Mar 13, 2019
Today we’re talking to Stephan Guyenet who has a degree in
biochemistry and a PhD in neuroscience. He’s
spent over 12 years in the neuroscience research world
studying neurodegenerative disease and the neuroscience of body
fatness. He wrote a great book called The Hungry Brain, speaks at
conferences, is a Senior Fellow at GiveWell and scientific
reviewer for the Examine.com Research
Digest.
He is definitely not a low carb person which is why I had him
on. He has a lot of great ideas and is a great mind in the space of
nutrition. It was very interesting to hear him talk about all the
great benefits he did see when he ate a low carb diet 11 years ago.
Make sure to listen until the end when he talks about this.
He has some problems with certain people and aspects of the low
carb community and is going on Joe Rogan’s podcast soon to debate
Gary Taubes on his views of the Carbohydrate Insulin theory of
obesity and sugar being uniquely toxic
We had some disagreement on the recommended daily allowance of
nutrients - he thinks what’s recommended is all you need and
getting more than that is pointless. I think this is wrong. I think
he’s basing it on studies of worthless, non-bioavailable vitamin C
pills that in excess do nothing. So in that - I agree. I don’t
think there’s any benefit to popping a bunch of these and think
we’re going to cure a cold. I do know that our ancestors got
estimates of 10-20 times the amount of nutrients we get today, so
there’s a lot more to this discussion that we didn’t have time to
get into.
We also disagreed on fiber which led to some carnivore talk. He
got some things wrong about the member of the Grateful Dead who was
a carnivore. He said he died at a young age of a heart attack. I
looked into it and it turns out he was carnivore for 48 years and
was in excellent health and died in a car accident at
72.
He also says we don’t have longterm studies on the safety of low
carb diets at the end. This isn’t exactly true and furthermore, we
have hundreds of thousands of years of human populations living on
low carb diets to prove its safety and efficacy. He additionally
mentions the low carb community makes crazy claims that aren’t
based on science. I’m not sure what he’s referring to. Not
everything can be measured anyway. If tens of thousands of people
report to their doctor they aren’t hungry anymore, their energy is
stable, their brain is working better, they aren’t addicted to
sugar, they finally have control of their food intake, etc. then
this is some great clinical observations and patient anecdotes that
add up to a lot.
I think everyone has their own ideas about things and collects
info to support their opinion. It’s only natural, and I’m sure I’m
doing it to, even though I’m trying not to. Everyone has to be in
their camp and collect data and narratives to support their
theories. He seemed to do this as you’ll see throughout the
episode.
I agreed with a lot of his points though, especially that humans
didn’t evolve to eat based on tracking macros and calories and
using an excel spreadsheet to figure out what to eat. He’s doing
great work and looking at this from a different angle which is
important. A lot of interesting stuff here so let’s get to it. But
first I gotta mention the Food Lies film which is in the last
stretch of crowdfunding on Indiegogo. We really need your help to
finish it. We have a bunch of cool perks like the Eat Meat T-shirt,
the movie poster, bonus features, and more. Find it through
FoodLies.org or by clicking
through this link in the show notes. I really appreciate it - and
now here’s Stephan Guyenet.
http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post
Show Notes
- I’m obsessed with why we get fat and what to do about it and
you’ve been researching this for a long time
- Why the brain is the most important place to focus on
- The brain regulates how much we eat, our food choices, and our
exercise
- There’s also non conscious processes the brain regulates that
influence caloric expenditure, etc.
- We also study the human genome to find how that plays a role in
body fatness
- When it comes to body weight, the genes that relate the most
are in the brain
- Nobody wants to overeat, but we end up doing it anyway
- We need to look at our past to understand why we are wired to
seek excess calories
- Animals and hunter gatherers we’ve studied follow the Optimum
Foraging Theory when they acquire food. It’s all about the calories
per the amount of effort
- Because we were eating whole foods from nature, if we got
enough calories, we by default we’re getting all the vitamins and
minerals needed
- They didn’t have white flour, sugar, or refined oils
- We only have receptors for fat, sugar, salt, and
glutamate
- Apparently those are the nutrients that natural selection cared
about most to create reward systems for
- The Hadza people went mainly for meat, tubers, and honey and
didn’t go for leafy greens
- The brain is motivated to pursue calorie containing foods, not
vitamins and minerals
- Combining bliss points make certain foods almost
irresistible
- You need to control your food environment
- Not only don’t have it sitting out so you can see certain
foods, don’t even have them in the house
- How do genetics play a role? We know it’s way more to do with
the type of foods eaten
- About 70% of people in countries like the US are genetically
susceptible to become obese when eating the bad diet that exists
there. The remaining percent just aren’t as susceptible and can get
away with it
- Energy balance while always be a fact, but there’s a lot more
to it
- Eat less, move more may work for some people, but it’s not how
we evolved. It’s not a natural way to regulate body weight
- You can set up a food environment to allow your body to
naturally eat the right amount
- You’d have to be hungry all the time to continue eating
processed foods and try to lose weight
- His definition and thoughts on nutrient density
- Questioning the necessity of fiber
- His views on the carnivore diet - he thinks a big factor is
becoming lean and it certainly does that
- He questions if there’s long term chronic disease problems that
we don’t know about
- Inuit seek some plant matter
- Sound engineer from the Grateful Dead who was carnivore for 48
years - Stephan said he died of a heart attack at a young age.
Turns out he was super healthy and died of a car accident at
72.
- His book https://justmeat.co/docs/the-bear.pdf
- They call him “Bear”
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/uncle_johns_ham_the_grateful_deads_all-meat_diet
- Wikipedia on him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley
- Stephan agrees with what I always say about going to either end
of the extreme with super low carb or super low fat you have great
benefits
- He’s going on Joe Rogan’s podcast to debate Gary Taubes on his
views of the Carbohydrate Insulin theory of obesity and sugar being
uniquely toxic
- What happened with Gary Taubes and Dr. Peter Attia’s non profit
venture NuSI - the Nutritional Science Initiative?
- What Stephan got wrong in his blog posts
- Why he thinks Gary Taubes is wrong and what is the
evidence
- He doesn’t like the fact that Gary is calling out
scientists
- Exercise and weight loss
- The model of obesity he subscribes to is that it’s all
regulated by the brain
- Homeostatic regulation - hypothalamus controls body fatness
like a thermostat
- The hormone leptin sends feedback to your brain regarding body
fat levels
- Personal fat threshold, how someone can be skinny on the
outside but fat on the inside, people can be obese but
metabolically healthy, and insulin as a dam holding back fat in the
cells
- He doesn’t think that eating an insulin lowering diet like low
carb allows you to lose weight because of the lowered insulin
- He thinks low carb diets and low fat diets work merely because
you’re taking away the extreme motivation to overeat the foods, AKA
hyperplatability
- Potato hack
- Metabolic flexibility
- He thinks being metabolically inflexible is more a sign of
insulin resistance than anything
- He eats about 50% carb, 18% protein, 32% fat
- He ate a low carb diet after reading Taubes’ book Good
Calories, Bad Calories 11 years ago
- He said it was about the same but one benefit was that he
wasn’t tied to meal times. Eating high carb he definitely knew when
it was time to eat. Easier to fast
- He was easily doing 24 hour fasts. Now on high carb it’s way
harder and he experiences brain fog
- Why are low carb diets so maligned in the mainstream media and
medical system?
- What are his solutions for fixing the nation’s health
problems?
- His book The Hungry Brain http://www.stephanguyenet.com/thehungrybrain/
- His website http://www.stephanguyenet.com
- His Twitter https://twitter.com/whsource
Preorder the film here: http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post
Film site: http://FoodLies.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FoodLies
Sapien Movement: http://SapienMovement.com
Follow along:
http://twitter.com/FoodLiesOrg
http://instagram.com/food.lies
http://facebook.com/FoodLiesOrg
Theme music by https://kylewardmusic.com/