose supplement
at some point in their lives, spending roughly 2.1 billion dollars a year.
People get really wrapped up in supplementation and multi-vitamins.
And for me, real foods, that's where the nutrition lies. That's where your nutrients are.
That's where your vitamins, your minerals, your phytochemicals, your fiber,
all of that exists in real whole food.
If these supplements really had a beneficial effect, I would have known about it,
because then it would have been described in the medical journals that I read.
There has been nothing of that kind.
People are getting fooled and they lose money on things that don't work.
And It's a total waste, if you ask me.
[Dr. Popper] But what do you say to the person who is going to continue
to eat fast food and junk food and the whole nine yards?
Wouldn't that person be better off taking some supplements?
Okay, well, no. And I'll tell you why. It's not going to fix the problem,
so asking, "What do you say to the person who won't change his or her diet?"
is like saying to a financial planner, "What do you tell the people who won't save money?
Who won't get their credit card balances paid up?"
Well, you know what the financial planner would say?
"We don't have a solution for people who are financially irresponsible.
There is no way for a person to be financially irresponsible
for 40 working years of life and retire comfortably."
There is no way. You're not going to take nice vacations
and get to do fun things in retirement,
if you spend more than you make and write up your credit cards
and go bankrupt a couple of times during your working years.
Why is it that we are supposed to come up with some
half-baked solution for people who say,
"I'm not interested in taking care of myself,
so wouldn't popping a couple of pills help me out?"
Actually, not so much.
Stop thinking about the shortcut
and start thinking about how to enjoy real health.
Real health is not pills in a bottle.
Real health is eating the right food, drinking water, getting exercise,
getting sun, sleeping well, living a great life,
figuring out what's bothering you psychologically and fixing it.
You know, that's what real health is.
[Siewierski] Calories in equals calories out,
most of us believe that calories are the same
and that our bodies cannot differentiate between them.
That would explain why there is so much focus on portion control diets.
If calories are the same, then all we have to do is eat less of them, right?
Because there is a signal for satiation that comes from your stomach,
where your stomach gets full and then a message from the brain where the brain says,
"Okay, I've had enough calories"
and when they align, satiation happens.
When we are eating a lot of our processed, packaged low fiber, high fat foods,
the message doesn't coincide.
So even though your brain is saying,
"Yeah, that was a 500 calorie donut,
the stomach doesn't register. There is no fiber, there is no water in that food.
It's a packaged refined product that doesn't fill the stomach receptors,
and so there is an argument that happens, between the stomach and the brain.
The stomach says, "No, but I'm still hungry," and the brain says,
"Yes, but you've had enough calories." When that battle is going on,
a 100% of the time, the stomach is going to win
because you're hungry. People don't like to be hungry.
The body is not meant to go hungry.
And so then people overeat so they'll have that second donut,
and maybe by then the fibers in the stomach are full enough.
Calorie density is very different than calorie counting.
I've never counted calories, personally.
And think about it, if you're over by 100 calories per meal,
that's 300 calories a day, and at the end of 10 days
its 3,000 calories, 3,500 calories is a pound of fat.
So imagine if you're over by just 100 calories a meal for 10 days, you gain a pound of fat.
You do that for 100 days, that's 10 pounds, 300 days its 30 pounds.
So you can see how you could very easily, get into trouble
if you thought you knew better than what your body actually needed.
To lose weight, it's important to look at not only the amount of food,
but also the type of food.
Some foods are much denser in calories.
Fat, for example, has nine calories per gram,
whereas protein and carbs have only four.
So it's the density of the calories that matters.
So if you go from a high fat to a very low fat diet,
even if you had the same amount of food, you're getting about a third fewer calories.
There is a particularly high dopamine response or a brain response,
when people eat high calorie, high fat foods.
And the reason is this, when we were wandering around looking for food
and there often wasn't enough of it, if you would happen upon something
that was calorie dense, the pecan grove, for example.
Pecans are high in fat. This brings a lot of pleasure.
This is nature's way of saying, "You don't know where the next meal is coming from,
you haven't eaten for a while, you need to chow down on these pecans
because this is the key to survival."
[Michal Siewierski] Today's military strategy dictates mobility and speed.
And to meet these demands, a soldier's rations must be light, small, easily prepared
and still packed with enough nutrition to keep him at top effectiveness.
Currently, many kinds of Natick designed food rations are in use.
Each specifically tailored for a particular environmental or military situation.
[Siewierski] A few years after World War II ended,
America entered the modern age of food manufacturing.
And the processed food revolution got underway.
After having struggled with food scarcity for years during the war,
people developed an appreciation for quick and convenient foods,
but that convenience often came with a price.
Foods high in fat, high in sodium, and loaded with toxic preservatives,
flooded the store shelves and became family traditions.
It was not until the late '90s that researchers begun raising questions
about the safety of processed foods.
So the more you process something, you know, you're extending the shelf life of it,
but you when you eat it, it's probably going to shorten your life.
So I say get away from the processed foods. You want to eat foods
in their more natural state. There are food companies
that are spending billions of dollars
every single year in a laboratory, trying to chemically concoct foods
that are going to activate those pleasure centers in your brain.
The same pleasure centers that are triggered by cocaine,
and alcohol, and heroine, and prescription medications.
That's what they're after, because if they can figure that out, and they've got you,
they've hooked you and hopefully, they've hooked you for life.
That combination of fat, sugar and salt seems to be the main ways
the food industry gets people to crave their foods.
Anything that's processed, you should be trying to minimize that.
I'm not saying you can't eat processed food, you know?
Crackers are processed,
but what you want to do is you want to try and optimize
the cracker you're going to eat, and not live off of crackers.
If I'm going to eat a cracker, I'm going to try and get whole grains,
I'm going to try and get no added oils,
I'm going to try and get, you know, little or no added salt, for example.
That's what works for me, and then I have the cracker,
and it can be an enjoyable addition to the diet at times.
[Siewierski] There is historical evidence
that suggests that the sugar industry
paid scientists in the 1960s
to play down the link between sugar and heart disease,
and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead.
Even though the role of sugar might have been downplayed for years,
is sugar the only one to blame?
Sugar isn't health food, but the idea that that's the whole problem
with the diet is really not correct.
Is sugar the ultimate evil?
And for me, it's really-- it goes to is it a whole food?
Because glucose is what our body thrives on, right?
It's what composes carbohydrates. It's what's in fruits,
and vegetables, and whole grains, and legumes,
and all of these foods that are health promoting.
So is that sugar bad?
No, I think that sugar is very healthy and very health promoting.
And then there is the other end, which is processed foods,
and I think there needs to be a separation
between real whole foods and processed foods.
And yes, we are seeing in the research that sugar, refined sugars
are probably just as bad as the saturated fats.
You know, we keep doing these studies where they're testing which is worse, which is worse,
but what if they're just both health damaging. You know, it's a refined food.
So I went to the US Department of Agriculture because they actually
track the entire US food supply every decade since 1950.
Not what people say they're eating, because they often don't tell you the truth,
but what they've actually, as a country, what we've been eating. And what have I learned?
Well, we may have been told to eat less fat, but every decade since 1950,
we've been eating more fat, more sugar, more calories, and more meat,
and a lot more. So not surprisingly, we are fatter, not because
we are eating too little fat, but because we're eating too much of everything.
I don't think it's that sugar or fat is evil,
but I think that excess amount of either one can cause issues.
People don't want to give up eating calorie dense foods.
They don't want to give up eating fat.
They don't want to give up eating a lot of protein.
They don't want to give up eating animal foods, which are very calorie dense,
so they're easily persuaded that if you're willing to sacrifice, say sugar,
they get to keep butter, and cheese, and ice cream, and steak,
and that's a trade off many people are willing to make.
I always tell people, I eat fruit all day. You know, I live on sugar.
You know, sugar is what energizes the cells in our bodies.
It's what I use for pre-workouts. It's my new candy.
The thought that a doctor, a doctor with no nutritional training,
by the way, could tell their patient,
"Don't eat fruit because it causes diabetes,"
is absolutely insane because there's so many studies showing
not only that it doesn't cause diabetes, but it prevents diabetes.
I know diabetics who eat tons of fruit and they have some
of the most controlled diabetes you've ever seen, Type one diabetics.
I've been on shows where there is a nutritionist or a chef saying,
"Well, be careful with bananas and be careful with mangoes because you can gain weight,"
but they never say anything about ham, and sausages, and all these animal fats.
Why? Off camera, I've told them,
"Why are you talking about mangoes and bananas?"
Of course, if you eat bacon and then you eat bananas,
they're going to create a lethal weapon there in your body, but it's not the bananas,
it's obviously the animal fats.
So there is a huge misunderstanding,
but the banana producers or the orange producers don't have a huge corporation
that can come out and pay millions of dollars for a campaign that says,
"Bananas are good for you. Fruits are good for you. It's not us, you know." [Laughs]
So there is a huge misunderstanding.
[Siewierski] When it comes to oils, consider that one tablespoon of olive oil
and a large banana each contain about 120 calories.
It's easy to see which one will be more filling,
resulting in less food consumed throughout the day,
so what is the role of oil in all this? And can it spell danger for our waist lines?
Pure oil is 4,000 calories per pound,
so you can imagine just pouring a little bit of oil,
how quickly you add calories to a dish,
and it's not going to really stretch your stomach.
Sugar is pure carbohydrate, and oil is pure fat.
They're not whole foods. They're super calorie dense.
They're not healthy. One has been demonized, sugar, as pure evil.
The other one is seen somehow or another as "Okay, healthy."
And someday we will realize that oil is an unhealthy food,
and people will begin to change their diets.
You know all the oils that are out there, olive oil, coconut, safflower, sunflower,
flaxseed, it's all highly processed.
No nutritional substance, whatsoever.
Truly a black hole of nutritional nothingness.
And coconut oil, my goodness. Lard is 43% saturated fat.
Coconut oil is 91% saturated fat.
The question now is, "Are they necessary?
Do they bring something that we cannot obtain by whole foods?"
And the answer is quite simply, no.
[Dr. Lederman] If you're going to eat fat,
do it in its whole form.
Don't extract the fat and think
that there's going to be something miraculous
from doing that. It just doesn't make sense.
[Hever] You know, we're all trying to cut calories.
It's like the easiest way to do that is to just
not use oil as people are using it. Not sautéing and making dressings
and glug, glug, glug all over your salad. And there you go,
you've got 1,000 extra calories in your diet. That's not going to even
contribute to feeling satisfied or all that.
You know, when you go out, it's almost impossible to avoid oil,
but at home it's so easy to cook without oil and just sauté with water,
or vegetable broth, or vinegar, or whatever.
Oil is definitely the calorie excess, and it's hilarious,
because people go and buy these cooking sprays,
and the cooking sprays says on them low fat,
so that cooking spray is 100% fat, so how can it say low fat?
If you look at the serving size, it's a quarter of a second of a spray.
I mean not even like "sitz." You know that's what it is, but that's not what people do.
They take that cooking spray and go "shhhhhh," and they don't even count that.
These oils, regardless of whether they come from animal,
whether they come from a plant, can end up damaging your endothelial layer,
which is the single cell layer inside of your blood vessels,
and that can set the stage for atherosclerosis,
peripheral artery disease, and coronary artery disease.
The problem is it's not disease promoting quick enough.
You know, so you drop dead after you ate it,
you know from a heart attack, and people would stop eating that food.
The issue is that it takes 10, 20, 30 years sometimes, some people sooner,
to really manifest the diseases that are the result of eating that food.
[Siewierski] One of the fastest growing diet movements in the US
is the Saturated Fat Movement.
For some reason, people started believing
that eating copious amounts of saturated fat is healthy
and does not contribute to weight gain. The explosion
in popularity of those diets has many experts concerned.
Few things can make me angrier than saying saturated fat is good for you.
That blows my mind. The fact that someone comes into my office
and they're putting butter in their coffee
because they think that's good for them, is insane. It's preposterous.
It's A huge movement. There are some scientists out there and doctors
who are really pushing it. I'm astounded at people's
willingness to deceive themselves and to not read countervailing evidence.
It has discouraged me quite a bit, actually. They just don't want to read the science.
They want to believe what they want to believe.
[Barnard] If there's one thing
we have been concerned about
for decades,
it's the saturated fat
that's in foods and the cholesterol.
Well, meat is second biggest source of saturated fat.
The biggest source is dairy, particularly cheese
and yet people consume huge amounts of it. That saturated fat in your body
causes your body to make more cholesterol. It's bad for your heart,
but researchers in Chicago have also found that saturated fat
increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The people who eat the most saturated fat,
the most cheddar cheese, and bacon, and these kind of things,
their risk of Alzheimer's is tripled compared to other people.
Red meat on average is 40% saturated fat.
Your leanest piece of chicken breast is 30% saturated fat,
and your leanest piece of wild caught Atlantic salmon is 20% saturated fat.
An egg is right around 20% saturated fat,
so why do we want to continue to put in saturated fat,
dietary cholesterol in a weak source of animal protein
that all promote all of these diseases,
heart disease, major cancer, type 2 diabetes? We don't.
A lot of people imagine carbohydrates are fattening, but the fat grams,
that's where the calories really are.
Uh, but not only does fat have a lot of calories in it,
but when the fat gets into your body
it actually slows down your metabolism.
Your calorie burning speed, it's impaired by fatty food,
and that happens very, very quickly as well, but the last thing
is to turn off your appetite, you need fiber in your foods.
The fiber fills you up, tells your brain, "stop eating".
Well, fiber is in plants. Cheese is not a plant.
So you'll see a lot of experts say,
"America tried a low fat diet and look at us,
we're getting more and more overweight."
But the reality is America never truly tried a low fat diet.
[Siewierski] But wait a second, don't we need some healthy fats?
And how can we get them if we are avoiding oils, butter and animal foods?
Most people don't know that green leafy vegetables, on average are 10% fat.
Oatmeal is 16% fat, strawberries are right around 7% fat,
tofu is 40% fat, nuts and seeds 80% fat,
and it's all the polyunsaturated and essential fatty acids that we need.
[Siewierski] Some of the most heated and controversial debates
in the weight loss world are often about carbs.
If you ever tried to lose weight, you probably got exposed to information
about low carb diets. The internet is clogged with articles
telling people to cut carbs.
But do carbs really make us fat?
Carbs are not your enemy. Bad calories are your enemy.
So for example, if you eat an orange or an apple, there's sugar in that,
but it also comes with tons of fiber and it's a whole food.
When you say carbs, you could be referring to any carbohydrate rich foods.
You could be referring to quinoa and beans,
which are some of the most health promoting foods.
At the same time, you could be referring to white bread,
which obviously, is not really a health promoting food.
And so to lump those together under the term carbs
really just adds to confusion.
When I read health books about low carbohydrate diets,
and why that's the answer to diabetes and heart disease and cancer,
it really hits me at my core, because that information is not truly evidence based
and the evidence that these low carbohydrate advocates cite
is always small numbers of people over short periods of time.
We're not looking at large collections of people over long periods of time.
If you really do, then it's very obvious low carbohydrate diets
actually cause more chronic disease. Very few people will argue
that refined carbohydrates can be detrimental to your overall health.
I don't see anybody saying, "eat more refined carbohydrates".
That's fine, we've established that as a society, we can now move on.
Studies are showing that, you know, you can lose weight on different diets,
but when you lose weight on these high protein diets that are often high in fat,
you often mortgage your health in the process.
When you go from, say, a whole wheat flour to white flour,
or from brown rice to white rice, you're turning a good carb into a bad carb,
because you're removing the fiber and the bran,
and the fiber and the bran are what normally fill you up before you get too many calories.
You know, if you eat really healthy foods, good carbs,
you're going to get full before you get too many calories.
It's very, very difficult for the body to turn a carb to fat.
When you eat carbs, it does not turn to fat.
They did overfeeding studies where they load people up with carbs
and only about 2% gets turned to fat
through a process called de novo lipogenesis, but when you eat fat,
they go straight to fat, and so you absorb it very quickly into your tissues.
A potato chip has carbs in it, but it's got more fat than carbs.
Donuts have more fat than carbs, but these are considered carbs.
People ask me all the time, what's your ratio of carbs to fats to protein?
I never know how to answer that question. I've never given it a second thought.
I don't pay attention to that because I think nature takes care of it itself.
If you just graze on a wide variety of fruits, vegetables,
whole grains, nuts and seeds, legumes, you're going to be fine.
You don't need to worry about it. Nature has resolved this.
People hundreds of years ago didn't worry about their ratio of macros,
just eat plant foods close to their natural state. This stuff takes care of itself.
[DR. Ornish] If you replace the bad carbs with good carbs, you get a double benefit
because not only you're not eating the foods that are harmful,
but there are literally hundreds of thousands of protective substances
that you find in fruits and vegetables, and whole grains and legumes
that have anti-cancer, anti-heart disease and even anti-aging properties.
[Siewierski] Diets that villainize grains are also growing in popularity.
They claim that grains cause weight gain and inflammation,
so are these foods the health villains that many claim they are?
You would be very hard pressed to find a study that shows a negative health outcome
to eating whole grains and that's the bottom line.
Study after study among literally hundreds of thousands of people
followed for many years shows over and over again,
that whole grains prevent heart disease. They prevent cancer,
they reduce the risk of cancer recurrence in people who've had cancer,
they lower the risk of premature death.
They're actually the number one type of food that prevents type two diabetes
and I could go on and on. Whole grains are this incredible food
that really should be a core part of most people's diet.
And they're actually very anti-inflammatory,
contrary to what people talk about when they say grains cause inflammation.
[Dr. Davis] Look at the healthiest cultures in the world.
They're eating lots of grains, they're eating lots of fruits.
It's just preposterous to say grains are bad for you, so I'm going to eat a steak.
And that's the diet of America and look at our health.
We're one of the sickest countries in the world.
[Dr. McMacken] So the Blue Zones are parts of the world
that have a significant proportion of people that actually live to be 100 or more.
And they are not just living to 100 with a medicalized life,
they're actually living with a really high quality of life, and that's what's so amazing.
They have a lot of things in common in terms of lifestyle,
but in in terms of what they all eat,
they share in common that they're mostly eating unprocessed plant foods.
Individuals in the Blue Zones are following a predominantly plant-based diet.
They're not vegan by any stretch of the imagination,
but they're eating small amounts of meat,
small amounts of fish, and small amounts of dairy products.
The overwhelming majority of their diet comes from plant sources.
[Siewierski] We all heard the popular advice of just eat less and exercise more,
but is eating smaller portions of any kind of food the solution for staying trim?
Fifty pounds over 20 years is an extra 168 calories a week.
It's like 16 M&Ms a week.
This is not a lot of food.
No one guesses their diet to within 168 calories a week.
They say eat whatever you want, but control your portions.
No, that is so wrong, that was like science from the 1980s and people are still doing that.
The volume of food tell you nothing about the calories.
[Dr. Pulde] I don't think yo-yo diets are sustainable,
I think that's the whole idea of yo-yoing,
and you know, is that you may go down but you're going to come back up.
There's no way to sustain deprivation and calorie restriction long term.
What we do as a society is we try and lose weight very quickly,
and we try and adopt some kind of behavioral pattern
that's going to make me lose 40 pounds in the next three weeks.
And so what we're programmed to do is get instant gratification
and try and adopt some diet where we can do things very quickly,
and as a result of losing a lot of weight very quickly,
we end up becoming incredibly hungry.
We end up with all types of strange hormonal effects that happen in the brain,
in the thyroid gland, and then over the course of time,
you end up with these insatiable food cravings that make you want to start
eating a bunch of food again, because you haven't been eating food,
and then you're likely to gain that weight all back again.
And that's where this yo-yo pattern starts.
Mounting evidence shows that when people
lose weight in the short term, and then regain the weight,
that tends to have very deleterious metabolic effects,
and it then becomes even harder potentially, to lose weight the next time.
In addition to the metabolic effects,
there can be psychological effects to constantly losing weight,
gaining it back, losing weight, gaining it back.
And so I think a more constructive approach
is to look at building healthy habits over a lifetime.
It doesn't sound sexy, but it actually works.
To change your diet just for a matter of a few weeks or a few months,
then go back to eating your usual diet, chronic problems are going to come back.
No diets or fat diets work in the long term.
I mean the success rate is approaching zero.
You know that you're on a good path if it gets easier over time.
If it's getting harder over time, it means you're using willpower
or you're just bored with it, you know,
that's a sign it's not going to work.
[Siewierski] Dieting for most people means eating less.
The idea of eating lots of food on a diet sounds very counter intuitive,
but what if there was a way to eat more and weigh less?
Most people, when they think of dieting or they think of getting healthy,
automatically imagine that they're going to have to eat less.
And when I talk to my patients, I say: "You know what, actually, you could probably eat more.
In fact, you will be eating more."
I see eyes lighting up at the-- you know, first, it's a disbelief.
Like, "What are you talking about? You have no idea.
[Dr. Davis] You could eat as much as you want. I don't care
how much you eat of low calorie density foods,
because you will get full before you get too many calories.
Could you eat so many apples that you get fat?
I guess, possibly you could, but it would be a lot of apples, and who does that?
I get to eat as much as I want. I fill myself every meal. I'm not like stuffing myself,
but it's like, I want to feel comfortable. I want to feel satisfied.
It's the opposite of compromising. Everybody else is compromising
by forcing themselves to stop eating when they still want to eat.
For about 500 calories you can have a big Snickers bar
or you can have three potatoes. What is going to fill you up more?
You know, If you had three potatoes or if you had one Snickers bar?
[Siewierski] Another global phenomenon is the Paleo diet.
An increasing number of people are adopting this lifestyle.
And although many claim there are benefits,
the question is do those benefits come with a price?
All these diets, people will feel better, "I did the Paleo diet, I'm feeling better"
Well, of course, I mean, you just got rid of processed foods, you got rid of dairy,
you got rid of-- You know, you're eating whole foods a lot of the time.
You know, so of course, you're going to-- The standard American diet is so bad
that you could pretty much eat, follow any other diet and feel better.
But the question is, "What does the evidence show? How can you optimize?"
And It's really, eating whole foods plant based as much as you can.
[Khambatta] So low carbohydrate diets have been around for approximately 50 years now.
In the 1970s, Dr. Atkins first came out with the Dr. Atkins approach,
and then it got re-popularized again in the 1990s.
And then, it got turned into the South Beach diet, the Zone diet,
the ketogenic diet, the Paleo revolution.
So there's many incarnations of this low carbohydrate approach.
And what people find is that when they adopt a low carbohydrate diet,
that their health improves dramatically.
They see a lot of rapid weight loss, they see a rapid reduction in blood glucose,
a rapid reduction in insulin use.
Their LDL cholesterol falls, their total cholesterol falls
and from the outward perspective, if you look at their labs,
you say, "Okay, fantastic." You've solved the problem.
The problem with these low carbohydrate diets is that
they give you rapid improvements in your metabolic health in the short term,
but if you fast forward 5 years, 10 years, 15 years,
and you delve into the period of your research, what you'll find
is that when you compare low carbohydrate diets versus low fat diets,
truly low fat diets, your low carbohydrate diets increase your risk for premature death.
This is called all-cause mortality,
and all-cause mortality is effectively death from any cause.
And so, those that are following a low carbohydrate diet,
regardless of the type, whether it's ketogenic or paleo,
those individuals die quicker and they die of more health diseases.
[Dr. Davis] I don't even know what people mean when they say, "Paleo diet" anymore.
I mean what was the Paleo diet? Are we talking about the Paleo diet
of people in northern hemispheres in the Antarctic?
Are we talking about people in desert?
You know, what were they eating back then? And for some reason,
the Paleo diet is loaded with meat,
but these people did not have access to meat all the time.
They had to run for miles to hunt and they would barely get that meat.
Most of the food, uh, that they ate was gathered.
If you look at Australopithecus, one of the oldest fossils out there,
when they look at the teeth, it was plant based matter that was in their teeth.
And so, probably, the Paleo man was mainly eating plants,
but what does it even matter what Paleo-- Paleo man was trying to just survive, alright?
They were dying at an early age. You know, we're living into our 60s or 70s,
then we want to be living into our hundreds and not just living into our hundreds,
but living healthy, having healthy, productive lives all the way up, and that's
all we should be focusing on, not what Paleo man did in order to survive until the age of 30.
[Dr. McMacken] These are diets that can be very appealing to people.
They have a theme, uhm, people kind of understand
and it's-- It can even be a little bit romantic to imagine that you're eating a diet
that was eaten, you know, many, many years ago.
And we also are living in a time when we have to think about evolving,
just like, just like people did in Paleolithic times.
They evolved and, uhm, ate in a way that was sustainable for them at that time.
And so, now, with billions of people living on earth,
uhm, we have to consider what is the most sustainable and ethical way
to frame our diets to survive as a species and as a planet.
[Siewierski] The Ketogenic diet leads the way when it comes to promoting the consumption
of large amounts of saturated fat, but is putting butter in our
coffee and eating lard the solution to staying trim?
Every now and then, we hear more about ketogenic diets.
The idea is that if you don't have any carbohydrates or sugar,
which is the natural fuel for your body, then your body's starving for fuel,
so it's going to burn up fat. There's some truth to that,
except that when people don't actually cut calories, they don't lose any weight.
The reason that people are losing weight from that,
is they're cutting out so many foods.
They're cutting out the vegetables, and the fruits, and the beans, and the grains,
all these things, So their calorie content falls.
And that's the reason they're losing weight. If they don't do that,
they don't lose any weight. The other problem is
when you're not having your healthy carbohydrate rich foods, what are you having instead?
When I think of food, when I think of diet, I don't lose sight of common sense too,
you know, and when you think of eating higher fat foods,
it just doesn't make sense to expect to lose weight and be healthy.
Now, the problem is if you write an article that says,
"Fruits and vegetables and whole grains are good for you," it's like people go:
"Oh, yes, tell me something new." If you put a slice of butter
on the cover of a magazine and say, "Butter is back"
or, you know, "Put, uh, cream into your coffee
and that's somehow gonna to be good for you," it's a great way to sell magazines
by telling people what they want to hear
or to make a best-selling book by telling people, you know,
"Eat fat, it's good for you." But, you know, it's not-- I mean, don't shoot the messenger.
I'm just here to tell people what's real. But, you know,
I've always dreamed about, well, maybe in my next book, I'll write,
you know, "If you eat it off someone else's plate, it doesn't-- it doesn't affect you
and they get all the calories." It'll be an Instant best seller, but it's just not true.
[Dr. McMacken] By using a ketogenic diet to burn fat,
we're actually doing something that's very unnatural
and that has never been studied in the long term,
so it's not something that I would recommend, for, uh, any of my patients.
[Dr. Davis] I will tell you, 'cause I've done ketosis diets myself
and I've done them with my patients.
Extremely hard to stay on them.
There will be people out there that will hear somebody like,
"I do ketosis. I feel great, and what's this doctor talking about?"
I treat thousands of patients, thousands upon thousands.
There may be that one or two outliers that it works well with,
but most of the people feel horrible on them.
I don't trust the Ketogenic diet for cancer, for heart disease.
I wouldn't risk it for myself, my family or my patients.
And then, I really don't recommend you saying,
"Oh, well, ketosis may possibly work if I'm going to eat meat."
In these ketosis diets, your body wants that sugar so badly that if you eat steak,
it'll take that protein and convert it to sugar. It wants sugar.
The only way to really get into ketosis is an extremely high fat, lower protein diet.
That's a true ketosis diet, so you shouldn't even be eating steak on the ketosis diet,
but people have this all messed up.
The truth is we don't have long term data yet
showing that these things are beneficial,
but what we do have is a huge database filled with information
showing that we need to eat more vegetables and fruits, we need to eat legumes,
we need to eat whole grains and nuts and seeds.
These are the foods that reduce chronic disease risk,
that help reverse chronic diseases, that help promote health,
and help with weight management.
[Michal Siewierski] Most people have heard about the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle
eaten for hundreds of years by strong, healthy people in the Mediterranean basin,
but are people in America following this diet properly?
What saddens me when I think about the Mediterranean diet
is when you look at what that diet was really based on, it was whole food, plant based diet.
So, high in fruits, and high in vegetables, and, uhm, high in legumes,
and a little bit of olive oil, a little bit of animal products,
and what we took from that is, "Oh, olive oil is really healthy
and feta cheese is really healthy"
and we added that to our already high fat nutrition devoid diet.
[Siewierski] Another subject of a lot of confusion among the public is gluten.
Everyone seems to be avoiding it for both health and weight loss reasons.
But what the heck is gluten and should we really be so concerned about it?
I, myself have an allergy to gluten, so it's become this kind of scapegoat again.
It's a protein found in mostly wheat, rye, barley,
and sometimes oats from cross contamination, but it's simply a protein,
and if you don't have an allergy or you don't have celiac disease
and you don't have an intolerance to it, there's no reason to avoid it.
The reason people feel so, quote unquote:
"Oh, I feel so much better because I got off gluten,"
is because, again, they're using a-- like a biochemistry term
to define a food group. And so, what does that mean if you cut out gluten?
Well, usually that means people are cutting out, you know, white breads,
and cookies, and cakes, and crackers, and all this junk food. Of course,
they're gonna feel better because they're going to be forced to eat more whole food.
But if you don't have a problem, eating a bowl of barley
isn't going to be, you know, cause you to gain weight
or cause a health problem. It's a wonderful whole grain, you know.
It absolutely fits into a healthy diet.
[Siewierski] Nowadays, scientists are using DNA
to determine what is the best diet for each individual.
These so called personalized diets are gaining popularity,
but along with it, lots of criticism.
One of the things that's popular these days is personalized diets,
let's say. You know, give us, uh, your--
"We'll analyze your genes and we'll give you a personalized diet."
And that's mostly just a lot of hooey.
Now, there are genetic variabilities.
For example, some people can metabolize dietary refined sugar
and carbs better than others, but if you're eating a diet
that's low in those to begin with, it doesn't really matter so much.
I mean, if you look at countries in Asia 50 years ago,
where obesity and heart disease and cancer were really rare there,
and suddenly, they began to eat like us and live like us,
and now all too often, die like us, through obesity and heart disease
and many forms of cancer, uhm, it-- it wasn't because of this genetic variability.
It was because their whole diet changed, as a nation.
[Siewierski] Our society is obsessed with meat, protein, and animal products,
but an increasing number of studies are pointing out the dangers associated
with consuming large amounts of animal protein,
as well as its relationship to weight gain.
So there's a number of studies that have looked at what are the types of foods
that are most linked to weight gain over time,
and there was a big study conducted in Europe a few years ago
that, uh, included about 400,000 people
that actually showed that of all foods that they studied,
meat was the number one food associated with weight gain over time.
And that's been backed up now by a number of other studies, as well.
And so, it's not to say that meat is the only problem.
There are, of course, other foods that can cause weight gain and are not good for us,
but meat is the one food that people tend to think of
as being a healthy food for helping people lose weight.
People are always like, "How many grams of- of protein should I get?
How- how much protein should, how much protein?" And I want to pull my hair out.
I don't care how much protein you get. I don't want to know.
I don't want you to count. If you're gonna count anything, count grams of fiber.
Whenever I tell people to eat fiber, they're like, "What, like chicken?"
I think they think the fiber in the muscle is fiber.
That's not fiber. Fiber is cellulose.
It is a type of resistant carbohydrate.
It is not absorbed by our bodies, and it is only found in plant foods.
[Dr. Pulde] It's funny. In this country, we are so obsessed with protein
and yet we do not have issues with protein deficiency.
[Dr. Ornish] Animal protein itself is bad for you, particularly from red meat,
one study showed that you're 75% more likely to die prematurely,
you're 400-500% more likely to get heart disease, diabetes, prostate, breast, colon cancer
by eating a lot of red meat. So, it's not just calories,
it's also the whole picture of the food.
[Roll] What we should be talking about isn't protein and how are you getting your protein,
it's how are you getting your fiber?
Because the average American is completely fiber deprived
because they're not eating whole foods.
The fiber slows down the digestive process
and slowly releases the glucose into the body, so you don't get a huge insulin spike.
That's why it has a low glycemic index, right?
The fiber also produces all these good gut hormones to give you satiety, like GLP-1.
[Hever] Like you go to a restaurant, they say, "Do you want to have protein with that?"
Well, what does that mean? That doesn't mean anything.
So because of-- Instead of getting down that rabbit hole,
why not just focus on eating healthy foods?
And getting-- You're getting all of your amino acids.
You know that all plants have all the essential amino acids in different ratios.
So you can't not get enough protein if you're eating a healthy diet, it's impossible.
Unless you really work hard and construct a diet
that's all refined white bread and you know,
white sugary foods, it would be really difficult.
You can sell a product just by saying it's got protein in it, which is crazy to me
because in the aging world, protein's a bad word. We know that protein ages.
All the anti-aging research right now revolves around low protein, not high protein diets.
A hundred years ago, Quaker Oats promoted Quaker Oats
as a method of getting your protein
and it actually promoted Quaker Oats as having the similar
protein content of beef for a lot cheaper.
Plant protein not only helps you grow your muscles and be healthy and look good,
but it also helps you reduce weight.
The risks associated with the consumption of any animal protein,
that's milk, egg white and dairy protein, including casein, including whey,
is that it increases your own body's production of insulin like growth factor one,
which is IGF-1, which is a cancer promoting growth hormone produced by the liver
in response to the consumption of animal proteins like whey.
[Dr. Williams] Red meat kills, and processed red meat kills you faster.
However, if you do the-- what I believe is the proper comparison,
it's not meat versus different kinds of meat or dairy,
but animal protein versus vegetable protein,
there's very clear data that the animal protein
increases mortality of all varieties, just not quite as fast as red meat, in general.
[Dr. Williams] We have done bypass surgeries, stents, bioresorbable stents,
implantable defibrillators, pacemakers, heart failure therapies.
We've done so many things that decrease the death rate of cardiovascular disease
and yet they've caught up with us.
It's getting to the point where cardiovascular disease is on the rise.
If we don't go back and start talking about what it is that we're eating
and what's happening to our hearts because of it, we're going to lose the game.
[Siewierski] There's no doubt that there are many diets out there
that are healthier than a standard American diet,
but what is the optimal diet for humans,
according to the majority of available studies?
If I wanted to design the healthiest diet for people,
whether they're kids or whether they're adults, there are really four groups.
Vegetables and fruits, they really are as healthy as we always thought they were,
plus beans and whole grains. That makes a good, complete, healthy diet.
I think a whole food plant based diet is the best diet for weight loss,
and I think one of the things that I like most about it
is it takes you completely away from the notion of dieting.
A whole food plant based diet is really a great approach
to getting to a healthier body weight and that's for a few reasons.
Number one, is that it's nutritionally an extremely healthful way to eat.
It's not about counting calories. It's not about measuring portions.
It's about just choosing healthier foods
and that's really sustainable for a lot of people.
Their blood pressure go down, their blood sugars go down,
their cholesterol go down. People feel more mobile.
People don't have aches and pains in the same way.
They don't suffer from fatigue in the same way. So you have a lot more energy,
a lot more vitality, a better quality of life. It's incredible.
Stop thinking about this diet as a punishment for being overweight or sick
because I don't think of it that way. I think of this as a gift.
At my age, I'm watching my friends go to doctors and have surgeries
and have body parts taken out. I am losing friends now.
I'm going to funerals now for people my age.
So this isn't a chore, this isn't punishment, this is a gift.
I get to be 60 years old and take no drugs,
and hopefully, live to be 100 if I don't get hit by a bus, right?
Most people feel so much better so quickly
within a few days after making these changes. Then it becomes self-fulfilling.
They get into a virtuous cycle it's like-- and then they literally connect the dots
in their mind between what they do and how they feel. It's like,
"Oh, when I eat healthfully, I feel good. I can think more clearly,
I have more energy, I have better sexual function. I don't have chest pain.
If I have heart disease, I can play with my kids, I can go back to work.
I'm not as depressed." You know, "I sleep better." Whatever those things happen to be.
And when you focus on health, all these metrics fall into place,
including but not limited to weight loss.
[Robert] I was on Metformin, I was on Wellbutrin and allergy medication,
and I used to be on Adderall also.
I thought, well, maybe I'll just add more vegetables to my diet,
and I did that by just what-- you know, putting more vegetables on my pizza.
And I honestly thought that if I added
more vegetables on my pizza, that I would be healthier.
January 4th was the first day I started going plant based.
The night before, I ate two extra-large Papa John's pizzas,
just to say goodbye to all that food, you know.
So I went to the doctor's, to see Dr. Matt Lederman,
and this was day one of my plant based journey.
He took my blood sugar and did all those tests and weighed me,
and I gave him a bag of all my medication.
And Dr. Lederman asked me what I was going to be, what my diet was going to be like,
and we told him the plant based diet, and he took my bottle
of Metformin and he just threw it in the trash right there,
and said, "You don't need this anymore."
In two months, I'd lost over 40 pounds
and in six weeks, I had completely reversed and cured my diabetes.
Gone in six weeks. As of right now, I've lost 80 pounds,
but I'm under 200 pounds for the first time in almost 10 years.
It was really gratifying when you get on the scale
and you see the first number is a one.
I'm going to cry.
[Siewierski] The plant based lifestyle is exploding in popularity
with more and more celebrities, world class athletes,
and influencers becoming part of the movement,
and millions of people transitioning to this lifestyle every day.
But the question is, do people need to become vegan
in order to get started on a healthy weight loss journey?
[Dr. Davis] I get this question all the time. "Do I have to be vegan?"
I get it from my patients all the time. Look, I'm in Texas.
I'm seeing ranchers that come in, you know, raising cattle.
The answer is, no. You don't have to be to be vegan.
To me, vegan, the term Vegan with a V is an ethical term.
It just so happens that vegan is the healthiest diet and lifestyle
that I've seen through much, much research.
But I tell my patients, "Look, you don't have to be vegan,
but you do have to change your plan. I can't help you
if you're going to do what you've always done, you're going to get what you always got.
You have to eat a lot more fruit and vegetables.
I want your fiber levels up 35, 40, 45 grams.
I want multiple servings of fruits, vegetables and beans today.
Now, if you're eating that much, there's no way you're going to be able to eat
that, you know, 12 ounce steak that you used to eat every day.
When I look at my patients' diet log when they come in,
they're eating animal protein at every single meal.
That they can't do, that has to change.
It's confusing to people. People want simple answers,
and the truth is it is simple.
Eat real food, eat whole foods,
and make sure they're at least 90 or more percent plant based.
You know, want to be on the safe side, eat 100% plant based. That's what I do,
but the main thing is it's the overall pattern.
Eat real foods, mostly plants.
When I first started, I used to demonize animal foods,
and right now I'm vegan for many reasons.
So not only health, but for the environment, and for ethical reasons.
So all together, the best decision for me was to be 100% plant based and vegan.
But, animal foods, a lot of people think are these terrible things,
and I think, uh, you know, depending on what you do, if you're processing bacon,
now you've got a carcinogenic type of food,
but animal foods in small amounts still provide nutrition, right.
There's still nutrients in them,
I don't think of them as just these harmful toxic substances
that a lot of people with a thoroughly vegan agenda might think of them that way.
But I do think that getting a significant portion of your calories from animal products
will lead to adverse health outcomes.
One way that I've always explained this to people that makes sense
is think about in your bedroom, having a safe on the wall,
and there's $10,000 in the safe.
On the front of the safe is a combination lock.
It takes four numbers to open the combination lock,
and if you open up the safe, you get the 10,000.
But what happens if you only open or dial up three of those numbers instead of four.
You don't get $7,500.
You got to get that fourth number right. And so that's the way it is with diet.
You don't have to be a perfectionist. I mean, my gosh, if you eat a cookie,
you're not going to die, but, on a daily basis,
you've got to get this dietary pattern right in its totality,
or you're not going to see the type of weight loss
and health improvement you want to see. And in fact,
that's one of the things that plagues people.
They'll come in this office and they'll say,
"I don't know how this could have happened to me.
You know, I tried eating this, and I ate more of that
and I don't drink soft drinks and we don't order pizza anymore."
They'll tell me all these little changes they made.
And at the end of the day, all those little changes
just didn't add up to enough to make a difference in their health.
[Siewierski] Eating junk food has one benefit, it is dirt cheap.
So, what is the alternative if a person is trying to lose weight on a budget.
Is it possible to eat healthy without breaking the bank?
Years ago, I worked with the CEO of McDonalds to get salads on the menu.
I figured, let's, you know-- let's really be disruptive.
And they have 43 million customers a day. And if they had salads,
then a lot of people would eat salads instead of burgers.
Which they finally put on the menu. Uhm, and they were really good.
They had 14 kinds of lettuce and edamame and all kinds of great stuff.
The problem is that, because of the perverse subsidies in the agriculture bill,
the salad was you know, $5.95. A burger is 99 cents.
If you're on a fixed income, you're going to get more calories for your dollar
by eating junk food, because it's subsidized.
And yet, even though the calories may be the same, they are often unhealthy calories.
There's an obsession, I hear it all the time. "Why do healthy foods cost more?"
So, the question is misunderstood. So, It's like,
"Why is healthy food more expensive?" When the real question should be,
"Why does this inexpensive food not have any nutrients in it?"
And they don't ever think of it that way. So, I think thinking about it as a cost per nutrient
is a more productive way to think about it.
In that sense, healthy food is not expensive at all.
Healthy food is remarkably inexpensive and the junk food, which has almost no nutrients
is incredibly expensive because you're paying a few dollars
and you're getting almost no nutrients. You're just getting empty calories.
It's amazing how many people tell me that they can't eat healthy
because it's too expensive, right? They can't afford it, and I say, "You know what,
that's a flawed argument to the court." This is peasant food.
This is potatoes, it's beans, it's rice, it's bananas.
If you don't want to do organic, do conventional.
If that's too expensive, then do frozen.
Frozen is incredibly affordable, it's picked at the peak of its ripeness.
And you should see my freezer at home.
We've got frozen mango, strawberries, blueberries,
quinoa, brown rice, spinach, kale, the list goes on and on. cauliflower, broccoli.
This is not an expensive way to eat. This is drop dead cheap.
To me, it costs just as much but, if it does cost more, what's more important?
Your health or your grocery bill?
Either pay now or pay later. And those hospital bills are steep.
[Gunn] Fast food businesses need to wake up
to the fact that consumers more and more these days want to consume real food.
If you make healthier food choices available conveniently,
a growing percentage of the population will choose those healthier choices.
What's happened with traditional fast food is that food has been made artificially cheap.
Being in the fast food business, it's commonly accepted
that you're going to have side dishes like French fries,
but because of our nutritional philosophy, we don't sell any fried food.
And for a number of years, I had this idea that we could sell steamed green beans
as our version of French fries and they've proven to be a huge success.
[Siewierski] Let's face it, the idea of only or mostly eating plant foods
sounds really boring to most people,
so what will you be eating if you adopt this lifestyle?
Can it be both healthy and enjoyable?
People have this misconception
that if you're going to eat a plant based diet, you're going to be eating grass.
Like literally, they make jokes at me, "How long would it take you to eat that tree?"
Okay-- [laughs] I don't eat trees or grass.
Or they ask me like, "What do you eat?"
I eat everything. Everything can be cooked and made with healthier ingredients.
It's actually one of the easier barriers to overcome is the misnomer
that on a plant based diet, you're just eating steamed vegetables and salads.
And when you open up that lexicon,
when you give people a much richer vocabulary
of what, you know, What is included in whole plant based foods
and then ask them to add those, it becomes pretty easy.
People when they used to go plant based, for some reason
instead of thinking in the terms of dishes, they think in terms of food groups.
All this time, they are talking about beans and vegetables and whole grains.
But on the American diet, you talk in terms of dishes.
Burritos, stir-fry, burgers.
And what I tell people is to keep focusing on dishes,
Burgers, stir-fries, French toast, pizza.
Just make it with whole plant foods, instead of processed plant foods
and animal foods whenever you can.
[Siewierski] Most of the focus in the weight loss and diet world is on food,
exercise, and supplements, but there's more to the story.
A factor that is often taken for granted is our mental health
and the role that stress plays in a person's weight loss journey.
[Dr. Gonzalez] The biggest predictor in the research that I've done has been,
why you want to lose weight? And if why you want to lose weight
is meaningful and it's long term, and it's legacy based, and it's bigger than yourself
in terms of the impact that it's going to have, then the journey might start off
about weight loss, but with time it becomes something bigger.
It becomes about rewriting your story. It becomes about actually doing things.
It's that I need to lose weight
so that I can live this sort of quality of life
or be this sort of example or live out this value and ethic
that is important to me and my legacy.
Why don't I stop putting too much meaning about a number on a scale
and transfer that meaning to what is it going to mean to me
to actually be around to watch my grandchildren be born?
What is it going to mean to me to actually be the first person in my family
to live beyond sixty without having diabetes?
You know, these are things that if people can focus on those outcomes, they're long term,
they're going to be set up for greater success.
But on top of that, that's why we want to lose weight.
So why not focus on those areas from the get go
rather than some arbitrary number on a scale?
This goes all the way back to Victor Frankl's classic Man's search for meaning
about concentration camp survivors in World War II.
And he found that the ones who survived were--
even if you had two people in the same bunker,
it wasn't always the strongest and the healthiest,
as the one who had the strongest sense of meaning and purpose,
because it's like, "I have to get out of here so I can be reunited
with my loved ones or bear witness." Whatever it happened to be.
The most beneficial way to approach weight loss is to step back
and look at the universe of wellness from 10,000 feet.
Try to address where your life is going astray and understand that this is a mental,
emotional, psychological journey,
as much as it is a journey with food in particular.
[Siewierski] For many people, the family doctor is seen as the best resource for information
on diet and nutrition. People rely on their advice
without realizing that most doctors are not trained in this field.
On average, US medical schools offer only 19.6 hours of nutrition education
across four years of medical school. And in a 2016 study,
researchers from Ohio found that most medical programs in the State average only 2.8 hours
of instruction on obesity, nutrition, and physical activity.
[Dr. Goøtzsche] It's a very bad approach that doctors have to obesity,
because what usually happens is that, when you are obese,
your blood pressure might be a little too high, your cholesterol might be too high
your blood glucose might be too high
and before you know it, you are in treatment with at least three different drugs.
Which of course, impacts on your quality of life.
You know, so often when someone's got high blood pressure,
high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and they say,
"Doctor, how long do I have to take these drugs that you prescribed?"
The doctor usually says, "Forever." Sometimes, when I lecture,
I'll show a cartoon of doctors busily mopping up the floor
and a sink that's overflowing, and say, "How long do I have to mop up the floor?"
Like "Forever." "Well, why don't we just turn of the faucet?"
And to a much larger degree than we once realized,
the faucet of the diet and lifestyle choices that we make each day
and how quickly they can affect us for better and for worse.
Being overweight has become normal in America.
That has become expected, it's become ordinary,
particularly I think in the United States. And I've noticed something
about doctors in recent years. They don't talk about it with their patients much anymore,
because they don't think it's going to work to talk to people about it.
They don't want to offend people.
Eating a diet full of saturated fat
and animal protein and dairy, all of that is so indoctrinated in our culture.
It's very difficult to get people to understand how bad that stuff is for you.
It's very difficult, including the doctors.
Remember, they are just human.
So, I was watching a number of documentaries
that described the benefit of whole food plant based diet.
Some of those documentaries mentioned, you know, it can reverse heart disease, you know.
So, I'm like, "Wow, I've been a cardiologist for a long time.
You can reverse heart disease? I'd like to do that. I wanted to do that since I was young."
That's really one of my motivations to like, "Okay, I'm going to try this myself."
I didn't have heart disease, but I still got to try it myself.
I lost a lot of weight after I tried that, you know.
So, I think it's kind of amazing that as a practicing cardiologist
I had to watch a documentary to figure out
one of the most important things in preventing or reversing heart disease is diet.
Unfortunately, most physicians don't know much about nutrition.
And when I was in medical school, we got one lecture for 20 minutes
by a pediatric specialist who said basically, "Go to McDonald's,
you'll get everything you need." And we all looked at each other like, "This guy doesn't know
what he's talking about. "It was obvious to us. And unfortunately,
I think most physicians aren't very well trained. They don't eat well themselves.
[Dr. Pulde] The level of education that you get as far as nutrition in general
in medical school is minimal and then whole food plant based nutrition is nil.
It didn't exist when I went to medical school.
In conventional medicine, we're just putting more and more people on medication.
That's the treatment that we have to offer.
And it's so limited and it's so depressing.
And to see the empowerment of just changing the food that you're eating
and the positive impact that it can make was amazing.
And for me, that's what I went into medicine to do. To really help people
and I saw that this was the way that I was going to do it.
So, in school I actually went to school to become a dietician,
and there's definitely a discrepancy
between what I know now and what I was learning in school.
None of this was covered in our classes.
They don't talk about the benefits of a plant based diet.
They are too busy focusing on making sure people are consuming dairy
and animal products, "And make sure you get your protein."
I mean, we learned that eating fruits and vegetables is good for you,
but there was no focus on making sure you get tons of fruits and vegetables
and whole grains into your diet. I think they are controlled by
what the government tells them they can say.
The government is who designs the dietary guidelines
and that's what our curriculum is based on.
The more I learn about how diet lifestyle changes can have amazing effects
on your body and your health,
the more I learned about how much control institutions and industry has on
on not only food production and distribution, but my education and my professors
and the research that they are able to do.
But they have a lot of control over, ultimately, whether or not I get a degree
and whether I become a registered dietician.
And given this, uhm, I'm not really comfortable talking about,
about all those controls they have publicly you know, until I graduated.
And I don't even want to associate myself too strongly
with people that do speak about it publicly.
They persecute people, uhm, because there's a lot to be lost.
There's a lot of money to be lost.
The whole system thrives on people filling their pockets
and not disrupting the paradigm, because the paradigm's been bought out.
[Dr. Cyrus] When it comes to nutritionists and registered dietitians,
they're often taught tactics that are about 30-40 years old,
and they're taught an old school version of nutrition that simply isn't true any longer.
A lot of them are sort of taught information that's influenced by the dairy industry
or influenced by the meat industry. And as a result of that,
they're told that when your client presents with this issue,
then teach them to eat more yogurt or teach them to eat more meat
because that's the solution to their problem.
[Greger] Now, you hear about calls that there should be
more nutrition education in medical education, right?
Doctors need to learn about nutrition,
but if that information is coming from the National Dairy Council,
maybe it's good that the doctors aren't taught anything about nutrition, right?
I mean one really needs to look at the sources of this information.
I can get free continuing education units
that's sponsored by the National Beef Council or the National Dairy Industry,
and it's free. And you know, it costs a lot of money to get a continuing education.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, are-- if you look at their sponsorship,
it's purely food industry.
If you go to the expo at their annual event, you know,
they've got Coca Cola, and Dairy Industry, and McDonald's.
This is a dietetics conference. So We are taught by food industry
what to recommend to our clients, and that is wrong.
Let's suppose all those patients went on a whole food plant based diet,
what would be the economic effect?
Yeah, it would bankrupt the hospitals, bypass is going away, stents are going away,
diabetes is going away, cancer is less.
If everyone got healthier, I had less to do, I would say, "Man, I did a good job."
You know, I wouldn't be disappointed.
You just have to realize that why are not more doctors or hospitals
or pharmaceutical companies promoting this?
It's not in their economic interests. It's a big business.
All of these industries, they're in it to make money,
and that's exactly what they're doing.
But, we're getting it done at the expense of the people.
[Siewierski] Making a film such as this one comes with certain risks.
I would be lying if I said I didn't consider quitting this project on many occasions.
The industry has the resources and systems in place
to stop the mass dissemination of this kind of information.
And the consequences can be quite intimidating, to say the least.
[Dr. Breggin] When you get these big corporations in cahoots with big government,
it's the same everywhere.
So if you stand up against a nutritionist,
they will try to keep you out of their universities, they will try to fire you.
The corruption of my profession
cannot be overestimated or exaggerated,
so they try to do anything they can.
If they think they can do it, many of these forces would try to kill you.
People can be punished, sued for saying anything negative about them,
even when they're true.
[Greger] There's actually been some cases of these lawsuits
by the dairy industry trying to silence critics.
There are these so called food disparagement laws
in more than a dozen states that where it's illegal
to make unfounded comments against perishable food items.
Now, you say, "Wait a second. What if I make founded comments against food?"
That's legal, but you've got to prove that in court.
But thankfully, we now live in an era
of kind of information democratization
and no longer can industry have this kind of stranglehold on the information people get.
It's in their interest that we're confused, but the science is there, the science is solid.
We just have to get the science into the hands of individuals.
[Siewierski] According to the government's dietary recommendations,
13% of our caloric intake should be coming from plants,
but the amount of subsidies going to fruit and vegetable growers, is not even 0.1%.
One of the quirks in the US law is that our government
is supposed to give us health guidance, and it does.
Every five years, we get a new set of dietary guidelines for Americans
that help guide schools and others to know what's healthy.
But by law, the Government also has to promote American agriculture.
[Dr. Popper] So you have this institutional conflict here.
You've got an agency that is supposed to represent farmers, on the one hand,
and advocate for them. And if they really would fulfill their-- their responsibility
to the public with dietary guidelines,
they might have to, they would have to tell American consumers
to consume less of some of the things their true constituents, the farmers produce.
The Government could be subsidizing healthier foods,
but members of Congress know that if they cross the industry,
they're going to have a fight on our hands.
We have an amazing system in America,
where we have the farmers that will grow whatever they can get paid to grow.
If we wanted farmers to grow organic fruits and vegetables
and produce them at a cheap price,
all we have to do is subsidize it and they would do it.
Right now, if you look at what we're growing, we're growing corn, and we're growing soy.
And we grow those corn and soy products to feed animals.
And it makes me mad as hell as a public health official
to know that our Government is complicit in the leading causes of death in America.
And If you look at the direction of China and Canada, now they're focused on
their constituents' health rather than on supporting the industries
that they're using to feed their population. So that shift in focus,
where you're using the science to promote what's best for the constituents
from a diet perspective is really where we need to be.
[Siewierski] So you might be asking, "What's next?
Where do we go from here? How do we start?"
If you find yourself struggling with your weight, know that you're not alone
and know that there are ways to achieve your goals
without losing your health in the process.
If I could do it, so can you.
For me, that signal of carrying excess weight
is actually a blessing in one sense,
because it's a signal to the person that,
"Hey, maybe it's time I need to make some changes.
And maybe this excess weight that I'm carrying is a sign to me
that it's time to make those changes,"
versus the people who drop dead of a heart attack
and that's their first sign that something's wrong.
You are not the victim of your genetics.
You are simply a victim of what you decide to put on your plate.
Which means you also get to be a hero in your own story.
Conquer that next meal. That's it.
One day you're going to wake up and you're going to go, "Wow,
I completely changed my life. Not by focusing on
the rest of my life, but by focusing on today."
[Rip Esselstyn] People for some reason, they think that
eating plant based is extreme or somehow radical.
Let's just say for a second it is extreme and it is radical,
what better thing to get fanatical, and radical, and extreme about than your health?
And taking care of yourself, taking care of the planet, right?
and putting a stake in the ground and saying,
"You know what? I stand for something.
And I stand for something at every breakfast when I eat,
at every lunch, at every dinner and every snack, right?
I have a purpose that goes beyond myself and also includes myself."
What better way to basically say that you love yourself?
So to me, if you're going to be fanatical about something,
be fanatical about what goes into your mouth
because this is the most important issue facing you
and facing us as a country and as a world.
[instrumental music]