← The Determined Society with Shawn French | Mindset, Adversity & Growth
The Determined Society with Shawn French | Mindset, Adversity & Growth
Everything You Know About Nutrition Is Wrong with Nina Teicholz
00:46:42
Loading summary
Transcript58 lines
- [00:00]
Sean
Dude, like, what did you do? You look great. Like, you're lean. You look younger. You're happier. I'm struggling. What can I do? I go, that's very easy. High protein, high fats. Oh, no, I need rice. I need rice to survive. I'm 280 pounds. I'm like, no, you think you do.
- [00:15]
Nina
Really. The foundation of my work in this space started with a book that I wrote called the Big Fat Surprise. People have received so much misinformation. And from the highest levels. The American Heart association, our own U.S. dietary guidelines. People's minds are full of received ideas that turn out not to be supported by science. That's a whole other story. Why are all our trusted health authorities delivering incorrect information to us?
- [00:43]
Sean
Is it money? So, Nina, thank you for joining us today. You have an amazing resume. As far as, you know, your PhD in nutrition. You. You really put out some controversial topics out there about what nutrition should be, what to consume, and I'm into it. Right. And I just super happy to have you here today. So thank you.
- [01:10]
Nina
Well, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
- [01:13]
Sean
Yeah. I mean, not. Not a bad Monday, right?
- [01:16]
Nina
Yeah.
- [01:18]
Sean
So talk to us a little bit about coffee. Yeah, I'm always drinking coffee. It's like one of those things where it's. If I'm not drinking coffee for the first part of the day, I'm really not living.
- [01:33]
Nina
Yeah, go ahead.
- [01:34]
Sean
You know, I love it. Do you drink your coffee? Coffee black or.
- [01:38]
Nina
Yeah, here's my coffee. And it's black. It's black.
- [01:43]
Sean
Same.
- [01:43]
Nina
Or sometimes my son will make me a latte with. With whole milk or cream. And, and, and. And that is really good. And I would drink that. That tastes, like, nutty, Wonderful.
- [01:55]
Sean
It's like. Yeah, it's so good. You know, let's segue because, you know, you know, dairy products are often demonized. Meat is often demonized. So walk us through. You know, like, there's people listening right now. I'm like, oh, I'm allowed to put cream or milk in my coffee. That's not going to kill me.
- [02:11]
Nina
Right? Yeah. Well, so really, the foundation of my work in this space started with a book that I wrote called the Big Fat Surprise. I'm not here to sell my book, but I do have a copy.
- [02:23]
Sean
No, please do hold that thing up.
- [02:27]
Nina
So that came out in 2014. It was a result of almost a decade of research and work. It's in. It's very intensely researched, documented. There are 150 pages of footnotes, and there were two major arguments that I put forward in that book. The first one was we got it wrong on saturated fats. Saturated fats. The fear that saturated fats cause heart disease is why we avoid red meat, full fat, dairy, butter, cheese. You know, and. And some people think there's a lot of saturated fat in eggs, which is not true. But it's sort of the whole history of the hypothesis saturated fat and dietary cholesterol cause heart disease. That goes back to the 1950s. And we can talk about that. But I really lay out that whole history. All the science, the clinical trials, the personalities, and. And so my book was really the first to really put out this idea. We, in a very comprehensive way, we wrongly demonize saturated fats. And number two, we were very wrong to replace those fats with seed oils. So my book was also the first to really go into the history of seed oils. The idea that they're machine lubricant. They were started as machine lubricants. And the problems of oxidation and potential problems of inflammation and the various ways the toxins that are in them or that they are produced when they oxidize. So that was also all my work from this book. And so now a lot of this is just kind of out there as common knowledge, which is fantastic. I mean, we have the FDA commissioner, Marty McCary, talking about how we got it wrong on saturated fats, citing my work. I was just like, it's amazing to see this finally get up to the level of recognition by our public health authorities. So, yeah, we could talk about a lot of this.
- [04:29]
Sean
No, I love this. I love this. And, you know, it's so funny because when we talk about fats in general, right? You know, predominantly saturated fats, there's. There was a long period of time where everybody's like, you know, cut fat out of your diet, fat's making you fat.
- [04:43]
Nina
And.
- [04:43]
Sean
And fat really does not make you fat. Those are sources of energy, right? They're very dense. And. And they help us. But, you know, there was this massive push to remove all the fats from diets. And the thing about that that drives me crazy is, isn't fat essential for hormone?
- [05:03]
Nina
Like fat is. Let me explain one thing I think most people don't know. All food except for sugar is made up of the three macronutrients that is in all our food, carbohydrate, protein, and fat. One of those is not essential for you to live, and that is carbohydrate. You do not need any carbohydrate in your body. You don't actually, you don't need it. The amount you need. According even the National Academy of Sciences reluctantly concluded in 2005 in a report, it seems the essential amount of carbohydrates is zero. And that is just kind of common knowledge among people who study nutrition, although there's a lot of incorrect messages mixed into there, too. People say you have to have glucose to fill your body, but that is not true. You need protein and fat to survive, and you need a good amount of them for optimal health. Fat is used for energy, it's used for your hormones, it's used for all, you know, many systems in your body. You need. You need, like, much more fat than you think you do. And if I can just spend a moment to kind of go back to explain to people, like, where all these ideas come from, to try to locate them for people, I just want to give, like a brief history that. So it really. We did not have any of these ideas about saturated fats, about avoiding fat at all until really the 1950s, when the nation was in a panic over what caused heart disease. Heart disease had risen from really out of nowhere in the early 1900s to be the number one killer in America. And the signal event was President Eisenhower himself having a heart attack in 1955 and being out of the Oval Office for 10 whole days. So all of the nation was fixated on what causes heart disease. And this one very influential, self promoting, aggressive scientist named Ansel Keys from the University of Minnesota came out with this idea called the Diet Heart Hypothesis. And that that hypothesis held that it was saturated fat and dietary cholesterol that clogged your arteries, you know, and like hot oil down a cold stovepipe would clog them up and give you a heart attack. So it's really important to understand that at that time there were other competing hypotheses that were put forward by top scientists of the day. Maybe it was auto exhaust, the growing number of cars on the road, maybe it was night vitamin deficiency that caused heart disease. Just other valid ideas. But Ancel Keys was able to just really railroad through by force of personality, his idea. He got onto the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee in 1960, turned that whole committee around, such that by 1961, the committee was saying they embraced his idea, and they came out in 1961 saying, Americans, avoid saturated fat and cholesterol to prevent a heart attack. That is your number one best way to prevent a heart attack. So this was the little acorn of advice that grew into the giant oak tree of advice and guidelines. And all that we have all over the world now, it all started with that in 1961. And what did that mean in practical terms? It meant replacing butter with margarine. Right. And the American Heart association at that, even early on, at that point was actively promoting seed oils. Right? So president of the AHA is posed in a. With a bottle of Crisco in his hand in an educational film promoting seed oils. So it meant we were to start cutting back on red meat, which we did as a nation. It meant start cutting back on whole milk and replacing it with skim milk. I mean, skim milk only really came into the food supply in the 70s. So we feel like we've been living with this forever. But it's important to note this idea does have. It is located at a moment in time when this came into being. People before 1961 did not think like this the way that we do today. Chapter two is bringing in the low fat diet. Right. The low fat diet means cut back all fat, not just saturated fat. And that was done based on the rationale that the macronutrient fat has 9 calories per gram, whereas carbohydrate and protein, the other two macronutrients only have 4 to 5 calories per gram. And so it was thought at the time, as we were just starting to see obesity creep up In America in 1960s, it was really in the low teens percentages, you know, 14, 15% of American adults were obese in the 60s. But researchers had started to see that creeping up and saying, hey, we've got to get a handle on this. Let's tell everybody to eat a low fat diet. And that is what started in 1970 again with the American Heart association being the first to come out with that advice. And then it really spread into a kind of mania by the 1980s. The low fat 1980s were really the height of everybody cooking their fish in parchment and trying to pretend that a salad with only vinegar was yummy. And that was something.
- [10:50]
Sean
Tastes freaking terrible.
- [10:52]
Nina
Tastes terrible. And people were obsessed with fat. And since then there had been. There's been a rollback in this idea about that, that lowering your fat to very low levels is healthy or good or, or preferable. But people still live with this fear of fat. Fat is going to make me fat. Fat is going to put. But it's far more likely that it's that donut you're eating rather than the bacon for breakfast that is going straight to your hips. So. But that's the low fat diet. And you know that Diet was extensively tested in multiple National Institutes of Health funded clinical trials. And it was found to protect this amount of chronic diseases, no effect on preventing weight gain, no effect on type 2 diabetes, no prevention for heart disease, and no prevention for any type of cancer. And it was tested in large randomized controlled clinical trials on more than 55,000 people. So it's been tested, it failed. And low fat diet. Nobody should ever be avoiding fat. Fat. One of the things that the low fat diet recommend, guidelines completely ignored, and we have only, it's only come become more prominently known recently, is that fat, fat and protein, especially together are very satiating. They fill you up. If you have eggs and bacon for breakfast, you are not hungry. You don't need a st snack mid morning the way you do if you've had a bre. A bowl of cereal for breakfast because your blood sugar is not rising and plunging the way it does when it has a bowl of starch in the morning. Protein and fat keep your blood sugar flat and you there. It keeps you satiated, it fills you up and it just, it's a much more even kind of energy. So. And people should also know people who are trying to like, bulk up on protein. You need the fat to go with the protein. If you have too much protein without fat, that excess protein will start to spike your blood sugar as well. So you really need to have fat in your diet.
- [13:11]
Sean
I, I do. I love this. Thank you so much because I can speak from personal experience. Okay. In December, I started a health journey and I was £230. I'm now between 186 and 190. Right.
- [13:27]
Nina
That's great.
- [13:28]
Sean
Thank you.
- [13:29]
Nina
Congratulations.
- [13:30]
Sean
Thank you. The, the, my body fat percentage went from 30, almost 31, down to probably 15 to 17%. Right. In such a short period of time. And I was housing fats. I mean, I was crushing them. And the thing that I did was in the morning pre workout, I would have a shake and then I would come home, have another shake. And then in an hour and a half I was super hungry. So I'd have five eggs and four pieces of bacon. And then I was good for an extended period of time. And then for lunch it would be, you know, mostly red meat and then dinner, red meat. And if I was super hungry before bed, I would have another shake right. For that, for that, another protein. So I would end my day right around 2100 calories and, and looking at roughly 250 grams of protein and 100 grams of fat. And the weight fell off. I Started getting vascular. I started feeling more satiated, to your point, throughout the day, where when the nighttime came, I wasn't super hungry. And most people get this thing wrong, Nina. They say protein is going to satiate you. In part, yes. But if you don't couple it with the fats, you're going to be hungry. It does not matter. You need to make sure that when you're eating something, you're completely satiated. That is fats and that is protein. So from my own personal experience, you're speaking my language, like really, truly are. It changed my life.
- [15:10]
Nina
Well, it works. I mean, it works because of the biochemistry behind it, and it works because, you know, first of all, you're cutting out carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, even the healthy whole grains, the quinoa, the, even the legumes that we've been told to eat more of, they contain starch. Starch is just sugar molecules holding hands. Your body doesn't care when you start that. And so if you cut out carbohydrates, you're cutting out glucose and fructose. And both of those, by different pathways, contribute to fat accumulation, let's say. Yeah, and they contribute more seriously to insulin resistance, which is, I believe, the root of chronic diseases. So diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, like, you know, disease we see across the spectrum. So you're cutting out carbohydrates, you're increasing your protein, which helps their satiation. You're. You're not shirking fat, which is really important. And I want to just put in a little note for your women readers, especially women who are a little older, like more around my age. But I'm just saying, people who, whose metabolisms are more likely to be broken, like they've been overweight for a while or they, you know, they, they don't feel well, they've eat. For women, they need to eat even more fat, especially when they're getting off what we call the SAD diet, the standard American diet. That transition, getting unaddicted from sugars and starches. Getting off the SAD diet is a big transition. And it's really important to keep fat in your diet at that point. When you're a little closer to your goal weight, then you have to maybe, like, be a little more careful. It's my experience and what I hear from other people, when you're getting closer to your goal weight, those fat calories can make a difference force, especially for women. So, I mean, everybody's individual, but we're, we're talking in, in General terms now, like, a higher fat diet is healthier and will help you lose weight for the vast majority of people. And a low fat diet is not healthy. It actually increases the risk of heart disease and will increase your risk of insulin resistance. So like, in broad terms, we know that much, right? And then you're, people have to kind of fiddle around the margins of that.
- [17:42]
Sean
It's so funny because when people say like, dude, like, what did you do? You look great. Like, you're lean, you're, you're, you look younger, you're happier, there's more life in your eyes. I'm like, they're like, I'm like, yeah, well, this is, you know, I've been locked in, man. And I go to the gym five, six days a week, right? And like, well, I'm struggling. What can I do? I go, that's very easy. High protein, high fats. Oh, no, I need rice. I need rice to survive. I'm 280 pounds. I'm like, no, you think you do. See, that's the problem. You think you do because you haven't tried anything else. And what does the body do biologically when there's no carbon, there's no glycogen in your body to eat for energy, it goes straight to the fat and that's your energy source. And it's just, to me, it is, it is more of a choice, right? Okay, I can sit here and struggle or I can follow this plan, which is very simple. I'm going to eat a ton of protein and I'm not going to care about the fats to a certain point, right? I mean, it's very simple.
- [18:39]
Nina
It, I think it is. But let's understand that people have, people have received so much misinformation. And from the highest levels, I mean, the American Heart association, our own US Dietary Guidelines are. Our top professional societies have been delivering information that is incorrect. So people, it's not just the choice. People's minds are full of received ideas that turn out not to be supported by science. And that's a whole other story. Why are, why are all our trusted health authorities delivering incorrect information to us? That's a big part of my book.
- [19:22]
Sean
Is it, is it money?
- [19:23]
Nina
Understand? Well, it's. Yes. I mean, there's one simple explanation is there's a ton of drug and big food and big pharma money that is in all of our public health institutions. I've looked into and investigated the American Heart association, the American Pediatric association, the American College of Cardiology, many of our guideline committees. I mean, I did the first ever systematic review of a US Dietary guideline committee, which is the most, the top, most influential nutrition policy. 95% of that committee, that 20 person committee had a tie with food or pharma company and half the committee had 30 such ties or more. So yes, money is, you know, surprise, a huge factor driving this. But I want to also, and we could talk about this for a long time, but just one other factor is the cognitive dissonance that exists among the professional medical, nutrition expert community. So many of them truly, truly believe, believed and still believe that saturated fat causes heart disease, that dietary cholesterol will clog your arteries and cause heart disease, that high cholesterol is the number one cause of heart disease, that dietary fat makes you fat. I mean, they believe these things and they believe them for decades because remember, it goes back to the 1950s originally. So there's so much cognitive dissonance in their minds, they cannot change their minds. And if they're a bureaucracy, it's very hard for any bureaucracy to swivel around and change its position and lose the public trust. And this is also, it's a good segue because it's also what is going on in individual people's minds and why it's hard for individual people to shift to the kind of diet you're talking about, right? Or that we are both talk about. Because in their mind is the message, for instance. But aren't there good carbs and bad carbs? Aren't there fast carbs and slow carbs? And the answer to that is not really. There's, I like it. There's really all starches when you, you know, even in dark bread and pumpernickel bread, when they come into your body, they, they come apart. They're just sugar molecules, as I said, sugar molecules holding hands. And if you are trying to lose weight, reduce your risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, all of those, or you want to reverse them, you really need to cut back on total carbohydrates. That is what the scientific literature shows. And here I'm talking about the most rigorous kind of science, randomized controlled clinical trials. Now, we could go down a big rabbit hole like, well, don't the Europeans eat more carbs? And what about the Japanese and rice and what about this and that? And that's a whole conversation. I'm not denying that those populations exist on higher carb diets and they are healthy. But I will say that in clinical trials all over the world, when people reduce Their total carbohydrates, their overall cardiovascular risk profile looks better, they're able to lose more weight consistently. In all head to head diet trials, low carb always comes out looking better. It's the only way to reverse type 2 diabetes. So that is what the clinical trials show us. And we have to, that's the most rigorous science. So. Or you could move to Italy and try their diet and see if you lose weight. And maybe that's your, maybe that's your diet mode.
- [23:05]
Sean
That's an expensive way to do it.
- [23:08]
Nina
Explain the mechanism for it so people understand. Because another message that goes through people's heads is wait, I know that I need glucose for energy. And you started to explain this earlier, which is, no, you don't need glucose for energy. Your body is like a hybrid car. So most of most of us, typical American diet, we run on glucose, right? We have to take in the glucose, which is from sugar or fruit or starch, and then we run on that. And then when we run out of glucose, your body can only have a teaspoon in circulation at any one time. And so it socks it away as fat and then it can access it as fat, it can bring it back into the body when that runs out. And you, that's when you're like, your body really hits a low and you're super tired and because your blood sugar's gone up and then it's crashed and then you're, or if you're like in a long distance race, that's when you're bonking and you like need the goo pack to suck down more glucose or you, whatever that that is way most people live and with really wildly fluctuating moods and they need to eat fairly constantly to keep their glucose replenished. Okay, that's one fuel source that's like the traditional gasoline fuel source. But your body is a hybrid car and you can use the alternative fuel. So fuel source which you get from eating fat. So and by the way, this process of converting to be flexible and used to fuel systems that can take, that can take weeks or even months for people, right? You're up regulate up regulating enzymes and developing this whole new metabolic pathway to use fat as fuel. And that can take a while and you can feel badly along the way. So, you know, beware those articles like, oh, I tried low carb and it didn't work after a week. You know, I mean it takes, it's a process to change the way your body functions and what fuel it uses. But when you're fueling on fat, fat will generate something called ketone bodies. You can measure them in your bloodstream to see if you are producing them. And that's a very effective way to know when you are in what's called a ketogenic state. And by the way, you can lose weight without getting into keto becoming ketogenic. You can lose weight by just bringing down the carbs, right? Bringing down starches, sugars, all that. Just, just bring it down. If you get all the way down to ketogenic, which is very, very low carbs, then you can, you can measure your ketones and, and when you're in that state, you're much, much more able to use fat as fuel and you really, really mobilize all the fat out of your, your stored fat. You run on your own stored fat. It's, it's like you're stored fat. One way of thinking about it is not the thing you hate on your body, but it's like, oh, these are my, this is my, this is my granola bar bars, like extra fat body. And when I can't get food, if I, if I'm metabolically flexible in this hybrid car, I can just access that for fuel, I'll be like, oh, you know, I'm running on my right hip fat right now because I haven't eaten in a while. And like, that's a great thing. That's why people and animals, generally mammals have fat, so you don't have to eat all the time. You need a source of fuel. So anyway, that's the mechanism. Sometimes it helps people to understand that and to try to get through some of the misunderstandings. And again, just to get back to the original point, I understand resistance and people not understanding and like people have been receiving so much contrary and confusing information and it's, and, and people have been scared off this way of eating that you're, you're, you are currently have benefited from and I've been benefiting from for years. There, there's a big campaign to scare people away from it that I have documented actually quite a lot. So, I mean, I understand where people are coming from on this and that's why I like to get out and talk about it.
- [27:23]
Sean
I love it. You know, it's funny, I want to go back to something you said about, you know, I tried the low carb for a week. It didn't work. It. I, I think that's impossible. Nina like it from a standpoint of just experiencing it. You know, I'm in my mid to late 40s and the moment I cut out all those carbs, you know, I lost £8 the first week. And now most people, well, that's just the water weight, like, whatever, doesn't matter. I'm trending in the right direction here. The main thing that I think, people, and I'm, I'm assuming okay, but the first three days when I was detoxing out of carbs, I had, I mean, my team can tell you I had the worst headaches ever. Like, I. Nina, I was so effing miserable. But I also was miserable in another way. You know, it's like when you get that heavy, you're. You're in. And for people listening and watching right now, and if, if you struggle with weight, you know exactly what I'm talking about, you find two or three shirts that you feel you look the best and feel the best in, and you rotate those shirts, you rotate that pair of underwear, as funny as it sounds, and you rotate those pairs of shorts or those pairs of jeans. And that to me was pain in general. Enough to, enough for me to keep moving through that, that physical pain of the head. And, and then after that fourth. And when that fourth day came clear as a bell, like my vision, my mind. And so I transitioned in January to the Carnivore diet. Now, granted, lately I've been eating more carbs and I'm feeling bad, right? So, like, there's no accidents in this world. This morning I woke up, I had a bunch of ground turkey meat, I had two eggs and a half cup of egg whites, and I had a high protein breakfast. And when I, on the way home, I'll go and I'll get a steak, some steaks for the family. I'll grill those up for lunch and that's what we'll do. So I just find like there's a lot of people. This is a good question to ask you. A lot of people are talking about the long term effects of Carnivore. What are your thoughts there?
- [29:35]
Nina
Okay, I want to just, I want to just wrap up the point about transition to low carb. You were very lucky. Some people, it takes very long, longer period of time and they have something used to be called the Atkins flu, the keto flu. They have flu like symptoms. I just want to let those folks know you are losing electrolytes in the first days and you are experiencing all this enzymatic regulation change in your body. All you need to do is to have a couple of cups of, of soup broth, and they can literally be from one of those soup cubes like you don't need to get the fancy stuff.
- [30:13]
Sean
The bouillon cubes.
- [30:15]
Nina
A bouillon cube. Right, thanks. That's enough to to and that this has been known for decades. Like you just, you just have that, that will alleviate your symptoms and help with the transition. And then I want to give people who might be thinking and considering this one other tip, which is when you're having your sugar craving, eat fat instead. Like whip up some whipped cream with a little artificial sweetener. It's not going to kill you and you know, eat fat instead and that will kill your sugar craving. So you need help when you start because it's really hard to come off of sugar especially. Okay, let's do the carnivore diet and long term implications. There's been one survey that was published on carnivores and that was done with some out of Harvard and it was. One of the authors is David Ludwig. Nick Norwitz is another author, maybe Sean Baker was on that, who's a well known carnivore. People had been on that diet for years. Everybody improved in their health and felt better on that diet. Uh, are they potentially risking a heart attack, heart disease in the long term? If you look at people on ketogenic diets, what you see is their overall cardiovascular risk score improves dramatically. Like improves their life expectancy by six or seven years. There's multiple studies showing that carnivore diet, due to the saturated fat content tends to increase your LDL cholesterol, which is your so called bad cholesterol. And that is what doctors focus on almost exclusively as the only cardiovascular risk factor that matters. I would note the coincidence that that is the one cardiovascular risk factor that they have a blockbuster drug for named statins and other cardiovascular risk factors that have actually shown much better predictive value for predicting heart attacks. They don't have drugs for those. They tried to make one for hdl, for instance, to help bring it up and that turned out to kill people. So I think there's not a pure incentive to focus exclusively on LDL cholesterol. And more importantly scientifically, what we see is that, you know, there are, let's say 21 cardiovascular risk factors. And you know, if they're what you see on keto and I would, you know, assume by extension Carnivore, which hasn't been studied as well, but it's very adjacent. You see virtually all of those 22 risk factors moving in the, in a. To get, to get better, right? All of these are getting better. Your crp, your Inflammatory markers, your CRP reactive proteins, your hdl, your triglycerides, all that's getting better. And then you see LDL moving in the other direction which turns out as a transient effect anyway. Like you know that LDL is, you know, you're not gonna just go target LDL when everything is moving in a better direction. So that's, that's the main concern that people have about this diet is the cardiovascular risk. And I think it does not show increased risk. So there's been the largest clinical trial on this that has five year data. Again, keto, not carnivore. Their five year data do not show increased, that shows reduced cardiovascular risk and continued sustained weight loss. Sustained, I mean every, every other marker of insulin resistance is getting better. Interesting, I think and you can show that for a low fat diet. So you know, I think, I think I'll give you one other data point on carnivore specifically, which is that in the 1920s there was a super interesting story. I write about it in my book and others have written about it too. There was a scientist named Stefanson who had gone up and lived with the Inuit in, in, in, in the Arctic in, in Canada and discovered that they only ate meat and fat. Like for them it was seal meat, reindeer meat and fat, high fat diet. He said they were among the healthiest people he had ever seen. He felt the healthiest when he was living with them. He comes back to America, everybody, he writes about it, everybody thinks he's insane. He checks himself into a hospital in New York City and he and a colleague for a year, most of it is inpatient in the hospital follow a meat and fat only diet. So carnivore diet for a whole year and there, there's a battery of tests like they're testing everything they can think to test. They've all their vitamins, minerals and everything. You know, I'll just check out are there any deficiencies? Everything they know to test it comes out in six or seven published peer reviewed papers and they were found to be in perfect health at the end of a year. So you know, is that a large clinical trial? No, but does that show that that is, you know, probably a safe diet? I think I, I think it is. I mean there's also the evolutionary point which is this is how we evolved to eat 2 million years ago.
- [35:42]
Sean
Yeah, I was going to ask you that question. You ran right into it. Yeah, go ahead.
- [35:46]
Nina
We were only eating, we were eating meat and fat. Okay. Like there's some people say, oh, we were also Digging up tubers. And maybe we were doing some of that, but the reality is like, mostly what we're doing is hunting large game animal mainly for their fat. It was the fat that people that would people prized. Again, getting back to that point, the fat, it's the fattiness of those animals that was prized above everything else, not just the protein. In fact, one more data point, when hunters and explorers such as Lewis and Clark, when they were making their, their journey across country, when they encountered animals that were too lean, they would throw them away because they, they like deer that were too lean. They were starving, basically. They were like, we can't even eat those because that will give us. That will give us. They used to call it rabbit starvation because rabbits were too lean as well. You need to have the fat to process the protein.
- [36:44]
Sean
It's very interesting. I got a quick question because a lot of people that listen to the show are into their fitness and they lift a lot of weights and they always say that you need to have a certain amount of protein. So if I'm 185 and I want to continue to gain lean muscle tissue, then I probably need to have 1 gram per pound of body fat, of body weight or one and a half grams or something like that. Do we really need, like, do I really need. Or does that person really need to be eating 220 to 250 grams of protein a day in order to build lean muscle tissue or is it just your lean mass?
- [37:26]
Nina
So, so I would not say that I'm like a fitness expert, but, you know, I do know a bunch of folks in that field. You need for lean, your protein requirements are probably 1.2 to 1.8 according to like the top experts that I know. And this is maybe not including the bodybuilder community, which maybe they need more protein to really put on, you know, to build up. But 1.2 to 1.8 is where I think most protein experts would land per ideal body mass. So, so that's your. What your ideal weight is. So maybe that's an important qualifier as well. What we. And I would just say like what we are currently feeding our children in public schools and are at our, in our nursing homes for the elderly. And elderly people need more protein because they develop an inability to process protein as well. We're feeding them 0.8 grams of protein per body weight or the equivalent. And that is just, that's like starvation level. That's like, can. How, how do we keep people from starving or, you know, like becoming emaciated that is just nowhere near the optimal health level. And so that's why I work in policy, because I think that among other things need to change. But yeah, so you definitely need more. And again, I'm just going to repeat this ad nauseam because it's so important. You need the fat with the protein. You should not. And I think you need to get protein from animal source foods because it's complete. It has the rare there, you know, it has all nine amino acids. The rare one is called leucine. That's the amino acid that's super hard to get from plants, is not as abundant even in legume grain combinations. That should provide all the amino acids. Leucine is still low in those combinations. Plus you're getting a huge whopping load of starch along with that. So animal proteins have no sugar or starch. All the amino acids you need is much better than a protein bar which has all those ingredients. You know, that is ultra processed food, let's face it. But you know, do my children eat them? Yes. So, but I mean, ideally, in an ideal world, you should be getting your protein from animal source foods.
- [40:03]
Sean
Agree. So you, you brought up a great point. What we're feeding our children, right? So I have three kids, all right, My oldest in my middle, my son in my middle, middle daughter. They will crush steak. They will eat protein like crazy. They Love it. My 6 year old has this aversion. She just won't truly, you know, embrace meat unless she's dipping it in ketchup or something. Right. So my question is to you, for the parents out there that are struggling to get their young ones to have this, you know, protein and fat rich diet, what are some, you know, strategies or alternatives they can feed their children in order for them to get those things that they need?
- [40:47]
Nina
Yeah, kids are hard because they, they have all their own little weirdnesses. I just want to say, like there were several years when I convinced my parents that the only kind of milk I could drink was chocolate milk. I don't even know why they went for that. I was a complete sugar, sugar maniac. So, you know, in my household, we, we, I usually say, I don't have any forbidden foods, but I just say, look, you have to have your protein first. So you, you have to get your, your protein with whatever sauce or something to get the fat in there or the butter. That's your first thing. And then you can have, if you want dessert, you can have dessert, but you have to fill them up. Two things. One is you have to Fill them up on healthy foods and then that protein and fat in their system will blunt the glucose effect if they decide to have, you know, sweets or fruit or whatever afterwards. But it is getting in the healthy, the healthy protein that they need and then serve it in a way that they can. They like if it's chicken fingers, make those chicken fingers with pork panko, you know, which is pork dust. And instead of breadcrumbs, if it's, if they need to have ketchup, get low sugar ketchup. If they, you know, there are all kinds of recipes out there. If they need it fried, fried in tallow, like you just, you know, go along with whatever the however you're going to get it, you just have to give it. They don't have to love steak. Not everybody loves steak. If they need it, you know, in tacos, figure out, you know, there are recipes for low carb taco shells. Like, you can do it like, or. And also I would deal with the fact, again, sugar addiction is real. Sugar addiction is real.
- [42:33]
Sean
Me, I know there's all kinds of recipes out there.
- [42:37]
Nina
You can rely on artificial sugars, art, you know, sugar sweeteners to get off sugar. I think, you know, whatever the fears are about those artificial sugars, and I'm not saying they're nothing but like if you for like a couple, couple of years need to, or a couple of months need to transition off of sugar, sugar, do it with the. Make, make the, make the chocolate bombs or whatever fat bombs with a bunch of fat and a little artificial sweetener and get your child to have that for dessert. Like, don't. I think forbidding foods is a bad policy for kids really, for anybody because if they feel like things are off limits, then it's just, it's too much for them to feel like, oh, never again. Are you kidding? And then that's what leads to binging or sneaking around.
- [43:25]
Sean
Binging, sneaking around or disordered eating. Right? Like, we don't want to create that. We don't forbid anything in our, our household either. I mean, I eat the way I eat, you know, and I try to pass it along. Right. And you know, their kids, though, you know, hopefully, you know, as they, as they get older, like, again, my, my middle child and my oldest child, they're not, they don't really buck the system. But that little one, man, that little one, yeah. She will test.
- [43:53]
Nina
I'm happy to share with you in your show notes, there's some really great cookbooks on ideas for kids. Like, like foods you can feed to Kids that are local.
- [44:02]
Sean
I would love that.
- [44:03]
Nina
There's so much creative thinking out there about how to deal with kids. So I can send you a list after the show and I would love that.
- [44:11]
Sean
I would love that. We can put that in the show notes too.
- [44:13]
Nina
Yeah.
- [44:14]
Sean
Also the link to your book and everything like the big fat surprise. And this has just been such an amazing conversation. I appreciate you, Nina. Thank you for sharing so many real data points with the audience to give them the confidence that what we are speaking about and what you are bringing to us is factual. And, and hopefully, you know, it gets some people to think that, hey, maybe I can do this and, you know, maybe feeling like crap for a little bit maybe worth it. And you've, you've given points to state that this is why you feel bad when you cut out carbs. So for, for a short period of time. But I just appreciate you and it was such a phenomenal conversation. Thank you for sharing everything with the audience.
- [44:56]
Nina
Thank you for having me, Sean. It's been great to talk to you. Really fun.
- [44:59]
Sean
Absolutely. Absolutely. Look forward to more and following you and seeing what you're doing in your career and the impact you're making on America and society and in their nutritional choices and, you know, making America healthy again.
- [45:13]
Nina
Let's make America healthy again.
- [45:14]
Sean
Let's go, girl. And for the audience, for those of you that this episode resonated with, please share along with somebody you know love and trust. And until next time, stay determined.
- [45:28]
Expedia Narrator
Martha listens to her favorite band all the time. In the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them sawed off. You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you more Expedia made to travel savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.