The Meat Mafia Podcast

P1Cate
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Dr. Kate, welcome back to the meat mafia podcast. Excited to have you on. I know we have a lot to talk about, a lot to catch up on. So excited to dive in.

Speaker 2: Thank you, Harry. I'm excited to talk with you about what, uh, what you're thinking these days.

Speaker: So we were talking a little bit before the conversation. We have this office in the east side of Austin and our office is full of all these nutrition books, but I just want to make sure I give you a proper shout out because your book is that your deep nutrition book is actually in our office twice because it's so good.

So, um, Just wanted to thank you before we get going for all your incredible work that you've done with deep nutrition. And now I'm so excited to just dive into done with dark calories. Cause I think that there's so many different aspects to what you did with deep nutrition that you just want so much further on with dark calories.

So excited to dive in.

Speaker 2: Yes. Great. Uh, me too. I, uh, [00:01:00] I've been obsessed about this book for four years, so I'm glad to be able to finally talk about what's in it.

Speaker: So I think just as a place to start, so as someone who's, I remember like I was, At home back in Virginia a while back, and I was listening to Deep Nutrition on audiobook at like 1.

2 speed, and then I came back and read it, read the hard copy, and it's one of those books that I think had groundbreaking information in it at the time that it was released, and from there, you've now gone and written a second book, so I'm really curious what that leap looked like and why you felt so compelled to Really go an extra step in terms of the topics that you're talking about in dark calories with vegetable oils and seed oils.

Speaker 2: Well, with deep nutrition, I kind of focused on the big picture of what is nutrition and what isn't it, but I didn't really do the deep dive into how do these, um, toxins in our food supply affect us [00:02:00] and what are they? Um, like the, the profound, um, Amount of damage that they do. Um, I, I didn't just have the space to do that.

Um, I really wanted to get to the concept of like root causes too, of, um, disease. Like a lot of people talk about root causes and medicine kind of doesn't really give the concept enough, like deep thought. And they just kind of spew out, um, ideas, right? And so medicine comes up with a root causes, which are really risk factors.

Like the root cause of obesity, um, includes like not being, not exercising enough, right? Or, or genetics. Um, and, uh, the root cause of hypertension includes obesity and maybe, Some insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome kind of thing. So these are [00:03:00] just truly not root causes and they haven't really sorted it out at all.

And I thought it was just quite important to do that because actually ever since writing deep nutrition in the first place, um, I've been wanting to talk about root causes. I had my original edition of deep nutrition that came out in 2009. Had an index in the back, an appendix in the back that said the root cause of pretty much every disease.

Is, um, nutrient deficiency and toxicity and, um, that I wanted to put in the newer edition because I felt like it was just sort of a unifying principle because it helps people understand that, all right, if we want to get to the root cause of any random disease, asthma, well, how does nutrient deficiency and toxicity play a role in that so that we can help people with diet and what is a, you know, what is happening as a result of these things in ourselves?

[00:04:00] That leads to the inflammation, um, and, uh, you know, the, the, the role of oxidative stress. It's not emphasized in medicine, even though all diseases have their roots in oxidative stress, but that's not even a risk factor. It's not considered a risk factor,

Speaker 3: uh,

Speaker 2: if in modern medicine and preventative medicine and cutting edge medicine, even among, you know, the alternative folks that do a little bit better at getting to risk factors, they don't talk about oxidative stress as the single most important risk factor that, um, Appendix had to be removed.

Like my, my agent said, um, you know, that's another book does, let's not even bring that up. And so since that day that they said that I've been wanting to write this book, they felt it was really important. And I was like, well, good. Now I'm going to write a whole book about it because literally every single disease can be traced back to nutrient deficiency and toxicity.

Causing the state of [00:05:00] cellular imbalance called oxidative stress, which pathologists and people who study the root causes of diseases, see evidence of oxidative stress in every disease, cancer, dementia. Getting sunburns. I know that's a popular topic. Can you get, um, you know, gut health, right? Um, gut disease.

I mean, all of it comes down to nutrient deficiency, toxicity, causing oxidative stress, and the most important agent of oxidative stress in the food supply is the seed oils. Today, because that's what we're eating. So many of them. Um, and another thing that the other books didn't touch on was the sheer volume that we're eating, that we're getting 30 percent of our calories from the hateful eight seed oils.

And, uh, again, that's something that, uh, that modern medicine hasn't explored. They don't even really know what seed oils are or why they're, why they're [00:06:00] important to explore. So really dark calories is my attempt to fix modern medicine. So I'm glad you like it.

Speaker: Well, I, I can imagine people like Brett and myself are. Part of your target audience, but some of the people who will be most excited to just receive the book because it, it speaks to so many of the topics that we're passionate about. One of the things that you spoke on was this idea of chemical energy and the metabolism.

And I think this concept that, um, you know, metabolic dysfunction is Uh, it is quite misunderstood and you even mentioned like the medical communities don't really have The full picture, um, like clearly outlined in terms of like, why people are obese and in the book, [00:07:00] you had a, uh, several pages talking about how the World Health Organization has identified, uh, obesity as the number one health concern facing humanity.

Yet they still can't figure out what's causing it. And I think it's so interesting because if you look back 60 years ago, obesity wasn't even a problem. So you have to think something has happened in those 60 years. So, you know, I'm curious, how do you start to unpack this conversation with those medical professionals who, you know, can't really see what's, what's happening?

Speaker 2: Right. So, um, well, what, what, I don't have a perfect answer for it because it's not like I've done that and had massive success. I'm just gonna be honest, uh, you know, because it's, it's a big concept. People don't get it. A lot of times they're not even interested, uh, or it goes over their head, you know, and, but, uh, what I try to do, uh, is find some common ground that we, uh, that we can agree on.[00:08:00]

And sometimes I'll start with this. I'll just start with the fact that, you know, we hear that. We're eating more saturated fat, and that saturated fat is what correlates with heart attacks or obesity or you name it, we hear this, but when you look at the evidence. It turns out that is not true at all. And what we're actually eating more of are these vegetable oils that are high in polyunsaturated fats.

Do you think that's an issue? Right? And, and a lot of people don't even think that's an issue.

Speaker 4: They're just

Speaker 2: like, Oh, interesting. Like they just don't know what to do to think through that problem. So I'll help them. And I'll say, I think it means we've been lied to about fats. Right. So like, if I have sort of a Q and a kind of, um, more of an interactive discussion with folks, um, you know, then I try to get people like, at least on the same page about something like, [00:09:00] so if this is, if these statistics are that we've, you know, are true, uh, and, but we've heard the opposite.

Doesn't that mean we're being lied to?

Speaker 3: Um,

Speaker 2: and then isn't that kind of important since this is the bedrock of our, uh, preventative medicine, cardiology, uh, our attempts to help people reverse metabolic diseases? Um, and, and people will be like, yeah, that's kind of important. Yeah. And, you know, some, a portion of people will, Have like what I think is the appropriate amount of curiosity and slash outrage because it is outrageous, but you know, disappointingly a little bit.

Some people have like these other paradigms that they believe in and this clashes with that paradigm and instead of it. Yeah. diving down into, okay, which is the next conversation, which is, well, what is the root cause here? Like, why, why does this matter? Well, it matters because does it pertain to the root cause of disease?

And they won't come [00:10:00] down there with me. They'll just be like, well, everything in moderation or, you know, they'll, they'll kind of glom onto something they already believe it's too big of a leap, too much of a lesson for a lot of doctors. And, um, You know, but not all of them, right? So some of them will get curious enough and I'll actually read a book and then I'll hear back from them and they'll be like, wow, this is, you know, mind blowing and very important.

And can you, um, give a talk to my medical group or something like that? But, um, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, such a disconnect. You know, and we're just not wired at this age where, you know, 30, 40, 50, where we've spent so many years invested in one belief system, saturated fat is bad, cholesterol is bad, um, risk factors are what causes disease.

Let's not think about it in any deeper level than that. It's just a little kind of late for a lot of folks. Like [00:11:00] I've talked to some really smart people, um, who've written really important books and they're like, wow, this seems really important, but I, I can't really understand it. I feel like I'm just too old.

And I'm like, just read it again. Then I read your book, man.

But, uh, yeah. So there's like just the lack of lack of caring in some ways, I think.

Speaker: Yeah. It's really easy to get coaxed into the, um, legacy paradigm that is prevailing today. Uh, I just, A lot of people just don't really question what's going on. They just go on. And I really appreciate your first principles approach to actually unpacking this issue, because clearly we're missing something.

If. metabolic dysfunction and obesity is driving all of these different negative health outcomes, but these things didn't exist a while back. So I'm curious to get your take on the origins [00:12:00] of vegetable oils. And when did these start to creep into the food supply and what did we start to see change after they started to become more pervasive?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So, well, with the first principles, so that the root cause is oxidative stress and vegetable oils promote oxidative stress by two means, right? They are both capable of generating toxicity. Um, and we see, uh, you know, rates of diseases correlating with their introduction into the food supply starting in the early 1900s.

And we see rates of diseases accelerating, um, as They increased in the food supply. Um, and they, uh, really kind of took off in the 1950s and there was another big increase, um, since the year 2000 and they're promoting oxidative stress by causing, uh, cellular toxicity and, um, they are nutrient poor. So both of those things make it very difficult for ourselves to be healthy.

And. Like the [00:13:00] first principle that I talk about in chapter two of dark calories is that health begins at the level of the cell. And it's a first first principle kind of means something that it's really hard to argue against, like it's it's it's something that is already well established or should be well established depending on the state of the science with medical science.

It's it's. Not well established, but it should be, I think it, you know, eventually would stand up to the test of time because it's a common sense if you are, if you have only healthy cells, all the cells in your body are healthy, you're not going to get sick. You could get an infection, but you're going to fight it off as well as you can.

You can get squashed by a piano. If you're a wily coyote running around Southwest, um, that would be the end view. But, uh, but, um, you know, there's still, you can still die. But it's not going to be a chronic disease. So, chronic disease can't happen when you have [00:14:00] fully healthy cells. On the other hand, if your cells are always experiencing oxidative stress, then you can't be healthy.

And some sort of disease is inevitable. So how does this tie us now, how does this take us to becoming overweight? Well, that was a question that, um, I didn't really have an answer to until I saw two very important and fascinating pieces of evidence and started thinking about those and sort of putting like a hypothesis together.

So one, one piece of evidence, um, well, obviously we are eating more vegetable oils now. I think I covered that right at the beginning of the, of the 1900s. We got maybe three calories a day because they basically didn't exist in the food supply. And now we're getting 400, 500, 600 calories a day on average in America.

Yeah. Three ounces, you know, um, 80 percent of our fat calories, 30 percent of our total [00:15:00] calories that equates to around, you know, four or five, six, 700, depending on how many calories you're getting. Um, and so that's a big difference, right? So these things, first of all, they correlate. with health problems.

And, uh, that doesn't mean they are causational, but it does, if there is no correlation, you can't have a causation. Um, and I want to return to that idea, but because of some things that are in the conversation right now about, um, sugar, which we've actually started eating less of in the past 20 years yet, we've been getting more obese.

So, so, uh, so that's, so I guess I'll just dive into right now, like of all the common food elements. The ones that correlate the best are the most likely suspects for actually being playing a more important role in the OPC and metabolic disease epidemics. the ones that correlate best, right? So, so saturated fat, butter, zero correlation, not a problem.

Salt, that's [00:16:00] often, you know, blamed for lots of diseases, hypertension, um, but we aren't truly eating significantly more salt than ever before. Uh, we'll, We are eating significantly more of these vegetable oils. Um, we're, however, we are not really eating a lot more, uh, sugar and carbohydrates since the year 2000, right?

Um, since the year 2000, our consumption of fructose has declined something like 60%. So very significant and our total, um, sugar added sugar consumption has declined a little bit. Uh, something like, uh, I think it's between three and 10%. And similar declines in our total carbohydrates, I think, thanks in part to all the popularity of the keto diets and high protein diets and, you know, those, uh, the carnivore diet, stuff like that, so making, it's making a dent in the carbohydrate consumption, yet, not yet a dent, in In our health, we are still having the same acceleration, really worse year over year, more obesity, more heart [00:17:00] attacks, cancers developing in younger people.

So the correlate, the thing that correlates best is vegetable oils. And since you could say, and I would argue that because carbohydrates don't correlate with what's 20 years, they should be not, they should be considered a lesser factor. If a factor at all, well, certainly there's some factor there, but, um, but a lesser factor.

So, so that is the, the sort of like the basic, um, common sense, numerical graphical data level of analysis that hasn't been done. I just, I haven't really seen too many other people pick up on that.

Speaker 3: Um,

Speaker 2: I, you know, I published a graph similar to that in my 2017 book, the fat burn fix. I've seen a couple other people publish similar things since then, but certainly it's not catching on in medicine and it's not really catching on in the keto community because they haven't noticed that the [00:18:00] carbohydrate consumption is level or, or heading down.

Um, so, so we, so that's that first layer of evidentiary like value. Okay. But getting back to the first principles, um, the, um, the root cause of the, the metabolic disease. So one of the studies that really helped me understand what's going on came from Dr. Stefan Guyana, who published an article somewhere around 2011 on his blog first.

And, um, he showed that polyunsaturated fats in human body fat have increased. Significantly since we started collecting that sort of data, um, in a reliable way, which was like the 19 fifties and sixties back then. And does that does that like resonate [00:19:00] with anybody? So I kind of define that. What is that?

That totally come from seed oils.

Speaker: Yeah. So the poly, I think it would be a good, good point to just point out that polyunsaturated fat, linoleic acid, like this is what's found in seed oils. And you're saying over the past several decades, we've seen a rise in actually human fat that's in our cells, um, as it relates to these polyunsaturated fats.

Speaker 2: Correct. In our fat cells, in our fat cells under our skin, right? And so this is being visceral fat.

Speaker: This is being stored in our fat and it stays, I think the research says it stays in our bodies for something like 350 days or something like that. The half life, half life of linoleic acid is like about 350 days, which.

Yeah.

Speaker 2: So the half life, I don't believe we have specific for linoleic acid data, and it might be less for, um, the polyunsaturates, all the polyunsaturates, [00:20:00] but the half life for just triglyceride fat, uh, is what I believe was measured. And, um, that is on the order of exactly what you said. And, uh, that means, you know, you need about three half lives to clear something out more or less.

So it would take three, four years to clear it all out. Um, so. But yeah, so what that means is that our diets have changed the composition of our body fat because of these seed oils. And I have to emphasize that yes, linoleic acid is the dominant one, but it's not the most problematic. So thank God it's not the other way around where we have more omega three fat that our problems would be worse.

And I talk about that in, um, chapter one of dark calories where I talk about, um, why omega 3 is actually less stable and, um, you know, the solution to our imbalance is not eating more omega 3 by far. And [00:21:00] both of them are toxic and linoleic acid is not as toxic as, as the, um, omega three in terms of oxidative stress.

So for this discussion, I want to focus on polyunsaturates and not just linoleic acid.

Speaker 3: Um,

Speaker 2: yeah. So, um, so all that polyunsaturated fat in our body fat has been building up. Okay. So that was one piece of data. This graph that shows that back around 1950s. Pufa in our body fat. Pufa stands for polyunsaturated fats.

Um, Pufa in our body fat was around 5 to 10%. And at the end of Stephen Guarani's data collection period in around 20, 2005, um, it was, It's somewhere between 20 and 30%. Like there was a range depending on what people ate, but a significantly higher. That is a significant change to the chemical composition of the largest organ in our body.

And again, the obesity experts. Don't know this. They're not mentioning it. [00:22:00] Nothing. Not a word mentioned about vegetable oil in any of the obesity conferences that I've either attended or looked over the syllabi for nothing. Not a word. Um, so, so that means there's something very different about our body fat right now.

And long story short, I'm just going to jump to the chase here. What it is is we can build body fat, but because our body fat now has so much PUFA, it's going It doesn't generate energy properly. It's not a good fuel for our mitochondria and our mitochondria are the agents of metabolic health or metabolic disease.

Cause they generate energy and energy is necessary to, uh, life and, um, Metabolic health comes down to being able to generate energy, lean energy, without generating oxidative stress, which causes inflammation. So our body [00:23:00] fat now generates oxidative stress and inflammation, and we can, we can build it like normal, but when we try to burn it, Our cells will experience more oxidative stress and inflammation.

Speaker: Wow. So even if someone's starting to make dietary changes where they're eating seed oils and vegetable oils from their diet, they're going to have, in theory, based on this empirical data, Higher levels of poofers stored in their fat cells. So they still might be going through a period of like a, I almost don't even want to say detox, but as their body is, you know, burning off that fat that was stored and then, um, you know, in theory, not not eating any more vegetable oils.

They're still going through a process of oxidative stress as that that is burning off.

Speaker 2: Somewhat. Yes. And so that is why I think rapid weight [00:24:00] loss, um, really sets people up for problems because they're forcing their bodies to use more of this body fat than their body naturally would do if they weren't kind of suppressing their appetite with those MPIC or something like that.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and that's causing cellular damage. And I think. I think we're going to end up seeing a backlash from all these folks who are taking Ozempic and losing weight, um, but not paying attention to vegetable oils, not fortifying their bodies against the onslaught of oxidative stress, which you kind of need to do.

And I talk about how to do that in dark calories. Um, they're, but they're not doing that. They're just, they're not doing that. Losing weight, any old eating, any old thing that they want most of 'em. And I think in about five, 10 years we're going to unfortunately see an epidemic, a new epidemic of strange diseases, autoimmune diseases, perhaps cancers, um, [00:25:00] uh, don't know what, but I don't think it's going to be good, um, because it's dangerous to be forcing people to burn off that body fat.

Speaker: So in your book, you mentioned that you had a lot of discussions with toxicologists and, um, people who specialize in understanding gene, uh, human genes. And I'm curious what their perspective is on seed oils. Like, how do they approach this conversation? What stands out to them when they look at PUFAs and how our body is Um, really interacting with these, these chemicals in a way that we really aren't used to.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So, um, they have fragmented pieces of the picture and some of them are not even particularly scientific about it. So, um, I spoke to a gentleman who was 82 and retired and, uh, we talked about peanut oil, just like, you know, is, is peanut oil different than the other members of what I call the hateful [00:26:00] eight?

Cause this is what I needed to know in order to make my list. Um, and, uh, and he said, yes, indeed, peanut oil is very different. It's, it's much more stable. You don't need to do all the cleanup. It's a better, it's basically more stable to oxidation and, um, uh, has to do with breeding antioxidants. So on and so forth.

And, um, then I asked him a tough question. I said, cause he seemed really like knowledgeable, but also opinionated. Right. And when I say knowledgeable, I guess, I mean, like. He can answer questions. Um, and I'm going to contrast this with someone else that I spoke to also in the industry. Um, but yeah, he said that, um, I asked about trans fat.

I said, do you think it's been a mistake to remove trans fat and replace it with liquid vegetable oils? And he said, absolutely. Because, um, you know, those are, Those are oxidatively unstable. They will generate toxins and we'll be eating more toxic stuff. That's why we, that's why food scientists invented trans fat in the [00:27:00] first place was because liquid vegetable oils are not really suitable for the fryer.

Um, but because of the trans fat ban, thanks to places like Harvard and other doctors who don't understand the food supply whatsoever, uh, you know, that we've replaced something that was mildly toxic, but at least stable. And didn't deteriorate into aldehydes and, um, acrolein and 4 hydroxynonanol. Trans fat is much more stable.

Trans fat has mild toxicity. But it, it's less, far less of a serious toxin, um, than the carcinogens that I just listed, which are cancer causing, massively oxidative stress inducing agents. So he agreed, yeah, that was a bad move. And, um, You know, of course, it wasn't his call to make he's not a doctor. He's not in the American Heart Association.

He doesn't make the guidelines. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I asked him if he would even let me [00:28:00] quote him on that. And, um, I still have to write. Exactly the article I want to write about that so he can review it. But the other, but here's the thing, he doesn't know about the fact that these things build up in our body fat, right?

He doesn't know how much we've been eating necessarily compared to what we did 100 years ago. He doesn't know how they affect our mitochondria. He could guess. But he doesn't really know because it's not part of his job to study that. Right. So I found in talking to these experts that they had their area of expertise and some of them were better than others.

Some of them were not even experts in their area. And I think should be fired from their jobs because they couldn't even answer straightforward questions.

Speaker 3: Um,

Speaker 2: and, um, but none of them, they weren't like able to collaborate. With doctors or anybody in the health professions, clinical nutritionists, they were never invited into the room [00:29:00] and their field of science is so fundamental to clinical nutrition and preventative medicine that without them, medical science has stalled.

And, and, you know, like that's why I wrote chapter two, because I'm like, it's not that complicated. You just got to get, you know, ideas from people who understand these different pieces of the puzzle. And then you can start making a lot of sense from your living room in Florida. You know, you don't have to be in some think tank in Washington.

You just need the. Some of the facts put together and you need to care enough to think about it for a while and try to make some sense about it.

Speaker: It's such a good point. And. I can't help but think that the system in general is forcing people into specialization for and for someone like yourself. You're really able to see the full picture, but it's not surprising to me that [00:30:00] so many doctors are missing.

This is this key piece of why. People are running into metabolic dysfunction and chronic disease, seemingly like on repeat, like it's only getting worse. So I think being able to tie these pieces together is really critical. And it does seem like there is a lot of momentum behind this movement of no seed oils, but still, you know, your first book was published in 2009, you said, and we're still, you know, having this conversation.

So it's, It's still seems early,