00:00:00
after 16 years as an earth scientist i
00:00:03
went to work for this guy
00:00:04
we were pushing for the internet to go
00:00:06
public and i think every scientist like
00:00:08
me
00:00:08
thought that would be the biggest boost
00:00:10
for spreading scientific knowledge
00:00:12
ever it's so funny to look back now and
00:00:14
wonder what we were thinking
00:00:16
turns out scientists are very good at
00:00:17
coming up with magical things
00:00:19
but not so good at predicting human
00:00:21
behavior if you had told me that
00:00:23
millions of men would flock to a
00:00:25
three-hour interview with biochemical
00:00:26
lingo
00:00:27
and there are other molecules like this
00:00:28
that are also found in these type of
00:00:30
foods the brassica family of foods
00:00:32
things like goitrin or allyl
00:00:34
isothiocyanate they're all
00:00:35
isothiocyanates
00:00:36
and would shun real sinus who have
00:00:38
simple charts and compelling data
00:00:40
but we're looking at a range of protein
00:00:43
concentrations in the food
00:00:44
to see what happens i would have thought
00:00:47
you were trolling me
00:00:48
but one thing i have learned is that if
00:00:50
you can craft a good story around meat
00:00:52
and butter
00:00:53
being healthy even if you have no
00:00:54
science you can get some serious
00:00:57
traction one of the first books on the
00:00:59
scene like that is still the reigning
00:01:00
champion with more than
00:01:01
15 million copies sold several friends
00:01:04
asked me about the carnivore diet
00:01:06
episode on joe rogan's podcast that
00:01:08
featured paul saladino
00:01:10
here's the thing paul looks like he
00:01:11
could be will bolsowitz's brother
00:01:14
both are good-looking 40-something
00:01:16
doctors with great physiques who publish
00:01:18
best-selling books
00:01:19
with completely opposing messages will
00:01:22
is all about
00:01:22
plant-heavy diets like the mediterranean
00:01:24
or whole plant vegan
00:01:26
whereas paul is all meat all the time
00:01:28
how's a consumer with no scientific or
00:01:30
medical background to figure out who got
00:01:32
it right
00:01:33
both are great guys who believe they're
00:01:35
on missions to improve the world
00:01:36
but their messages are so opposite
00:01:38
there's no room for both to be right
00:01:41
or is the answer no one knows so just
00:01:43
eat to feel good
00:01:44
paul got 10 times the views on youtube
00:01:46
in his interview with joe rogan
00:01:48
than will did in his interview with rich
00:01:50
roll but i think i can show very simply
00:01:52
without confusing biochemistry that will
00:01:54
has 10x the credible science on his side
00:01:57
bold claim let's go joe and paul opened
00:02:00
with this idea
00:02:01
as a talking point that i actually stole
00:02:03
from you is that
00:02:05
most plants are inedible but almost all
00:02:09
animals are edible that's true and not
00:02:12
just for humans but for any plant-eating
00:02:14
animal like a cow a horse or a monkey
00:02:16
does that mean they're better off eating
00:02:18
meat that experiment has been done
00:02:20
carefully and published perhaps a
00:02:21
thousand times on various animals like
00:02:23
rabbits and pigeons and monkeys and pigs
00:02:26
you name it
00:02:27
it doesn't take much for their arteries
00:02:28
to close up like it did with these
00:02:30
monkeys
00:02:30
which became totally blocked when 40 of
00:02:33
their calories in this case
00:02:34
came from egg yolks once they went back
00:02:36
to eating predominantly plants their
00:02:38
arteries open back up like this
00:02:40
that only works for herbivores and
00:02:42
omnivores you can't give a lion heart
00:02:44
disease with meat
00:02:45
but guess whose arteries clog up if you
00:02:47
give them a fair amount of meat
00:02:49
humans clogged arteries are the leading
00:02:51
cause of death in america
00:02:53
and now we know from doing mri scans on
00:02:55
prehistoric humans
00:02:57
those that ate much meat got it too
00:02:59
here's otzi the iceman from 5300 years
00:03:02
ago who had wild ibex meat in his
00:03:04
stomach and had very advanced heart
00:03:05
disease
00:03:06
same with inuits who lived 500 years ago
00:03:08
in greenland
00:03:10
i remember there was a story about a guy
00:03:12
in a nursing home
00:03:13
and he had went out and picked mushrooms
00:03:16
for the people the nurses come and cook
00:03:17
them up
00:03:18
and they all died are we really going to
00:03:20
focus on death by mushroom in the middle
00:03:22
of a pandemic that's killed a million
00:03:24
and a half people so far
00:03:26
it's not the plants that send out
00:03:27
viruses to get us
00:03:29
it's the animals we raise to eat the
00:03:31
overwhelming incidence of food poisoning
00:03:33
that emergency room doctors see
00:03:35
comes from bacteria like salmonella
00:03:38
which originates in animals
00:03:39
so i think that's -5 science points for
00:03:42
paul and joe for insane logic
00:03:44
with no data the premise of the
00:03:46
carnivore code is returning to our
00:03:48
ancestral diet
00:03:49
it's on the cover of the book and the
00:03:51
early part of the book is devoted to it
00:03:52
quite fascinating here's the thing
00:03:55
people who devote their lives to
00:03:57
studying the evolution of men
00:03:58
say the idea of a paleo diet is a myth
00:04:01
people ate completely different diets
00:04:03
depending on where they live
00:04:04
just as modern humans do today for
00:04:06
example
00:04:07
aborigines in australia love grubs
00:04:15
[Music]
00:04:23
does that make them good for us maybe
00:04:24
pick up a bag at amazon and see if your
00:04:26
blood work improves
00:04:28
they make a unique snack around the
00:04:29
office to impress your co-workers
00:04:31
aborigines like most ancient humans dug
00:04:34
up a lot of fibrous roots to eat
00:04:35
the digging stick has been used by
00:04:37
australian aborigines for thousands of
00:04:39
years
00:04:40
it was of particular importance to
00:04:42
aboriginal women
00:04:43
as it was their primary means of digging
00:04:45
up roots and tubers
00:04:46
which was the mainstay of their diet
00:04:48
what separates the carnivore diet from
00:04:50
every meat-heavy diet before it is
00:04:52
paul's belief that any amount of plants
00:04:54
is toxic to humans i'm trying to show
00:04:57
respect but let me read you a passage
00:04:58
from his book
00:05:00
and let you judge for yourself as an
00:05:02
aside the whole premise that molecules
00:05:04
that independently evolved in plants
00:05:07
would somehow be beneficial in humans
00:05:09
sounds a bit far-fetched to me
00:05:11
it would be highly unlikely for one
00:05:13
molecule let alone
00:05:14
thousands of molecules produced during
00:05:16
plant evolution to truly be beneficial
00:05:18
in humans after our evolutionary path
00:05:20
diverged from theirs 1.5 billion years
00:05:23
ago when we were little more than a
00:05:24
single cell
00:05:25
blob imagine the odds against this
00:05:27
exclamation point
00:05:30
i'm sorry for face palming but he really
00:05:31
wrote that honestly i think most high
00:05:33
school biology teachers would give -10
00:05:36
science points for that because
00:05:37
co-evolution of plants in animals is key
00:05:39
to the world's ecosystems
00:05:41
charles darwin wrote about that in 1859
00:05:44
in origin of species
00:05:46
this is why i recommend listening to
00:05:47
actual evolutionary biologists
00:05:49
not paul i'm an archaeological scientist
00:05:52
and i study the health and dietary
00:05:55
histories of ancient peoples
00:05:56
using bone biochemistry and ancient dna
00:05:59
so people who live in places where there
00:06:01
are no plants tend
00:06:02
to eat more animals and people who live
00:06:04
in places where there are plants tend to
00:06:05
eat more plants
00:06:06
the big question is does it matter we
00:06:08
don't eat grubs and lizards anymore we
00:06:10
eat what we forage in safeway
00:06:12
isn't the most important thing which
00:06:14
modern foods make modern humans with
00:06:16
modern lifestyles slim
00:06:17
vibrant and healthy trying to figure
00:06:20
that out from ancient fossil records is
00:06:22
like extreme csi
00:06:23
but now we have all the things blood
00:06:25
tests mri scans and death records
00:06:28
and that brings up epidemiology a field
00:06:30
of science most of us revere when it
00:06:31
comes to infectious diseases like covet
00:06:34
19 and tracing its spread
00:06:35
epidemiology is what helped us unravel
00:06:38
the health effects of smoking this is
00:06:40
where will has a huge advantage because
00:06:41
he got a master's degree in epidemiology
00:06:44
on his way to med school
00:06:45
and has co-authored 21 scientific papers
00:06:47
plus 10 science points for will
00:06:49
if you trust epidemiology which joe and
00:06:52
paul don't and will
00:06:53
does then you believe the world's
00:06:54
healthiest people eat plant-dominated
00:06:56
diets
00:06:57
so why would epidemiology be so trusted
00:07:00
by consumers in infectious disease
00:07:02
but not by the same consumers in
00:07:03
nutrition oh i know the answer to that
00:07:06
one because i lived it in earth
00:07:07
science in 1988 when acclaimed
00:07:10
astrophysicist
00:07:11
james hansen head of nasa's institute
00:07:14
for space studies
00:07:15
testified before congress about global
00:07:17
warming gentlemen thank you very much
00:07:19
for being here dr hansen if you'd start
00:07:21
us off we'd appreciate it
00:07:22
and then george h.w bush embraced it
00:07:24
those who think we're powerless to do
00:07:26
anything about this greenhouse effect
00:07:28
are forgetting about the white house
00:07:30
effect scientists thought at long last
00:07:33
the science has become so clear and
00:07:35
obvious this would become like sciences
00:07:36
increasing progress against smoking we
00:07:39
knew the coal and oil companies were
00:07:40
coming for us like the tobacco companies
00:07:42
were doing but we had no idea
00:07:44
they could successfully shake the faith
00:07:45
and science of so many americans
00:07:48
and disrupt the careers of great
00:07:50
scientists i've been arrested i think
00:07:52
four times 32 years later it looks like
00:07:56
dr hansen's models were incredibly
00:07:58
accurate and science will end up on the
00:08:00
right side of history as it usually does
00:08:02
hopefully not tragically late
00:08:03
back to food since all credible
00:08:05
epidemiology points to plant dominant
00:08:07
diets being the best for health and
00:08:09
long-term weight loss
00:08:10
the only thing for the beef dairy and
00:08:12
egg councils to do
00:08:14
was to discredit the science they're the
00:08:16
masters of it
00:08:17
they were judged convicted
00:08:23
and put away for a long long time but
00:08:26
now
00:08:27
new evidence shows it was a bad rap eggs
00:08:30
contained 22 percent
00:08:31
less cholesterol than previously thought
00:08:33
all right let the eggs go
00:08:37
which is why the american heart
00:08:39
association has increased its weekly egg
00:08:41
yolk allowance for healthy people from
00:08:42
three to four
00:08:44
california fresh eggs give them a break
00:08:46
why do i mention epidemiology
00:08:48
because it's long term even if you smoke
00:08:51
it probably takes 20 years to have major
00:08:53
impact
00:08:54
paul has been on the carnivore diet for
00:08:56
two years he came to it as a
00:08:58
psychiatrist
00:08:59
who listened to the joe rogan interview
00:09:01
with jordan peterson a psychologist
00:09:03
how many times have clinical trials
00:09:05
indicated the short-term
00:09:06
safety of things like artificial
00:09:08
sweeteners only to find out 20 years
00:09:10
later they weren't safe at all
00:09:12
but blood tests are a good short-term
00:09:13
snapshot of health
00:09:15
so a great question is what are the
00:09:16
blood tests of carnivores what's paul's
00:09:18
what would happen if you went to a
00:09:19
cardiologist they would fall out of
00:09:21
their chair when they saw my lipids they
00:09:22
would say that is it
00:09:23
my most recent ldl was very high it was
00:09:27
533 milligrams per deciliter
00:09:30
i went to the mayo clinic's heart attack
00:09:32
risk calculator and tried to input
00:09:34
paul's numbers
00:09:35
it's based on an enormous database we
00:09:37
have accumulated in america of risk
00:09:39
factors
00:09:40
it even asks how many servings of fruit
00:09:42
and vegetables you eat because the data
00:09:43
shows that reduces risk
00:09:45
and how many servings of meat because
00:09:47
the data shows that increases it
00:09:49
it also wants to know your blood
00:09:50
pressure weight how much you exercise
00:09:52
and whether you've ever smoked
00:09:54
but paul's number blew up the calculator
00:09:57
because it wouldn't take total
00:09:58
cholesterol higher than 350
00:10:00
and his is nearly twice that so i looked
00:10:03
for other carnivore blood tests
00:10:06
here's a 28 day challenge where joe a
00:10:08
nine-month
00:10:09
high meat eater went vegan for 28 days
00:10:12
and
00:10:12
chase a 10-year vegan went high meat for
00:10:15
28.
00:10:16
four doctors who are on various diets
00:10:18
themselves commented on the blood work
00:10:20
where the key numbers went like this
00:10:22
ldl cholesterol in the vegan more than
00:10:24
doubled to the high risk category and
00:10:26
the high meat eaters dropped in half
00:10:28
to the low risk category insulin dropped
00:10:30
while eating vegan and
00:10:32
increased while eating carnivore igf-1
00:10:34
which is linked to a risk of cancer
00:10:36
dropped while eating vegan and increased
00:10:38
while eating carnivore
00:10:39
c-reactive protein which is a measure of
00:10:41
inflammation dropped dramatically when
00:10:43
the carnivore went to vegan although
00:10:45
that number bounces around a little bit
00:10:46
it's high after you run a half marathon
00:10:48
for example
00:10:49
i'll put links in the description to the
00:10:51
pretty informative and entertaining live
00:10:53
stream
00:10:54
where joe and chase get revealed their
00:10:55
blood tests in real time
00:10:57
it was far from a well-controlled
00:10:58
scientific test but the only person that
00:11:00
seemed to really surprise was the
00:11:02
carnivore doctor
00:11:03
who said these guys must not be eating
00:11:05
nose to tail too many muscle meats not
00:11:07
enough organ meats
00:11:08
they didn't identify who the doctor was
00:11:10
who made those comments but it sure
00:11:11
sounded like paul the joe rogan paul
00:11:13
saladino episode got millions of views
00:11:16
although i think it's unlikely that any
00:11:17
came from doctors or scientists
00:11:19
the guys who switched diets got a few
00:11:21
hundred thousand views across several
00:11:22
youtube channels and it was interesting
00:11:24
because
00:11:25
data but we do have massive data
00:11:27
carefully collected
00:11:28
by real scientists most people have
00:11:30
vaguely heard of the framingham study
00:11:32
where we have a million blood samples
00:11:34
collected over 70 years and rooms
00:11:37
full of medical records from 15 000
00:11:39
participants
00:11:40
almost every part of the body that could
00:11:43
be
00:11:44
imaged measured or tested flemingham has
00:11:47
done that
00:11:48
it doesn't get the youtube views but
00:11:49
it's massively respected among
00:11:51
cardiologists and scientists
00:11:53
and the conclusions are ever so clear
00:11:55
high blood pressure
00:11:57
smoking high cholesterol when joe asked
00:12:00
paul about his high numbers paul went
00:12:02
into science denial mode using word
00:12:04
salad with technical terms which seemed
00:12:06
to really impress
00:12:07
joe and then you start to look at people
00:12:09
outside the norm like yourself
00:12:11
and you go okay this guy has spent so
00:12:14
much
00:12:14
time thinking about this stuff maybe
00:12:16
he's got some insight that other people
00:12:18
have not acquired
00:12:19
actually paul's only been thinking about
00:12:21
it for a few years and hasn't been
00:12:22
involved in any scientific studies
00:12:24
but thankfully we have national
00:12:26
treasures like jeremiah stamler who's
00:12:28
still
00:12:28
massively respected at age 100 and still
00:12:30
actively doing heart disease research
00:12:32
funded by the nih
00:12:34
after doing 800 publications dr stamler
00:12:37
helped scare
00:12:38
the beef industry into major science
00:12:39
denial mode way back in 1969 with
00:12:42
comments like this
00:12:43
i would underline the fact that the
00:12:46
distribution of serum cholesterol in the
00:12:48
population
00:12:49
the mean levels the rates of
00:12:51
hypercholesterolemia
00:12:53
differ markedly among these countries
00:12:55
and along with that
00:12:57
the coronary rates differ and only diet
00:13:00
can explain
00:13:01
these differences how about this 80
00:13:03
something olympic gold medalist in
00:13:04
rowing bronze star
00:13:06
surgeon from vietnam distinguished
00:13:08
scientist and surgeon at the cleveland
00:13:09
clinic
00:13:10
who fixed bill clinton's heart disease
00:13:12
and weight problems without surgery
00:13:14
here's how you explain things without
00:13:15
technical word salad
00:13:17
coronary artery disease is the leading
00:13:20
killer of women and men
00:13:22
in western civilization
00:13:25
and yet the truth be known it is nothing
00:13:27
more than a toothless paper tiger that
00:13:29
need never exist
00:13:30
and if it does exist it need never ever
00:13:32
progress
00:13:33
this is a foodborne illness but chris
00:13:36
how about just eating until you feel
00:13:38
good
00:13:38
isn't that the ultimate in common sense
00:13:40
paul and joe mentioned that a lot
00:13:42
this is where i have to give plus 10
00:13:44
science points to will
00:13:45
who makes his living looking inside you
00:13:47
with a colonoscope
00:13:49
how many people do we know who looked
00:13:50
and felt fantastic just before getting a
00:13:53
heart attack
00:13:54
ulcerative colitis or colon cancer for
00:13:56
example in a
00:13:57
patient just this past week i had a
00:14:00
patient who was
00:14:02
he was 50 and i found a huge power
00:14:05
so his colonoscopy saved his life
00:14:07
because if he never had a colonoscopy
00:14:08
you would have had colon cancer
00:14:09
and what does he say about risk factors
00:14:11
for colon cancer
00:14:12
every 10 grams of fiber that you consume
00:14:16
gives you eight to ten percent reduced
00:14:18
risk
00:14:19
of developing colorectal cancer that
00:14:21
doesn't mean unfortunately that you can
00:14:22
eat 100 grams of fiber
00:14:24
and reduce your risk to zero but what it
00:14:27
does mean is that a high fiber diet is
00:14:29
to our benefit
00:14:30
and here we are in the united states and
00:14:31
the average person is only getting 15
00:14:32
grams of fiber
00:14:34
per day which is minuscule it's nothing
00:14:37
finally i know some of you wonder about
00:14:39
the planet and paul is well known for
00:14:41
headlines like this
00:14:45
you know as someone who has spent 16
00:14:48
years as an earth scientist
00:14:49
i feel pretty confident in saying i
00:14:51
think this spry 93 year old
00:14:53
is a better authority to listen to
00:14:55
whenever we choose a piece of meat
00:14:57
we too are unwittingly demanding a huge
00:15:01
expanse of space
00:15:04
the planet can't support billions of
00:15:08
large meat eaters
00:15:10
that was a really hard episode for me so
00:15:13
much science denial on topics that
00:15:14
matter so much
00:15:16
it's hard on the soul but the good news
00:15:18
is the science is really clear that
00:15:19
eating a plant-predominant diet is the
00:15:21
best thing we could do for our health
00:15:22
and the planet
00:15:24
i hope this was helpful and thanks so
00:15:25
much for watching
