Episode 172: Dispelling The Myths Of Fiber Cholesterol and Saturated Fats with Dr. Zoe Harcombe

The purpose of eating is that we need essential nutrients, we need fats and proteins and vitamins and minerals. So, resumably, the body has developed a really good way of stripping out the nutrients that we need and then packaging them on to kind of microns and various other systems in the body to transport them around to where they're needed. So, I would kind of think if something is in my system longer it's because it's providing more nutrition and the body is taking the time to make sure it gets all the goodness out of it. So, if my apple is going to shoot through in two hours, that's because it didn't really have very much. It was 95% water. The rest is sugar. There's a bit of vitamin C, there's actually more vitamin C in liver but don't let that upset your plant-based ideology. You four are joining me on another episode of the Plant Free MD. I'm your host, Dr Anthony Chafee and today I have a very special guest, Zoe Harpon, who I've been looking forward to speaking with for quite some time. Now, she's done quite a lot of talks and rounds in the low-carb space and even has her own diet, the Harpon diet and has her own YouTube channel, which I encourage everyone to look at as well. Zoe, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for joining me. So, if I looked a bit distracted, I was just trying to click on the, yeah, I'm good that we're recording and my hubby's mouse was upside down. She had those micro-feesh that you used to look at and you had to put them in. It was kind of like that. So we're all good now. Yeah. Oh, good. So, Zoe, for those of our listeners who don't know who you are, can you please tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah. Okay, I kind of have had two careers. So I went to Cambridge University, I then did what my mum would call sort of a normal job, proper job, did some management consultancy, got the opportunity to travel extensively, worked for Mars. So I've worked for Big Food, I've worked for Smith-Kine Beach and so I've worked for Big Farmer and ended up as a HR director at sort of management team level. So I've always been really interested in what motivates people, why people do what they do. And then, of course, the world's kind of almost financially collapsed in 2008 and a number of people in the corporate world got the opportunity to leave and do something else and I just thought, you know, what I'm going to see if I can make what I really enjoy my vocation as well as my passions. So I left started trying to do more in the field of diet and health. I'd already written three books by this time, then did a PhD in public health nutrition. So it's very specifically on the dietary fat guidelines. And what do I do now? I read, write and talk about diet and health. So I speak at conferences, as you do, I do this Monday note where I take an academic paper that's in the news, red meat is going to kill you and whole grains are going to save your life and I dissect it. And the kind of motto is, guys, I do this so that you don't have to just read my exec summary if that's all you want two minutes, you'll understand what was wrong with the study and then you can put the mother in a law at rest and get on with you day. So that's me, that's what I do. Well, that's great. And well, I think that's a service for the world that you're doing reading those papers or the people going to do. Well, I mean, that's a perfect segue. There was a recent paper from Harvard that spoke about how red meat causes diabetes and I believe you wrote a rebuttal to that as well. Is that right? Yes, that's correct, yeah. Yeah, can you tell us a bit about that? And why, well, he caused diabetes with thoughts. I mean, I'm working on something at the moment to help other people understand how to read a paper because this is what I do. And I'm now on note number 665 or something. So I've been doing this every Monday for several years. So I know how to do it, but it's an epidemiological paper. So it's a population paper for those of your followers who know about the hierarchy of evidence, the epidemiological studies as we call them are sort of heading up towards the higher part of the pyramid of evidence, but they're very much below intervention trials, what we call randomized control trials. And of course, they're below systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which is the new sort of pinnacle of evidence where you pull together all the evidence available. You don't just cherry pick certain studies. So this was a population paper. The minute you read the headline, you just know it cannot make sense because diabetes can essentially be summed up by the inability to metabolise glucose. And of course meat is one of those rare foods on the planet, along with fish and eggs that contains no glucose. I mean glycogenin liver aside, it contains no glucose. So it makes no sense whatsoever that red meat would have anything to do with diabetes at all. So that's your starting point. You go in knowing that something is wrong. Then population studies, there are always the same flaws. So sort of flaw zero, as I consider it is the inaccuracy of dietary frequency questionnaires. So this particular questionnaire, the people in this study were women from the nurses health study number one and women from the nurses health study number two and then men from the health professionals follow up study. So these were all health professionals and they were asked what was your consumption of these items, 41 items in the case of nurses one over the last year. And it would say for example how many portions six to eight ounces of skinless chicken breast did you have over the past year? So let's say you're a nurse and you have five ounces of chicken for your dinner every night. How do you answer that question? Do you say I had no six to eight ounce portions because you didn't? Or did you average it and say well over the week, I have 35 ounces. So if I take that as by you know six to eight ounce portions, there's five of those. You don't even know how to answer that. So that's flaw zero. Floor one is then that population studies can only ever tell us association. They cannot tell us causation and yet these headlines that come out of Harvard particularly are always inferring causation. So eat meat and you will get diabetes is the very clear inference from that study. The second key flaw for all population studies is that the headline is relative risk. The absolute risk is usually tiny. And again in this case the headline risk was all you're going to be 61% more likely to get diabetes and people think oh my goodness. So if a hundred people are going to get diabetes in the non-red meat eating group then 161 are going to get it in the red meat eating. You know that's quite big. That's almost double. That's you know that's the concern. It doesn't mean that at all. It means perhaps one in a thousand people got diabetes in one group and 1.6 people in a thousand got diabetes in the next group. Do you care about the difference between one and 1.6? And that's before we've gone on to all the other floors in this study. So the final one that they all suffer from is what we call the healthy person confounder. So the person who is eating what Harvard want you to eat which is come quiet and kiwi and legumes and quinoa and all the rest of it put that kind of person in your head at the moment and what image have you got? They're slim. They're educated. They've got high income. They've got children called Tarquin and Olivia. They're affluent. They're privileged. They're advantaged. And then look at the person who's having the burger and the fries in the fast food joint who's obese who doesn't exercise who can barely afford the rent. It's a completely different kind of person that you're describing. An epidemiological studies would have us believe if only those poor disadvantaged people at like the privileged advantage people they would enjoy the same health and where do you even start on that one? So I should take a breath at this point. Well that's great. And I think the thing is too, like you said in the hierarchy of evidence, the experimental data trumps all. I mean just previously, to that study coming out, there has been experimental data from Berta Health with ketogenic diets, heavy and fat from me, presumably retinue, played a part in that as well. And this was reversing type 2 diabetes. So how does that work exactly? It really doesn't follow. And it's sort of strange when we have better studies coming out at higher levels of evidence in interventional trials that show a different relationship. Why are we still trying to bark up that tree of meat causes harm? I mean is there a sort of idea there? When things like this happen, there's only over two reasons. One is incompetence and one is conflict. Harvard is an esteemed institution. I don't think they're incompetent. I do think they're conflicted. And Nina Titechholz has just done a brilliant piece of investigative journalism looking at the conflicts of the Harvard team, particularly Walter Willick. As Walter is the main person at Harvard, he's one of the authors on this name paper. He is the corresponding author. I did correspond with him over this. And he did reply to be fair. So I took some of the, when I did my rebuttal to this publication, I did a 14 issue rebuttal. And I didn't even have to scrape around to find those 14 issues. I mean I was just writing them down as I went through the paper and it was just boom, another one, boom, another one. So we've got the sort of not to three that I've gone through. There was some that you were unique to this study. So for example, one of the really bizarre things was that it was claimed in the characteristics table, which is where they placed the participants into groups by meeting take. It was actually claimed that the lowest level, so they split them into five groups, which we call quintiles. And in the bottom group, bottom quintile for the women, the nurses health study won, they were allegedly having 0.46 portions of total red meat a day. And men, I think, from memory, were having 0.24. It's almost half. That would be the first study I've ever seen in the world where women eat more red meat than men. And I put this to Walter Willett. And I mean, the reply was hilarious because the nurses health study started in 1980. I think the health professionals follow up study was in 1986. And his answer was, well, red meat consumption was already going down by then. So hang on a sec. So in the period 1980 to 1986, red meat consumption was going down. And again, Nina can show you a great chart. She presents it in her lectures where red meat consumption has been going down since the dietary guidelines were introduced around 1980. But of course, diabetes has been going up. I mean, it's like an airplane taking off. So how does that work then? You haven't even gotten association, Mr. Walter Willett. And then there was another one where, I mean, this just completely goes to conflict rather than incompetence. So in the characteristics table where they say, right, these are the people split by meat intake. And then you're supposed to list all the other attributes that are collected at the beginning of the population study because then you know what to adjust for. And that's where you always see the healthy person confounder. So the people, men or women eating the most meat are also the ones who are current smokers. They're the ones who do less activity. They're the lower income. They're the less educated there as I described in that example. But what he also put into that table was their other food intake. And he put in fish, he put in poultry, non-red meat, he put in eggs, he put in legumes, he put in fruit, he put in vegetables. He didn't put in the two things that actually have something to do with diabetes, which of course are grains and sugars. And I said to him, why didn't you put in the two things that actually have something to do with diabetes? And he said, oh, there was no space. It's like you have all the space you want in the world. This is not the BMJ when it now gets published as a bound sort of volume and it gets sent out to doctors around the UK. This all goes online now. You have no limitations. And by the way, you did have space on that page. And by the way, you had a half a page at the end of the study. But I mean, don't give me that. And if it really was space, then take out fish and eggs and put in grains and sugars. I mean, another anomaly that was just ridiculous, the calorie intake in the lowest group for the women was 1200. You're trying to tell me that nurses in 1980 on their feet all day were consuming 1200 calories. And for the men, you're trying to tell me that male junior doctors and physiotherapists and health professionals were consuming 1,680 calories on a daily basis. I mean, that just tells me they forgot almost half of their calories. And I asked him about this. And he said, well, we adjust for that. It's like, I know you adjust for that. But it's just wrong. And you use that as your baseline against which to compare everything else. So you compounded wrong. So it's conflict. It's at a conflict, in my view. They have an agenda. And they determine to keep pushing it. Yeah. And I mean, the amount-- I guess they just cut out the amount of chocolates that they own the ward during that time. Because if anyone's who's worked in the hospital, I mean, there's just piles of candy and chocolate around the ward for the nurses and doctors and things like that. So everyone very nicely says, hey, here's some chocolates. Thank you very much for taking care of my mom and my dad. And so there's abundance of candy. And so maybe they just weren't counting that. But no, of course not. I mean, 1200 calories a day. How could you do that? You're very busy you're running around. And that wouldn't sustain your normal workflow. But that wouldn't even be representative of the normal population. Because the normal population certainly is not eating 1200 calories a day to 1600 calories a day. So even if that were accurate, it wouldn't be representative. And so it would throw an out for that reason as well. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's a trouble. People like Walter Willard are very influential. And I know a number of people have gotten their masters in public health from Harvard. And they come in, think you want a thing, they come out vegan. And that's just how that works. So I think there's quite a lot of influence from him. And I don't know. Do you know exactly what his ties are? I do know that he's worked with the Seven Day Adventist in Lovolinda and their studies quite often. I don't know if he's a member. But obviously that they are ideologically anti-registerial. Just from a religious standpoint. Do you know his ties at all? I don't. I think Belinda Fetke will probably be one of the people who best knows that. What I do know is that it was called the Harvard School of Public Health. And then it became the Harvard T-chan School of Public Health. And T-chan donated apparently $350 million to the Harvard School of Public Health, which is enough to get your name above the door, no problem. And therefore, the papers will be pandering to the desires of whoever this T-chan is. And there appears to be no doubt that T-chan is very keen on anti-meat papers, pro-serials and grains, papers, whether he's involved directly in the fake food industry or perhaps in the pharmaceutical industry, because of course the fake food makes us sick. I don't know particularly what his agenda is. I did do a bit of digging on him when it was all announced. And I couldn't find very much not easily helped by the fact that there are quite a few T-chans over in China. Yeah, there's conflict going on there. They're not stupid. I mean, the idea that you don't put in sugar and grains because there's not enough space. There was another one I asked him about, which is quite funny. And I don't know if I can explain this, because it was such an obvious error to me. And I've tried to explain it to a couple of people. And some of them look a bit baffled. And some of them just get it straight away. So your listeners are going to be smart. So let's try it. So they had a risk ratio for total red meat, which was 0.61, or 1.61, sorry, they had a risk ratio for processed red meat, which was 1.51. And then they had a risk ratio for unprocessed red meat, which was 1.4. Now, total meat always comes between processed and unprocessed, because total meat is the aggregate of the two in terms of being examined. So when it comes to the risk ratio, you can view it as the processed meat raises total meat overall, and the unprocessed meat lowers the risk overall. So the total red meat is always in between those two. And in this study, it wasn't. And I was trying to liken it to, my husband is 6 foot, and I'm 5 foot 2. It's like saying he's 6 foot, I'm 5 foot 2. And yet our couple combined height is 7 foot. It's like, no, it's not very 7 foot. It's going to be somewhere in between 5 foot 2 and 6 foot. It just can't happen. And I put this to him and he said, oh, it's just something that came out in the statistics. It's like, well, it's wrong then. Come on, guys, you don't just chuck something into a statistical package, and then it turns that out. And you don't then immediately go, oh, that's a bit odd. Total meat is always moderated by the other two. It's always in between the other two. There was another one. And I saw somebody on Instagram who was a plant-based-- one of these blonde-looking 20-somethings who have been plant-based for five minutes and feel great. And in two years, they're going to be going carnivore, because they're all fully collapsed. But anyway, she's happily plant right now. And she was saying what a great study this was and how it adjusted for BMI and all the rest of it. It's like, no, the headline figures did not adjust for BMI. So when you did adjust for BMI, those ratios of 1.6, 1.5 massively came down. They were in between 1.1 and 1.2. But they decided not to adjust for BMI in the headline data, which is the only thing that the newspapers reported, and they covered it worldwide. Why did they do that? Because they said, well, your meat intake would have had an impact on your BMI, and therefore we should not adjust for BMI. So you've a-you've double counted it, b-you've assumed that the meat was driving it. I mean, we haven't even got onto what are you eat in the US with meat? And you graduated, qualified in the US. So you know what meat consumption is in the US. It's not grass-fed steak and no vegetables. It's burgers and hot dogs. And what comes with the burger and hot dog, the white bun, the fries, the fizzy drink, the milkshake. And none of that was taken into account. Let's go. Let's blame the red meat in the burger for what the bun and the fries and the fizzy drink did, but let's not even measure the bun and the fries and the fizzy drink. I mean, this was so bad. It just was so bad. Yeah, that's all the fault. Hey everyone, if you need a little extra help getting started on the Carnivore diet and my online resources that I have for free aren't enough for you, you can go to www.howtocarnivore.com and sign up for a 30-day Carnivore challenge. Well, you'll have online resources, group support, weekly Zoom meetings, as well as the ability to chat live with myself, Simon Lewis, and the others in the challenge who can help you and support you and give you extra advice and help you along the way. So that sounds like something that would be beneficial to you. Then please go to howtocarnivore.com and sign up. All right, thanks guys. We'll see you there. Well, that's interesting about about T-chan as well. I'll have to sort of look into that. I wonder if if anyone's sort of done some digging on that, but that makes perfect sense. If that's going to have a lot of influence on the department in general, if that's the major wonder as well, his name's a bug door. So that's very interesting. So you've done some quite exceptional talks on YouTube that I've seen with low carb down under and other talks as well at other conferences, which I found fantastic. It's something that comes up again and again, and maybe we can go through some of these things, but one of them is the idea that it doesn't matter what you read as long as you get your macros in order. If you get your calories in, calories out, sort it out, that then you're fine. It doesn't matter what you read, it doesn't matter if you're just chocolate, as long as it's the right amount of chocolate, then that's exactly the same as a steak. Except that, of course, you'll get diabetes if you eat the steak and not the chocolate. If you can go through this, you can tell us how that's flawed and is a calorie, is a calorie a calorie or is there a problem with that statement? Yeah. Oh, yeah, good one. I mean, Cracky, this is, I mean, I've got a 45 minute presentation, I think, got calories thermodynamics, kettles. Right, one of the best ways I think to explain this is take a typical female, because the maths are easier. I did maths at Cambridge, but you know, other people might not like numbers as much as I do. So take a typical female who needs 2000 calories. And it is an unconventional, an indisputable fact, this is not contentious, that there are different calories that can do different things within the bodies. So if you take that 2000 calories, it would generally be agreed that you've got something called the basal metabolic requirement, which is if that female is ill in bed all day and doesn't go about thinking working at the computer, going to the gym, picking the kids up, whatever, she will probably still need 1500 calories. And those 1500 calories are for what we call the basal metabolic requirements. So what does the body need to do every day, regardless of what we do on top, needs to build bone density, fight infection, rejuvenate the muscles, keep the heart pumping, keep the lymphatic system going around process waste, I mean, it's just going to do all of that every day. Now, when you look at, and this is a piece of work that I need to do as an academic study, I can't nail down exactly how many of those, let's say 1500 calories, because that is about the right number for the basal metabolic requirement for an average female. How many of those can only be provided by fat and protein, but it's a high proportion, because fat and protein are your nutrients that are going to do that, build in bone density, body repair and maintenance is performed by fat and protein. It's not performed by carbohydrate. Carbohydrate will do some of that, as in carbohydrate can keep you warm. Carbohydrate would help you turn over in bed. You don't need any carbohydrate, of course, but it's just if you had consumed some, the body would be able to use a certain amount. Then you've got the 500 calories, if she's up and about, if she's moderately active, again, it's generally accepted that she would probably be needing about 500 calories on top of that. And for energy expenditure, the best micronutrients that the body would look to would be fat and/or carbohydrate. Again, carbohydrate not needed, but if carbohydrate is available, the body's lazy and the body would take that carbohydrate for fuel first. So picture those 2,000 calories as 1,500 needed for body repair and 500 needed for extra stuff on top and the 1,500 needed for body repair predominantly need fat and protein and the 500 on top predominantly need fat or carbohydrate. So first observation you make is fat is your ubiquitous macronutrient fat is your best thing. Fat is the thing that the body can use for the most things. It's the one that your body is going to find able to use that. Of course, it has other great advantages. It's going to have no impact on glucose and it's the one macronutrient that won't mess around with your insulin either. So you start seeing fat in a different light. But here's what happens when the government wades in and we've got pretty much the same dietary advice, US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Europe, across the globe. We've adopted the dietary guidelines from Americans, which is incredibly carb intensive. I've analyzed some of the menus that have been provided by Public Health England and their carbohydrate intake is in the range 65 to 70% of calorie intake and fat is at around 15% and protein is is making up the difference at around 15%. I mean the one macronutrient that we don't need, they are telling us to base our calories on. So let's say that it is around 70%. And then the government is telling us to have 1400 calories in the form of carbohydrate. And the body says, let's assume that for intense and purposes, the 1500 are fat and protein and the 500 is fat or carbohydrate. And I'll I will get to the bottom of this in my lifetime. I will work out how much of that basal metabolic need if any can be provided by carbohydrate. But it is, let's go 1500, 500. It won't be far away. And then you eat 1400 calories of carbohydrate. And the body says, I only needed a maximum of 500 and actually those could have come in the form of fat and I would have been quite happy if I'd become fat adapted. So you've given me an extra 900 carbohydrate calories that I didn't need. And actually I can't use for basal metabolic functioning and repair. And this is how we get both fat and sick at the same time following the government guidelines. Because we're eating more than is good for us in terms of what we can use as energy and we're eating not enough in terms of what we need for building our bodies back. So you know, I would say to doctors as a starting point, you want to be eating the 1500 protein. And in fact, if you care about calories, I mean, I don't and I know you almost certainly don't as well. But we're having the calories in calories out debate. If your mindset is about calories, then as a minimum, eat the 1500, that your body wants in the form that your body wants them. And then it's not just to go after these macronutrient ratios, because I don't agree with that either. My principles are number one, eat real food, number two, choose that food for the nutrient sick provides. And then you will naturally choose red meat over white meat, oily fish over white fish, eggs, especially the oats, full fat dairy. And you can stop there, because that's going to give you every single nutrient, vitamin and mineral essential fatty acids complete protein that you actually need as a human being. And those would be your two points. Now if you then don't need to lose weight, you might want more energy on top. And again, I'd say don't go over 500 calories of carbohydrate. And if you can become fat adapted, almost certainly depending on the exercise that you choose to do, you're going to be performed better having access to your body's store of fat, as opposed to just your body's store of carbohydrate, which is glycogen. But I just cannot see a reason for anybody on this planet. Even an elite athlete to be going over 500 calories of carbohydrate a day, and most people would do far better on far less than that. Yeah, well, I certainly know as, you know, in my playing days, I never felt better in my entire life. I never played better, I've never had better energy than when I was on a just a zero carb part of war diet. I didn't even know it was a carnivore diet at the time. I just wasn't eating pants. I just went to a toxic plants where I were like, yep, I'm not eating those anymore. And I just defaulted into just eating meat and eggs. And I absolutely never felt better in my life until right now when I'm doing that again, I rediscovered that. And you know, the biochemistry makes sense as well. Like you say, you're going to be far better off running on your own fat stores because you have far more fat stores than you will be able to store in glycogen. There was a recently that, uh, uh, uh, Dr Paul Mason told me about recently, which actually showed because the argument was, okay, well, maybe you can replenish your glycogen stores and and make blood sugar and make ketones as well. But do you replenish your glycogen? Ask quickly as say, just sucking down sugary drinks. And the answer is, yes, you do. You actually make it faster. So in, in human trials and with athletes, they found that the, the keto athletes, the fat adapted athletes, actually replenish their glycogen more quickly than the carb-fueled athletes who were sucking down the sport strength. So, especially for athletes, it makes a huge difference in your favor to cut out the carbs as well. So, you know, and then the other thing too is I mean, these people, just the idea of calories being of importance, like it's a measure of heat and we're not combustion engines. We're not just seeing people come out of it. So, it really doesn't matter what heat is coming off of these things. If we heat up a glass of water, it doesn't have more calories. It doesn't weigh more calories, but it doesn't weigh more than it used to, right? It has more heat that is giving off. And so, that's pretty worthless when we're talking about, you know, how much weight, I mean, we weigh atoms have weight. Alleries don't have weight. So, we need to think about that a bit differently. Also, all of these different carbohydrates, they all have unique individual chemical reactions in our body. They have different hormones, responses in our body, same with the amino acids, same with the fatty acids. Some fighters can't even use it all, like fiber. It's completely inactive. And then a lot of amino acids are used as structural opponents, so they're not being used as energy either. So, it's a bit funny. And then you eat different things as well. And just the fiber and you'll block out 20%, 30% of the food you're eating as well. So, you know, the idea that it just, that all that matters is just that calorie number. I think it's good. I think, well, it has gotten people into a lot of trouble. And that's some people can, yeah, it's been workout, pushed themselves, and eat what they eat, and they can stay lean and strong. And that's great, but not everybody can do that. And a lot of people who are struggling run into that. And they just basically get told that their liars are they're lazy. And, you know, that, oh, you're just, you're saying, you're actually eating when you're not supposed to, you're lying about how much you're eating things like that. They're not, you know, it's much more complicated than that. - Yeah. And that was calories in terms of what do we need? When you get into, should we cut calories? 'Cause there's this idea that if you eat less and or do more, you will lose weight. So an example that I used earlier, you could cut your calorie intake to 1500 calories and have them entirely in the form of carbohydrate. And you're still in the place that you've got too many carbohydrate calories for what you're using up. So you will store them and they will then be turned to fat and you will gain weight. But you didn't have enough calories to actually meet your metabolic requirements. So you're getting sick at the same time. So it's about, it's so about what you eat. You know, the idea, first thing that happens when you try to eat less, do more is your body tries to get you to eat more and do less. It's just the first thing that happens. You start a calorie controlled diet on a Monday morning by 11 a.m. all you can think about is food. And you were gonna go to the gym that night and buy five o'clock, it's like, I'm not going to the gym. I haven't got the energy. You know, the idea that the body is just a cash machine for fat, let alone the rate of one pound equals three and a half thousand calories. I mean, if you Google my name and that, there's a blog post that comes up. I mean, that is just completely unproven. It's just another one of these nutritional myths. But the idea that the body goes, oh, okay, you've had a deficit this week of three and a half thousand calories. There you go. There's a pound of fat and a little bit more on top in terms of water and lean tissue. No way, the body has nine systems that it can turn down, turn off. Do that for any period of time and the body's gonna turn off the reproductive system in women, just stop the periods. You're not looking after yourself. I can't risk you trying to have a baby. It will turn down the heating system. Dieters get really cold. Terms down the lymphatic drainage systems. You see this sort of puffy carb face in people who are eating low fat diets, high carbohydrate diets. You know, the body just adjusts. The body is not gonna say, well, there you go. There's a pound of fat. I know you wanna get into that dress for the weekend. My pleasure. You know, it just doesn't do that. We've evolved a store every ounce of fat that we can get our hands on. We're not gonna buck, I don't know, 350,000 years worth of evolution just because somebody invented a calorie counter. - Yeah, yeah. (laughs) Yeah, and I always thought that was funny too. Like in the 80s, they said, we should eat a lot of fiber. She's like a celery diet. You actually expand more calories processing the celery than you get from the celery. She's the unlimited celery and you're just the way to drop off. And the fiber will stretch out your stomach. It will release leptin and it'll trick your brain into thinking that you've actually eaten something useful. And I just always thought, like, you are not that smart. You are not gonna be tricking millions of years of evolution. Like it's just not that easy. You are not that intelligent. And if you were intelligent, you'd be trying to work with your bile and with that evolutionary process. And the MDS thing too, it's just not understanding physiology. Your vagus nerve has receptors in your stomach that actually counts macros and microbes and sees the nutrients. So you just, okay, fine, eat a box of styrofoam. It'll stretch out of me. But you know, you release some leptin and it'll suppress grellen. But you're, you're stomach will see that and be like, there's zero nutrition here. You need to, you're gonna stay hungry. Yeah. Right. So, well, the calories not a calorie. You heard it here. I mean, the art is still being, I literally had to wait into this in some Instagram comments today. It's guys like, well, Calibre's a Calibre. Oh my God. They still make you like seriously. It's just bad. So that's some of the myths. But you know, one of the things that is quite contentious, I thought you did, did an excellent presentation on was fiber. It was fiber actually a good idea for people to have. And I've always thought that, well, let's just bear bones. You know, are we, is that so? Are, you know, what animals on earth eat a fibrous diet that cannot be found and absorb the nutrients from fiber? You know, not what really, not what really does. And for some reason, we're supposed to, we've been told that we need to eat more fiber basically in the eighties again. And why is that a thing just in the eighties? Why did, why did our species need fiber before that? Why did we just figure that out? And, you know, so I never thought, I never really passed a smell test for me. And if we were paired fiber, then why is it, you know, how could we have survived the ice ages when we really didn't have access to these sorts of things? Or we were not enough for us. How could we survive the ice ages? What is your take on fiber? And how would you address something, if someone's having this argument, Thanksgiving coming up when they have to have fiber they shouldn't just eat the turkey? - I think his hypothesis here, I think that the fiber narrative has been increasingly pushed because it's the last thing left to justify carbohydrate consumption. So I think deep down they know, I mean, I think Eric Westman puts up something from a government document from decades ago, I think it was that provided you eat enough fat and protein, your actual requirement for carbohydrate is zero. So the panel on macronutrients, I think it's 1985 or something. We can put it in your show notes, I'll find it. So they've known for a long period of time because it is indisputable. It's just a biological fact that there is no requirement for carbohydrate as a macronutrient. And I think when you've got that situation, you've got to try to find a different justification for pushing carbohydrate. And of course, the only source of fiber is carbohydrates. So if you can promote this fiber narrative that we must have fiber, we must be having 30 grams of fiber, then it's something that they can use to keep the carbohydrate narrative going. Now you also mentioned the seventh day Adventist. And I go back to this in my presentation, and I look at the origins of where people started really pushing the serial agenda, which was John Harvey Kellogg, clue in the surname, and Sylvester Graham, Graham's crackers, the grains around at the time. So individuals who then went on to develop grain conglomerates were obviously going to be pushing the grains agenda, have serial for breakfast instead of eggs. And all the trials that we've had on, why you should have serial for breakfast and not eggs, why breakfast is the most important meal of the day. All of that nonsense comes out of this school of let's push grains. Because of course the margin in grains and serials is massively higher than the margins in an egg. So in that fiber presentation, I go back to carbohydrate 101. So I say, okay, there are mono-saccharides. We know those as glucose, fructose, and black toast. And then you've got the dye, saccharides, two sugars. Let's just take the one that people are most familiar with, which is chukrose, which is one molecule of glucose, and one molecule of fructose. Then you get into the poly-saccharides. Poly means many and saccharides means sugars. So you're now into many sugars and you've got digestible forms of many sugars and you've got indigestible forms of many sugars. And fiber technically is indigestible poly-saccharides. Many sugars that we cannot digest. So from an intuitive starting point, that doesn't sound like a very good thing. That doesn't sound like something I need to be put into my body. And indeed it's not but we have this. whole narrative that's come about from the grain pushers and also because they want us to eat plants and carbohydrates and not meat and fat because they know that meat and fat makes us healthy. So in this presentation I then go through what do we need to eat? Where do we find those nutrients and of course it's what we've said already it's red meat, oily fish egg yolks, full fat dairy, compare plant foods alongside those foods that are incomparable in terms of complete protein they don't have it, essential fats, they're not in the right form vitamins and minerals where they've got them again they're not in the right form, it's not retinol, it's carotene, it's not D3, it's D2 and all the rest of it. So plants are just massively inferior but they're promoted because of this fiber agenda. Now one of the last sort of bastions that people hang on to with fiber is oh you need it for your gut flora. So towards the end of the presentation I actually look at all the other things that can do great things for your gut flora which have nothing to do with fiber whatsoever and in fact are far more powerful than beans on toast which is a fibrous meal. What is far more important than that? The health of your parents, I'm sorry to say, it was something you couldn't do anything about but the health of your parents and their gut flora was incredibly important. Did your mum then give birth naturally because you're then bathed in flora as you come out into this world that gives you a great start whether or not that happened did your mum then breastfeed you for as long as possible because again you're getting all of her flora and immunity passed through onto you. Did your mum make sure that she didn't take antibiotics during pregnancy? Did she make sure that you didn't take antibiotics during childhood unless your life depends on it? Do you also as an adult? Make sure that you're not going to the doctor and asking for antibiotics like smarties. If you have antibiotics do you counter it with probiotics immediately? Are you consuming probiotics? Are you having natural yoga? Are you having blue cheese? Are you having aged meat or whatever? Are you having kefir? Are you if you are having plants? Are you fermenting them? Are you having fermented foods in any way? There are so many things that you can do that create a great gut flora that have nothing whatsoever to do with beans on toast. So again the idea that we have to have fiber for great gut flora is just a complete myth but a minute I go on I went on a podcast the other day with someone who's quite a well-known actress in the UK and she's like our sheets real food. She's not carnival but she you know would quite happily eat meat and fish and eggs and but also big salads and all the rest of it. I mean she was talking about salads and I was just sort of well you know they're not all that. You're describing what you'd have in your dinner tonight and I'm hearing lettuce tomatoes peppers and nothing's registering until you get on to the chicken with the skin and a hard boiled egg on the side and then suddenly my ears are pricked up and she's like well what do you mean? Vegetables are really important and all that fiber and everything. Why does the fiber word always come up? They've done such a great job on that propaganda. Really have. People need to sit for what it is which is just pure propaganda. Yeah but I think that's the the best work that they've done is that they've actually been able to classify fiber as an essential nutrient meaning that you will die and yet it has zero nutrients in it. You get it as zero nutritional value which I think is just I think it's wonderful honestly I think it's just hilarious so they can't even digest it you know not and then they say oh is it going through the gut flora it's feeding stuff along the way. He's like where do you get this stuff from? What is going along your digestive tract? This thing that your body's got to expel because it can't digest it you know it's probably quite a braze if it's probably quite inflammatory. It's probably no coincidence that we've got epidemics of diverticulitis and irritable bowel syndrome and there was that great study in the Far East and I always credit either come in some pool mason for doing a great double act on this study and pooled some great graphics with it and it was only involved about 67 people but they had just the worst irritable bowel syndrome symptoms you could imagine constipation diarrhea extreme pain extreme discomfort the trial intervention trial for all of them it wasn't randomized it was just like all of you give up fiber for a period of time and then let us know how your symptoms are and every single symptom just disappeared and then the trial finale was do you want to go back to eating fiber and of course a huge proportion of them didn't I mean some words because they think oh it's just how we supposed to eat but the majority of people like know that hurt and it didn't hurt when I stopped so I'm not going back there. Yeah one good for them. Hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at Carnivore Bar. I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the Carnivore Bar is a great option. So I like this product not because it's just to your meat but also because I want the Carnivore market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products that will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off which also applies to subscription is giving you 25% off total. All right thanks guys. That's another thing too is say that we need we need fiber for para stalls since your gut will not move without okay well the Inuit exist and they you know they go to the bathroom and so and you know 70% of animals on earth are Carnivores as well in fiber so how that that we're the only species on earth and not even on the primates there are primates that are completely carnivorous as well and they you know they don't eat fiber so it's not a primate thing it's not an animal thing why why would you be a homo sapient thing about that the us and and why would we not have died during the ice ages and why is it that that population is alive you know well up until recently when they were eating their traditional diets some will still eat their traditional diet like some inuits or the nene no fiber traditional fiber and yet they're they're able to go to the bathroom so these things I don't think the people really think them through and and and just thinking about that this is an essential nutrient you have to have it or you die and there's zero nutritional value for me that that's me is just hilarious I just love that and it's waste I mean in what other field on this planet is waste a good thing yeah everywhere else waste is a bad thing yeah and and at the same time this is sort of like double think when they have they have the the idea in their head that you cannot break down or digest fiber and that's a good thing this makes your parasols go and all that sort of stuff and in the same thought process they say and you shouldn't eat meat because you can't break it down it sits in your digestion and and digest the tract and and it's 10 years to the digest like you know what a tube is right that's not gonna sit there and and I thought that that was a good thing I thought you didn't want to actually break it down in a digesting I thought you wanted mass and bulk for this to to move through what five seconds ago this was a good thing and yet they they can hold those two competing and conflicting thoughts in their head at the exact same time and see no problem with it and the other thing is is they say um our stuff moves out of your body quicker and that's a good thing because then you're not going to get bowel cancer I'm thinking okay so the purpose of eating is that we need essential nutrients we need fats and proteins and vitamins and minerals so presumably the body has developed a really good way of stripping out the nutrients that we need and then packaging them onto chylamicrons and various other systems in the body to transport them around to where they're needed so I would kind of think if something's in my system longer it's because it's providing more nutrition and the body is taking the time to make sure it gets all the goodness out of it so if my apple is going to shoot through in two hours that's because it didn't really have very much it was 95% water the rest is sugar there's a bit of vitamin C there's actually more vitamin C in liver but don't let that upset your plant-based ideology um what was the point of the apple you know the body didn't have very much to strip out of the apple did it no fat soluble nutrients no B vitamins to speak of really not that much um which is why the body was quite happy to get rid of it really quickly and it probably bloats you in the process I mean they taste great I get me wrong I've got an apple tree in my garden so in order I'm gonna I'm gonna eat I'm gonna eat an apple I'm not gonna lie I'm gonna eat quite a few apples um but they do make you feel a bit bloated when you're not used to eating that kind of volume of fiber or carbohydrate yeah well you know and that's the thing we should just understand it for what it is it's a treat and you enjoy it and fine but it's not something that's essential that you have to have a real die so it's like it's like it's like having a drink sometimes if you enjoy that it makes you happy and by all means be you know if you don't you know go ahead and do it but you know you shouldn't you shouldn't drink because someone says it's really important that you get at least you know you get your you're five and two five shots and two beers a day you have to get at you know and so you know if people want to because they enjoy it and that brings something, some joy to their life or whatever, then that's fine, but understand what it is. It's something that's not all that great for you can cause for them. And so it may not be something you wanna do a lot and often, you know, same with apples and other sorts of vegetation. I also, you know, that reminded me as well of the fact that they say you have to, you know, constipation, you want this to move fast through so that your colon doesn't dehydrate your stool too much and it gets dry and hard. And to me, again, that's going counter to our physiology. So that doesn't really pass the smell test because our colon is designed to dehydrate your stool. That's the point. So why are we fighting against our own biology? Why are we fighting against our own physiology? And saying, no, we don't want this evil colon to do as job that it was designed to do. Obviously, there's a reason for doing that for a purpose. And so if you have to fight against it, maybe you're doing something wrong. You shouldn't have against your biology and your physiology. Maybe it's that you're not getting enough fat and then that excess fat that's were sitting there which propelled water anyway, you know, could sit in there and keep things soft. Where, you know, that's sort of when the timeline hits, where people started getting very constipated and started recommending fiber was in the '80s, I remember this as a kid quite vividly, you know, where they were saying, well, we need to, everyone was getting constipated. Dr. saying you should eat more fiber, increase your fiber and that will increase your, your, you know, the bowel motility. That was exactly the time we stopped eating fat. And we started that and we all started getting constipated. So to me, that sort of, that sort of made sense as well. I don't know if you had a similar conclusion on that. Oh, I mean, we did. We had the F plan diatus. It was called in the 1980s written by Audrey Aiton and it was one of these, like the Scarsdale diet, it all went a bit wild. But on the constipation thing, so if your sink is blocked, no plumber is going to come along and say, right, put more fat down it, your sink is blocked. You obviously tried to, you know, throw away some moldy, moldy lard or something. Just put more fat down it and it will all be fine. So I've never understood why when people go and complain of constipation, doctors say, oh, you need to eat more fiber. It's like, I'm already banged up and you're telling me to put more of the stuff in that's going to bang me up. How is that going to work? You know, somebody came to me and said, I'm constipated. I would say eat less fiber and increase your vitamin C and not through apples. But actually, if you need to take a vitamin C supplement for a period of time, the body weaves out, be vitamins. So if you take a multi-be vitamin, some people do if they go on holiday because there's rumors that it might help with mosquitoes, it turns your wee yellow. So you wee out your wee vitamins and we tend to excrete our excess vitamin C. So if somebody, for example, took 10 grams of a chewable vitamin C or something and they'd never taken any before, they would almost certainly get the run. So you don't do that. But you might want to take 500 milligrams see if anything happens, maybe take a gram. And just, you know, I've helped my elderly parents over the years who were sort of around at the time of the 80s when they started saying eat low fat and they changed things at home and they put cereal into their diets for breakfast and stopped doing all the bait and an eggs and the good things that they've naturally done. And of course, as they then got older, four decades of that, older people, they're sort of all, you know, I'm a bit constipated and it's like, it came up, you know, 500 milligrams up to a gram tomorrow. If the earth hasn't moved by Wednesday up to a gram and a half and then when it does, you just pair back and then you find what we call your poo tolerance level of vitamin C and you'll be going comfortably if, you know, almost whatever diet you are eating. But hey, by the way, you might want to cut back on the all-brown at the same time. - Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, you know, you have a traffic jam, you don't just add cars into it. You know, it's already stuck. The vitamin C thing is great. I have, I have discovered that just in practice and in life, there's one time I was going skiing with my brother and he was, he was my older brother. So, you know, it was a little dynamic there. And he sort of was doing the older brother sort of, why don't you go and do this for him, I'm like, okay. And so the thing they wanted me to do then was, and he said it in sort of the such a way that it sort of irked me and so he said, "Which are those stairs and get me a glass of water and put some vitamin C powder and do this and do that?" I'm like, okay, I'll do that. (laughing) And so I had a plan, my mom had some water boiling for tea. So I just took some hot water, put it in a mug and just dumped it. I don't even know how much. I mean, when he grams 30 grams of vitamin C, he was a lot. - Oh wow. - And I mean, it was, it was, you know, it was a couple of inches at the bottom of this cup. And so I dissolved it in the hot water for the mid-assuper saturated solution, we'll let down just slowly put cooler water in. So it wasn't like hot. We got to him just sort of warm. And we both knew what was going on. He knew that I was gonna do something to it. And I knew he was gonna know that. And he just sort of had this look on his face like, he knew it, he's just gonna be like overly, I would have added too much vitamin C. And he just did the same thing where he's just like, not gonna say anything, just trick it all down, like nothing happened. And like, you know, just decided to like, okay, all right, we didn't say anything, just like headed up to the mountains. Within half an hour, he just looks at me and goes like, how much did you put in the helmet? (laughing) - Waddle man, I don't even know how you handled that. And he was just like, my stomach is really upset right now. - Yeah, and he's probably the rest room. - Yeah, well, we ended up going, we ended up getting all of our gear and we ended up going on the first chairlift. And he just went, this is a mistake. Oh my God, I'm getting to get back. And we had to like, get up, I don't know, 15 minute chair lift up there. And we just stood down to the bottom. And I was like, okay, you know, I'll go, you know, on another run, I'll meet you back here. And I went on a run, check back, still not out. One on the one, still not back. And I'm going like five runs and coming back, I just went looking for him. And I was like, where is he? He had been in there the entire time. Like, he could not leave the bathroom. And it was just absolutely destroyed by that. So I have seen that. The funny, I think the funniest part from that is is that he then learned that. He's like, whenever you sort of blocked out, he's like, yeah, I'll just take some vitamin C. I know that. - That's okay. - So yeah, there you go. - Yeah, yeah. That's it. That's it. If you take one thing away from this podcast guys, you'd never be constipated again. - That's it. Vitamin C will work for you. I've seen the results for sure. Really. So, the other thing too is, well, we have this massive plant-based push. And you sort of mentioned it maybe because, people, they just sort of want us unhealthy. I almost have to believe that at this point because I think a lot of people are, well, I mean, a lot of the industries are, coordinate with each other, invested in each other food companies and pharmaceutical companies are cross-invested in each other, potentially so that even make similar products. I haven't been able to confirm this, but I heard at one point that L-Logs is vertically integrated. They make all their crops and make their products and they're also vertically integrated with the pharmaceutical companies and they make diabetes medication as well. So, that was something that Gary Fettke told me when this happened. And so I just sort of find that source, but that, that is the case that they're doing that. I mean, that's almost malice of fourth thought that they're knowingly causing harm and then they're selling you something for that. But you can't do that. You can't go around smashing tires and sell people tires. If that's not allowed, that's not something you're allowed to do. But there's this massive push for plant-based diets. There's massive pushes for veganism. What is your critique on the vegan diets? And what would you say to people? There are also many people like you said, like that woman who was on Instagram saying, "Well, this is a wonderful diet and is ideologically driven." What would be your response if you were able to have a sit down with her and talk about veganism? - I've got an advantage in that I've been there. So I was vegetarian for about 20 years and during that period, I kind of describe it as I lapsed into veganism without really realizing, I'm not much of a cook, so if somebody puts food in front of me, I'm really happy, like just put it in front and I'll eat it. And I was dating somebody at the time who I thought was veggie like me, but it kind of turned out he was a little bit more on the vegan side. And if I'd have thought about it, I was busy, I wasn't thinking about it. I was being given plant-based veggie burgers, rice and peas, most nights. And then at work, I tended to be grabbing some dry cereal 'cause it was just, I didn't have to even go and find the milk in the fridge. It was just, I was so busy, it was just sort of quick speedy food and then there were some cereal bars that I was having for lunch that were good amount of energy and quite tasty. And I just wasn't giving it any thought. So I actually suffered some harm when I realized that that was kind of the route that I'd gone down. looking back at that time and then also coming across the absolutely outstanding book by Lea Keys called the vegetarian myths. There are three reasons why people go vegan stroke vegetarian stroke plant based. So let's talk about vegan plant based because that is the extreme of that movement. And the three reasons that vegans will give are number one, they think it's healthier, number two, they think it's better for the animals and number three, they think it's better for the environment. So let's just quickly unpack those. Number one is an argument that you just cannot win dear vegan influence because I will just go back to what are the essential nutrients, what does the body need? By essential we mean it doesn't make it. Essential fats complete proteins, vitamins and minerals, where are they found and where are they found in the form that the body needs them and they are found in animal foods. And it was a great distress to me as a vegetarian to discover that but you've got to go with the evidence when the evidence comes back in your face. So you cannot win that argument, you just give vegans, you cannot win that argument, it's just incontrovertible. The second one is really interesting because the second one is it's better for the animals and that was my reason for being vegetarian. I absolutely adore animals and the idea of actually eating an animal was quite abhorrent to me. What I didn't realise is that there is nothing that you can eat as a vegan for which nothing has died. And this is one of the great things that Lear Keith goes through in her book. So she talks about trying to grow a lettuce so she takes it to the extremes. She says, "Right, I've got a lettuce patch in my garden. The only way I'm going to end up enjoying that lettuce is if I can keep the slugs and the snails away." Now I have to sit up all night and just keep moving them so they don't get near the lettuce or I have to put down something at some point that is going to kill them and keep them away from the lettuce. But the basic facts about food are you're going to have to keep the animals that want that food as well and there are a lot of animals that like plants. You're going to have to keep them away from that food and that's not going to be possible on an industrial scale. And of course, even if it were possible with the lettuce in the garden, you cannot live on lettuce alone. And so I've got a presentation online called Should We Be Vegan? And in this second part, I've got a picture of this sort of combine harvester sweeping across the field. And it's two, three tennis courts wide. And you want to say to vegans, "Okay, so which animals are going to survive that? You know, you're mice, you're old, you're rabbits. Domestic cats, God forbid. You know, people's pets who are out playing in fields, if people live in rural areas, that combine comes down and they were having a little snooze in the long grass. They've got no chance. And as well, we've got snails and worms and insects and bumblebees and other things that you might well care about." So there's great paper called Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture. And it tries to estimate, tries to quantify. And you're up into the billions, billions of animals are dying every year. And I hate to say this vegans, but I don't know how Kellogg's when they're sweeping that barley field or that wheat field to turn it into into the cereals. I don't know how they then get those bits of animals out of your cereals. I mean, the whole thing is just harvested. If you watch farming programs and you see that it just all ends up in a big pile and then it goes off to the mills and then it ends up being processed either into beer or into bread or into cereals or whatever, where is the bit in the process that was trying to get out all the bits of worms and cat and rabbit and bowls and whatever because I didn't see it. So I'm sorry, but you are eating bits of animals. You just didn't sit down and eat some lamb. So if you're up against billions of deaths in field agriculture, your more honest thing is actually to eat one cow. If you want as few animals to die as possible and I put it on on the presentation and you look at the calories that you can get from a cow and you can feed one person from one cow for the year. So if you want one animal to die as opposed to billions, then you need to eat the cow. And you also need to realise that if we don't eat the cow, it's not the case that you're going to enjoy seeing these animals in fields because farmers don't keep pets. So let's say the world goes vegan overnight. There's a directive that comes out. We've got no choice but to comply. As soon as the current cow's sheep's pigs, chickens, whatever are dead, they're gone. They're gone forever. The species dies out. There are no more cows and sheep grazing in the field. And of course you then come onto the third argument, which is they think it's better for the environment and where do you even start on that one? We have no topsoil without remnants. So without the cows and the sheep and the goats and the deer grazing on the land with their unique four stomach system, hosting the microflora, regurgitating it, eating it up again, hosting it, regurgitate. That is what rejuvenates topsoil. And what we should be doing with our food production is the old three-field system from the UK agricultural revolution. So one year you've got animals in their grazing, making the soil fantastic. The next year you've got the crops in there, taking the nutrients back from the soil, plants rape the soil. So they've got a year to rape it. And then the third year you leave it, follow, to recover before the animals then go back in and make it good again. We used to have topsoil that was several feet thick. We've now got topsoil that's millimetre thick. So vegans, if you get your way, we have no way of producing your plant food. We have no chance of producing harvests in, I don't know, 10 years, five years. It's not much more than that. There literally is no topsoil left on the planet. Then you're into what is possibly the end game anyway for companies like Cargill, Monsanto. They've got the control of the food supply. And we've already got food being grown upside down in greenhouses, no need for soil, no need for remnants, no need for nutrients. You just hang it from the ceiling, you spray it with chemicals, you spray it with water, you've got water trickling down through it, and you can make a strawberry in a non-tropical environment on Christmas day. And that's the way our food supply will go, if vegans get their way. And it's a terrifying dystopia. And the idea that cows fart in is somehow burping, it's burping isn't it not for, you know, the idea that that is somehow an issue. You've got to wake up guys, you've got to wake up, you are, you are really part of the problem. You are the spokesperson for these conglomerates, whether they're big food or big farmer, you are a man of heaven to those organisations, you are doing their bidding work. And you think you're doing it for the right reason, I admire your integrity, I admire why you think you're doing it, but you could not be more wrong. And please rethink what you're doing because it is wrong. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for that. I totally agree with all of that. It is a shame that these people's very good intentions are being manipulated in such a way. Because I mean, I mean, the people are trying to do the manipulation. They have an ideology and they're driven by that motivation. And obviously, that's what we're talking about, we're talking about 99.9% of people who go vegan vegetarian for a very good honest reason. And they really do care about animals and the environment and nutrition and their own health and health of others around them. And unfortunately, they've been seriously manipulated. I share all of their their their their drives and passions. It's just, you know, I've seen things in a slightly different way. So I've taken that in a different direction. And but I totally agree with their motivations. I really appreciate their motivation. Then it's really unfortunate that these very good kind people have been manipulated in such a way. I a lot of conglomerates, a lot of special interests and people trying to make money and profit off of their suffering, which is pretty all right. Well, that brings me to the other side of the argument, which is a lot of the some of the vegans will say, well, maybe this is maybe plant food is missing some things, but you can just take some supplements and that's fine. Plant toxins don't exist. That's a myth from, you know, big botany textbook, I guess. I don't know who's coming up with that that one, but the the other side of it is well, you shouldn't eat me because that's bad for you. It makes you sick, it gives you heart disease, probably causes diabetes somehow. And and and obviously the guidelines are there and they should be there. They've been there for quite some time. And we should fall. And honestly, I talk to doctors now that are getting flack from their colleagues or even their you know, heads of department about, you know, doing low, you know, suggesting low carb diets to their patients and high fat and they and they get a lot of pushback. And and I said, well, look at the evidence, you know, look at these studies. And so one thing they say is, I don't I don't care what the evidence says. I care what the guidelines say. I practice guideline medicine. And you know, that's obviously pretty problematic, but the dietary fat guidelines you did a presentation on on whether these should have been even been introduced in the first place. So I mean, what evidence even there to even make this recommendation? First, I mean, I think we can agree that they're wrong, but you know, should they've even happened in the first place I mean is it a matter that I think we should rethink them and we I think we should should recast them but should they have even happened in the first place? No, no, in and not shall. That was my PhD so my PhD and we gosh, if I can remember the title it was an examination of the introduction of the Dartsry fat guidelines, which was total fat and saturated fat using systematic review and metronalysis and it was the first part of the PhD was to look back at the time so what I said was let me imagine that I'm the Dartsry guideline committee back in the US in 1977 when Senator McGuffin was playing around with the US guidelines and then they became embedded in the 1980 guidelines for Americans and of course they've just got repeated every five years with a few tweaks but essentially the high carb low fat diet advice has prevailed and the saturated low saturated fat has has prevailed so I went back to say if I'd have been looking at that as the committee at the time was the evidence there to introduce those two guidelines so the two guidelines were you should have no more than 30% of your total calories in the form of total fat and you should have no more than 10% of your calories in the form of saturated fat so the four parts to the PhD basically so I looked back at the time and I said okay let's look at the population evidence so that would be studies like the Framinum study the seven countries study and what did the population evidence say although as we opened up the the interview talking about the population evidence is not as strong as the trial evidence and in summary there was no support in population evidence whatsoever the only one that was suggesting any kind of association was the seven countries study that actually found not many people know this the seven countries study did not conclude anything against total fat it did think that there might be an association with heart disease in men and saturated fat but then Anselkees was assuming that things like cake and ice cream were saturated fat so it was kind of nutritional ignorance then you look at the trial data that was around at the time there were only six trials things like the Rose Corn Oil trial the Sydney Diet Heart Study was available to the British committee in 1983 not even the American committee in 1977 you have the Oslo trial the London Low Fat trial so those combined six trials and my first paper from the PhD was the one that summarized all of this and it just went viral and it basically said so there are only six trials they only studied two and a half thousand people all of those two and a half thousand people were men so we've studied no women whatsoever all of those two and a half thousand men were sick so they'd already had heart disease so we didn't study any healthy people and none of those studies actually concluded that we should start restricting dietary fat on the contrary they were making warning such as the low fat diet has no plates in the treatment of myocardial infarction that's the final sentence of the low fat diet trial the woodhill trial and another one that administered vegetable oils instead of natural animal fats they actually cautioned about the potential toxicity of their interventions they were quite worried about vegetable oils in these trials so there's no evidence at the time so then the second part of the PhD was to say okay but we're not in 1977 1983 we're now in 2016 when I was doing my PhD so there are more studies available there's the Women's Health Initiative that massive study done just on women by Howard over in the US we've got the Minnesota coronary study that's now come out we've got a few more population studies let's pull all of these together and let's see what the evidence says now and the evidence still says there was no reason to introduce either of those two fat guidelines whatsoever now I say to the people in that presentation don't just take my word for it you might say I'm not paid by anyone I'm not paid by industry I've got no conflicts but you might decide you don't want to believe what I say well I'm one of seven teams of researchers who've looked at this and when researchers look at this kind of thing they come up with a number of findings so let's say one of my papers would have a finding on total fat and then a finding on saturated fat so among these 17s there were 40 different findings now if I tell you only three suggested that there was anything whatsoever to do with either total fat or saturated fat you'll realise that I am not alone in a certain that there are no issues with fat so one of the three findings was the childry paper where they found an issue with trans fats and I think it was heart disease like you won't get any arguments from me on that one because trans fats of course is processed food and then there were the two hyperpapers and one was just a repeat of the other an update of the other so essentially they found the same thing and they claimed that there was an issue with saturated fat and cardiovascular disease events they found nothing for mortality nothing for coronary heart disease nothing for this nothing for that nothing for the other not for the other they found this one finding that they then just repeated two times in their own document which was a cocraine review it's about 90 pages long when they do the sensitivity test and this was a great test for not just the studies that said they were going to reduce saturated fat but the ones that actually did there was no impact whatsoever so we have no evidence we just have no evidence and the impact of that and this was a real penny drop moment for me so everyone visualise a circle in front of you and you'll know this sentence it's just a nutritional fact I can give you an empirical citation for it I can give you theoretical citations protein just ends up being about 15 maybe 20% of any natural diet it doesn't actually matter much if you're a vegetarian or if you're a carnivore who's not doing stupid things but eating the proper amount of fat with your meat it just ends up being around 15 to 20% so now put in one segment that says 30% you should have no more than 30% of your diet in the form of fat and you can see what's happened to the rest of the circles the rest of the circle has to be taken up by carbohydrate so the inevitable outcome of our dietary fat guidelines was that we mandated a minimum 55% carbohydrate in our diet and at the time of doing that we hadn't studied it we didn't know that it was safe let alone healthy but it was just the inevitable consequence of the dietary fat recommendation that came in and that is why we have the low fat high carbohydrate guidelines that we do because by going low fat you necessarily go high carbohydrate which is just exact opposite of why if you go low carb you're going to go high fat unless you start doing really stupid things with protein like white fish or skinless chicken breasts or protein shapes or egg whites unless you do stupid things like that you're going to have that natural amount of protein so that is where those guidelines left us now the other things I'd say to your colleagues is a couple of things actually one how have they done for us so those guidelines came in in the late 70s in the US there's a great N-hane's chart I opened my 2009 obesity book with this chart and you've got obesity in the US and it's just you know truggling along pretty close to zero and then it just takes off like an airplane and suddenly the UK goes from 2.7% obesity in the early 70s to 25% by the end of the last century you know we get a 10 fold increase in obesity diabetes explodes heart disease explodes cancer explodes you know how has it been doing for us dear fellow colleagues and then the second thing that I would say to people what had one of the biggest impacts among doctors who are prepared to listen is when new dietary guidelines came out in the UK in 2016 I went to have a look at exactly where they came from so a panel was put together by public health England so public health England is the dietary guideline setting body it will be like your Australian guideline committee equivalent and they had 11 members on the panel that they wanted to look at the new revised guidelines and I got a paper on this in the British Journal of Sports Medicine they were one of the few journals prepared to take this on board because public health England were not happy and I got a lot of flak eight out of those 11 members were representatives of the fate food industry and I'm not talking representatives of one company so I'm not saying they had someone on there from Coca-Cola or Kellogg's they had people from the food and drink federation the Institute for Grocery distribution these are organizations that represent every single fake food company you can think of they were the industry bodies to push for fake food we had something called the Association of Convenience Stores now in the UK those are the little shops that are on every corner they only sell junk they only sell biscuits and crisps and capes and sweets and ice cream and Coca-Cola and fizzy drinks and cigarettes and stuff you might run out of on a Sunday evening but it's just basically junk and those were the guys who put together our healthy eating guides so when you look at that guide and doctors you want to tell me that that's what we should be advising you better know where it comes from and you better know how it's done for us over the last 40 years now I understand why you're doing it because you don't want to get sued and you know that if your patient ends up with diabetes but you recommended the government guidelines you can't be sued and if your patient if this is the Gary Fett key territory if your patient ends up with diabetes and you told them to do the right thing I mean the chance are they're not going to end up with diabetes. That's the irony, but something happens and somebody sees that you put them on a low carb diet You can then be sued Who's going to take that risk only the really caring doctor is prepared to take that risk for themselves to genuinely help their patients Yeah Thankfully because of Dr. Fetties I've been murdered them if I've been accepted in the Australian guidelines, national guidelines for the treatment of diabetes is a low carb diet And that that actually protected people and like me I had I had someone who was actually I wasn't even a colleague but he was a he was a doctor here that just seemed to just have a problem with me and so he tried to Try to make a claim behind my back against the same that I supported the potentially dangerous carnivore diet And and try to try to you know get me in trouble like Dr. Fettie got in trouble And I made up a whole bunch of other things I mean just like really You know Fictitious and so it's easy to sort of disprove which didn't really help it help his case But I was at least able to just say like listen, carnivore diet is a key to genetic diet or just the key to genetic diet is is now part of the national schedule for I mean here's the link that a carnivore diet is a key to genetic diet that's what this is so this is not fringe of fringe opinion This is mainstream medicine now and and thankfully that was was dismiss it didn't go anywhere so Yeah, I think that that you sort of have to I mean as Dr. Fettie said you know once you see this you can't unsee this you know he Unfortunately having to cut off people's limbs with a diet that Futs and things like that that they were getting the product and he was having to to amputate these And he found putting the more indicated genetic diets stop them from needing A patient or as radical an amputation as they need it previously and I mean that's I mean how can you not do that for your patients I know how can you say okay, well don't do that and how can you as a nutritionist or a dietitian or some other person in the medical system say no you're not allowed to do that And leg off like that's insane that we've onto that So yeah, I think that thankfully you know it's that's at least starting to be more acceptable but I think out of the way I do it I my first interview I ever did was with Dr. Sean Baker on his first podcast human former dollars podcast and we were talking sort of a lot about this or the corner where diet and all that sort of stuff and and he sort of asked me like so what are you going to do are you going to how is this going to affect your practice and I said well I just I just plan on getting in a lot of trouble Yeah, I can't I can't not do this for people you know this is the right thing it's not ethical I don't think it's ethical to withhold something that I that I know can help them So that's just sort of going to help it roll those dice Yeah, so yeah, I think that's the only thing you can do I'm conscious of your time do you still have a bit or do you need to wrap up? Yeah, sure yeah, if you've got another question, no, yeah, lovely. Yeah, well I I do Um, there's a couple more things that I wanted to ask you about. I'm one thing I I saw from some of your videos which I thought was was quite nice and something I've played around with in my head thinking that you know with these food The food misinformation and the guidelines being what they were that this would just bring about eating disorders and this this code and this is something I believe you have Experience with that you wrote about where you talked about food cravings and eating disorders and how they can sort of Other and I think that was that was sort of leading to my next question which was a harkum diet you would have booked about the harkum diet about for the optimal diet then and and how this that can help And I also wanted to update at least food cravings as well and and and I also wondered sort of as anything change from 14 years ago or so when you wrote that to now with the As well. That's a good question actually so um that the first book I wrote was in 2004 and I could have written it about 20 years earlier because it was something that fascinated me in my first job I graduated from Cambridge I became a management consultant which is ridiculous because you don't know anything so how can you consult anyone but anyway they do that and I got posted over to Boston because I think I was about the only person prepared to sort of just go over there on my own and work 135 hours a week or whatever it was And any time I did get time off I didn't have any friends I hadn't met anyone over there I was working too hard so I don't end up in a bookstore and I was eating really badly I was just trying to you know I literally was working 17 hour days so I was trying to keep myself awake and I was grabbing some M&Ms which were always in the kitchen over in the workplace and of course you get a big sugar high and then you get the sugar crash and then you need something else I was just in this constant roller coaster over how can I get more energy and of course it gives you less energy because you just end up putting on weight and feeling sluggish and just not being able to access your own bodies, stores of energy so it was it was quite a sort of personal experience but not one that I had much time to explore at the time so I'm in these bookstores and US bookstores were just 20 years ahead of the UK and you could just I mean we didn't have Starbucks in the UK then so I get this lovely milky cappuccino and they would just put you like there's a seating area and they'd just say take a book off the shelf it doesn't matter if you're not going to buy it just browse it, read it if you buy it that's great if you put it back just put it back in nice condition it's like wow this is amazing and I started reading about things like food intolerance and yeast syndrome as it was called candida all because really early explorations of imbalancing gut flora and what impact this could have on the whole physiology of the body and then of course hyperglycemia which at the time was just not something that was generally being talked about but now it is just so mainstream the idea that you can have blood sugar highs and lows and not just as a diabetic but anybody eating the sort of recommended advice so I was really trying to understand food cravings at that time because I was experiencing them and I'd observe things like well I never crave salmon and green beans or you know scrambled eggs I'm craving carbohydrates but basically it's just carbs and it's particular carbs and I guess that's when I really started trying to understand food and learning about food so my first because the same is called wide-overy when all you want is to be slim that could have been written 20 years not 20 years earlier quite but you know certainly 10 years earlier and it explored those conditions and it looked at a lot of literature that I'd come across where doctors would be writing about their patients saying oh and my patient Shirley was going to the 7/11 at 3 o'clock in the morning and buying cartons of ice cream and crate loads of cookies and couldn't stop and it's like well you're onto something here you're exploring the condition of hyperglycemia but you're explaining what's happening when people are out of the normal blood glucose range but you're then not making the connection that the minute they go for those kind of things your blood glucose is just going to lurch on naturally high then it's going to go unnaturally low because the bodies not going to get it into that magic sort of one teaspoon of glucose in your in your you know the four grams in your whole bloodstream so you're just messing this whole thing up and it's why if you have one biscuit you then can't stop if you start on the M&Ms you can't stop I mean it was explaining so many different things then I started looking at what is food and why do we need to eat and then I started noticing things like nature puts food in if you look at the macro nutrients and I have this little chart that I use in presentations over on one side you've got a pure carbohydrate and there's only one on the planet and that's chakrosis it's got no protein no fat no nutrients completely useless but it's your only pure carb and of course honey which is just sticky sugar over on the other side you've got pure fats which would be your olives or oil your coconut oil and then everything else in between butter to let this contains protein so you put this sort of protein bar across the top you've got stuff that's providing plant protein and you've got stuff that's providing animal protein so then you say that's really interesting protein is in everything nature is providing food that vegans do eat and they are carb proteins and they are your grains your legumes your vegetables and your fruits and then nature is providing foods that vegans don't eat things that you eat which is the animal foods which is meat fish eggs and dairy and it's really rare that nature puts fat and carbohydrate in the same food at the same time in fact it pretty much only does it with nuts and seeds and avocado and of those the ones that you'll find really difficult to limit if you've got a weight problem and nuts and if you start on nuts and you're trying to lose weight that's not going to be a good move because you're just going to want more because they have that unique food fat carb combo. And the fake food companies have realized that the fat carb combo is completely irresistible. So think about all the foods that you crave that you can't stop eating once you start. They're a fat carb combo. So they're the ice cream to the cookie, the doughnuts, the biscuits, the cakes, even crisps now. They've got fat in them, but they put sugar in them as well. And of course, they've got carbohydrate because they're potato chips. So I really started to understand food more. What is real food and what is fake food? And why can we not resist this fake food? And it was the start of my journey down the route of we've just not got to eat that stuff. We've got no chance. You know, I then became a board director at Cardiff Metropolitan University. They happened to have a food science lab. They took me around the food science lab as one of the board directors. I thought this is hilarious. You have no idea what else I do in my spare time. And I'm watching these students being fed some crisps. And then they write up this report and they say, what was the first experience in your mouth? How long did it last in your mouth? Was it fat enough? Was it sugar enough? Was it sweet enough? Was it salty enough? Put your form back in through the hatch and then they'll give you something that's been tweaked. And they just keep doing that all day long until they get the perfect pringle. And they know that if you put one in your mouth, you are not going to be able to stop. And you're going to want to buy pringles again. I've heard people describe dunking doughnuts as crack cocaine. That's what they're after. So that was me starting to understand what food addiction is all about. You can't eat this stuff in moderation. If you're a food addict, if you ever find yourself overeating any process food, you have to stop eating processed food. You can no more have that in moderation than an alcoholic can have alcohol in moderation. You just can't. You've just got to stop having it. And then you will find that the more even you can keep your blood glucose, the easier you will find it to control your eating. And you only have that teaspoon in your entire bloodstream at any one time. You have an apple. You are shooting out of the normal range. You've probably got four times the level of glucose that your body wants. Your body has to call upon the pancreas to release insulin to attach to the glucose to take it out of the bloodstream. If the body gets that just right and you're back within that incredibly narrow band, great. But it's not going to get it right every time. And the more you do it, the less chance you've got of it getting right. And if your blood glucose is slightly on the lower side of normal, your body is going to make you crave food. So almost the single best tip if you want to control your eating is manage your blood glucose level. Because if you let your blood glucose level dip below normal and you're not fat adapted, because that's the time when the body will just naturally call upon body fat or or triglycerides in the bloodstream or whatever to put some energy back into your bloodstream, your body is going to try to get you to eat some fast carbohydrates because that's what you're used to fueling on. And you said something on this earlier on, it's about working with your body, not working against your body. Trying to eat junk food in moderation is working against your body, trying to eat real food, really moderating your carbon tape, because you're naturally eating the most nutrient dense foods, meat, fish, eggs and dairy. That's the way to work with your body. And then the final tip, you know, of my three sort of eat real food, choose the food for the nutrients. The third tip is eat no more than three times a day. If you're grazing the whole time, you know, you're going to end up the size of the cow because that's what they do. And you're going to mess up your blood sugar all day long. So just stop it. If you don't like breakfast, don't eat it. That's you eating twice a day. If you're too busy for lunch and you had a great meal last night, that's great. That's you down to one meal a day. I'm a three meal a day person, but it's whatever works for you. I think that's great advice. And it's something that I think all of us have noticed. I mean, you do try to like the Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme. My God. I, the first time I tried a Krispy Kreme in the hotline pond, I came out, I was, I mean, that was the plutonic form of a donut. I think that was this is what supposed to be. And I'm, of course, I mean, good luck not eating the entire box of Krispy Kreme. That was such a great business model. They opened them up so slowly. It was like a 45 minute line to even get an order. And then we get, well, okay, we're waiting, wait a 45 minutes. Obviously we're getting like nine boxes. Not finishing all those, you know, by the time you get home. So, or when you get home. And, you know, and it works. And we're just, you know, eating ourselves into into an early grave. And, and so, you know, that was one, that was one critique of the carnivore diet from, um, um, Rhonda Patrick. And she said that, well, in all of these extreme elimination diets, many sort of cutting out a whole bunch of things. The natural tendency is to just sort of eat less over time. And so really it's just calories in calories out. And of course, you know, that's problematic just on its face. But what I thought was, was, um, a bit strange was, was, how she couldn't see how, how amazing that was, how important that was that just naturally, eating naturally, letting your body figure it out, not counting calories, not we're bringing out the calculator and trying to figure out your macros, we're just eating intuitively. Your body will naturally eat to your biological design, we'll eat exactly what you will reduce the calorie intake or your food intake, I should say. And, and, and temper to exactly your biological demands. I mean, how do you see how, how important that is? And, um, you know, that's, that's, that's something that the food scientists are trying to subvert. They're, they're trying to go exactly opposite of that. They're trying to screw up your natural senses so that you over eat, so that you can't stop eating, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're money making machines. If they can get us to buy our food and then keep eating their food, um, you, I missed a bit of your question earlier on when you said sort of have I changed over the time. So I first wrote, um, so it's nearly 20 years ago. Why do I ever eat, came out? I was vegetarian at the time of eating that. So I would talk about not mixing your foods, not replicating that fat carb combo. So I would give the example, um, if, if you eat oat biscuits on their own, you've got a limit. If you eat cheese on its own, you've got a limit. If you put the crackers and the cheese together, you've got no limits. So eat the way that nature intended you to eat. And because I was vegetarian at the time, I would then say, okay, remember proteins in everything. So think of meals as either carb meals, which is your legumes, your grains, your vegetables and your salads, or your fat meals, which for a vegetarian would be your sort of egg cheese, um, yogurt, dairy, based meals. But don't go sort of mixing those two and vegetables are fine because they're essentially water, so you can have those with fat meals or, you know, so I, I might have an omelet, um, with some coleslaw made with different vegetables, or I might have brown rice with a, um, a veggie curry or something like that. So those would be my sort of carb meals or fat meals. And it actually worked really well. And I, you know, I could not believe how spectacular the weight last was. And I was getting, I put my email in the first book because I thought, oh, you know, nobody's going to read this. Um, I started getting emails from people saying, oh, my goodness, you know, this, this really works. And where were you when I was at university stuff in my face? And it's like, well, I was where you are. I was at university stuff in my face and not really understanding what was going on. But I kind of, you know, I worked it out and wanted to share it with you, guys. But how has that evolved over the years? Well, I'm not vegetarian anymore. Obviously, I ended up, um, not being vegetarian in 2010. I went to a Western price conference in London. I was fortunate enough to hear Barry Groves resting peace, um, do a presentation on the carnivore diet. And, um, natural evolution and why we should be eating in the way that we were. And then I heard Sally Falon Morell talking about nutrients. And how would I know this? I mean, you don't learn nutrition at school when she was saying, and of course, Vitamin A comes in two forms. There's retinal that we find in animal foods and there's carotene that we find in plant foods. And yes, you can convert carotene to retinal, which is the form that the body wants, but not everybody can convert. And Diabetics, interestingly, are particularly poor converters. And I was sat there thinking, oh, my goodness, because when I'd lapsed into veganism, very, very soon afterwards, I'd ended up at Moorfields Eye Hospital, which is the primary, um, Elite Eye Hospital in the UK with a really unusual eye condition that ended up having me have an operation in each eye separately. I could hardly open my eyes through pain at one point. And I didn't realise at the time what it was. This was 10 years before I saw this Sally Falon. So this was sort of 1999. I'd had this eye trouble saw Sally Falon in 2010. And it was like, why did nobody at the eye hospitals say, right, for something to change, something must have changed? So what have you changed? And then we could probably have worked to out together, you know, Fedas said, what's your diet? Are you eating oily fish? Are you eating liver? I'd be like, well, no, I'm vegetarian. Okay, how many eggs and how much dairy are you eating? Right now, not actually any. You know, it should have been so obvious to the doctors. And I bet even today they don't ask people when they walk in with an eye problem, what are you eating? And particularly young women, have you recently gone vegan or vegetarian? So how am I different now? I'm not vegetarian. I'm even and lower on the carbohydrate because if you're not vegetarian suddenly the meat and the fish meals open up to you and I'm not saying that I it being a natural vegetarian you know somebody said to me would you like a mushroom risotto or something it's like oh my god that'd be so tasty um but I can't eat it knowing that actually the nutrients are going to be in a steak and I'm not carnivoresis and steak and some greens that we grow in the garden or whatever some beetroot that my husband pulled out of the garden yesterday um I don't seem to have a problem with plants I might be diluting myself but my health seems fine eating mostly meat fish eggs and dairy with some vegetables and salads and 85% dark chocolate um and that's me but when I look back at the amount of brown rice beans pulses lentils um veggie sort of carb proteins that I used to eat it it's very very different nowadays yeah well I mean I this is very healthy and that's my my main drive is not to just drive every carrot out of every hand but it really just to just to sort of let people know that that you know again you know if you want to if you want to do these sorts of things and you enjoy them and you feel good with them great but I don't think that people should feel that they are obligated to eat these things if they don't want you and that meat is not bad for you that meat is very for you that's sort of my main thing if I can just sort of get that message out there I'll be happy for for me I just have noticed I mean I originally stopped eating plants simply because I I'd taken the number of classes and I just had a professor that really influenced me because he said he was showing us all these different toxins and carcinogens and the produce that we eat were very blown away by that and he just said that he himself doesn't eat you know vegetables or salads doesn't let kids eat salads and his and his words and which is why I named my talk this plants are trying to kill you and I'm like yep Vince and so I just I stopped that day and I I really never felt better my entire life and I was always very clean and never ate junk food out my mom always cooked every meal um maybe we'd have some box cereals but often often we were we're eating all foods otherwise and um then I slipped off of that because I didn't sort of realize the significance of what I was doing and then just six years ago sort of rediscovered this and went like you know that makes sense because those five years that I was doing this I never felt better my entire life and I've always been trying to get back down I kind of like get back there I just it was just this golden time and I just figured it because you know age 20 to 25 time of life and I was absolutely working out like the crazy person all the time and so I was like well of course you're going to be in great shape and so then at 38 I was already sort of doing keto I just said naturally I wasn't doing keto but I just sort of naturally gravitated away from carbohydrates because they didn't make me feel good and back pain like I'm quite serious back pain and when I I sort of avoided carbohydrates for three four days my back pain went away and like yeah well that's that's what I'm doing and then when I so I was just eating veggies just greens and some lean meat and I was still avoiding fat you know even though I had seen tons and tons and tons of research that I shouldn't be avoiding fat and then I just stopped eating the greens and just started eating more fatty meat a lot more fatty meat and this is the whole calories and calories out thing out the window at least for me because I started eating far more food I probably quintupled my caloric intake and and vastly increased the amount of fat that I was eating and I and I stopped eating the greens and I lost 23 pounds in 10 days so 10 more than days and I just felt amazing after that and so the point that I felt like I was 22 again and I went to what I did at 22 again was I went out and started playing rugby again and went out and started you know playing with my team in Seattle which had always been in the top top leagues in America and now had gone professional and majorly rugby and I felt great I was I was able to push myself even though I hadn't played a full season in three years I felt good enough that I was able to keep up with everybody who it was in great shape and and so after that I just started getting in better and better and better in better shape and I just felt amazing so for me that's why I sort of do this and and when something sort of slipped back in it's not that I've just feel horrible it's not that I get sick it's not that I get diabetes I don't have an autoimmune issue like rheumatoid arthritis or problems I do have patients that have these and I do encourage them to be quite strict because it's more important for them because it's a little and trigger them and so if they want to stay off medications it's sort of important to do that I don't have those problems but when these things sort of slip in I don't feel my best and I really enjoy feeling the best and so you know that that's why I do it but I certainly you know it's just encourage people to do what's right for them so that you're definitely not so I'm still I'm still a fan even though you you eat vegetables who knows I mean maybe one day I'll try it and just think go why didn't I try that sooner but it is convenient we eat out quite a lot it's nice going around to people's houses for dinner party and almost at a dinner party whatever they put in front of me I'll eat you know if they put potatoes or even rice or pasta or whatever it's kind of like hey it's not gonna harm me because I don't feel any different the next day um maybe I'll get one day and it does but yeah so do you think they hurt everyone or do you think it is individual well I think I think it's there's individuality in that some people are more sensitive than others and certainly there's certain populations which are native populations like the Native Americans, Native um Australians who are going to be much more susceptible to the uh different chemicals in there I mean you know we we have the advantage that we come from a European background in the sense that we've been our ancestors were exposed to agriculture aged a few years ago and so we've had about 10,000 years of adaptation towards this but the Native Americans Native Australians have not and their health has has severely suffered when I first came to Australia I was told that when you have an Aboriginal patient and Native Australian patient that that whatever their their ages on their sticker add 20 years to that because that's the disease they're getting you need to start considering these people elderly when they're 30 and 40 and because that they're getting diseases of the elderly because their bodies are just breaking down much quicker um and so I think that that that's because of because they did not have exposure to agriculture more than 100 years at most a lot of that especially they've Americans like the plains it plains Indians I mean they're reading bison by large up until the late 1800s when we eradicated all the bison in order to wipe out their food supply and then they had to start going to alternate means of of nutrition and they're health has suffered dramatically since then you can look at the inuit similar sorts of examples nearly no chronic disease or cancer early in the 20th century and then sort of decade by decade sort of creeping up creeping up and increasing that came more westernizing incorporated western civilization but even in you know European populations or other populations in Asia that have had agriculture very long a long time or at the Middle East Mediterranean areas nor they're in Africa obviously Egypt and and the middle and Persia would obviously be sort of centers there are people that that can be a bit more sensitive and have autoimmune conditions have this activity the the molecular mimicry they're reacting to something that's getting in their body whether they're causing um leaky cut and lexins and other short plant toxins are getting in or just bacteria slipping in their bodies reacting to the bacteria it's reacting to something and what is is that well you get this molecular mimicry and you get sensitized to your own body and then you and then you just start really focusing on that but that doesn't fit with the observed phenomenal which is when you stop eating basically everything you just cut down to a complete elimination diet down to just meat and water really just red meat and water as Dr. Jay Salisbury discovered in the late 1800s that you could actually put autoimmune conditions into remission with a pure red red meat and water diet like rheumatoid arthritis Crohn's and ulcer pleitis you know we're seeing that now so so why would that be you're you're not eating these sorts of things and now all of a sudden you're not introducing something into your body that you're by acting too so now your your antibodies go down and I I track these with my patients I track their antibodies and you can actually see them coming down when this dietary change and then their symptoms improve as well I don't think it's just the bacteria because it can take months and months and months for leaky gut to heal but when you take people off all plants within days they're improving within weeks someone is it can be a complete remission symptomatically from Crohn's for instance and so you know that's not long enough for their gut to heal that Leaky Cuts think that there definitely is something in the plants that we're reacting to. Objectively, plants do have defense chemicals. Some people are back more or less to them. But if if you react, you know, less harshly to lead poisoning than I do, that doesn't mean that lead is good for you. It just means it's less ad-threat. And so, I mean, objectively, they do have toxins. And I think that a lot of people are just been eating plants forever. And so this is just how we feel. And you can sort of improve things. And I hope that you would have felt better once you started incorporating more meat. But, you know, sometimes we just we can only compare ourselves today against ourselves yesterday. And so today we feel good as compared to yesterday or maybe the same or maybe worse. But until you until you have that frame of reference where you've just completely eliminated everything for, you know, 30 days, you don't necessarily know exactly how glued you can possibly feel. And so sometimes I encourage that with my patients to just like, hey, look, just try for 30 days, see how you feel. And, you know, then you could sort of add things back in and say, well, I really like this. Maybe I'll add this back in, see how I react to it. And this, okay, that was fine. Great. Now I can add this other thing back in. But I certainly found that when when I didn't have major medical issues, I was always very healthy. And just by getting rid of the greens, I literally felt a thousand times better. And I was already not even ready to address. And so I just found that even some little things getting getting stuck in but make me just sort of just dull the edge of it. Maybe not all that horrible. But I've noticed a difference. And so it can be that, you know, just because we've had that experience, we just started this baseline level of feeling that we always felt and we sort of say, I feel good or bad in comparison to that. But when, you know, that that's not the same thing as getting rid of all this stuff out of your diet. And then see, okay, how was the best I can possibly feel? And maybe it should possibly feel, maybe it's not a lot much better than now. Go happily go back to, you know, eating, eating whatever. But it could be that you feel amazing. Me personally, after about two weeks, three weeks, I looked at, I looked back on my life and realized that I felt like garbage my entire life, except for the years and right now. And so I was actually quite upset, sort of robbed my birthright. It actually feeling amazing all the time. And so, and that's what that's what people tell me when they try it and they give it 30 days and they say the same thing. You're very compelling. I might be trying it. Yeah, well, you know, the thing too is, you know, 30 days is not all that long. You know, Joe, you're said, said the same thing. You know, Kayla has daughter. She put her from a Toronto arthritis very serious from a Toronto arthritis and transmission. Getting rid of salads. They were doing keto, a lot of meat and fatty meat and salads. And she found that she got rid of the salads and she actually felt great. It didn't have any flare ups. And then she said, this is stupid. Salads aren't doing anything to me. She had a salad the next day. She had a flare up. And she said, okay, all right, maybe I need to be completely strict on this. If you convinced her father, Jordan, because he proved dramatically with his self on high fat keto diet. But he was still having a lot of anxiety and depression issues. And he said, and she said, well, why don't you just try for 30 days? And he said, you know, in the grand scheme of things that this can help my anxiety, it's can help me feel better and help me, you know, live all the rest of my life in a better way. What is 30 days? 30 days is not even hanged by your fingers from window sill for 30 days. I mean, that's nothing. And so we tried it and he said within three weeks, his anxiety cleared up. And he said, salad was doing this to me. Yeah. Quite shocked, but it can be quite quite impressive what happens. But it's 30 days. It's not all that long. And we need him back in the world right now. Don't we? I guess thinking. Yeah, absolutely. Big thinkers who are prepared to shape things up, whatever you think of what they think about, just let them think. That's it. Communicate it. Yeah. Have you come across Thomas Sohl before? Yes, only recently actually. Yeah. Love that man. If I could get in contact with him, if anyone knows him and connect in contact with him to try to pitch a carnivore die to him, like, I mean, I would just, I would love to do it and just keep that guy just healthy, happy and his brain just firing away as it always has. I just absolutely love that guy. It's your bedtime now, isn't it? Cranky. It would be my bedtime in Australia time. Yeah, no, probably is. Well, so I thank you so much. It's been absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed talking to you and I know everyone will enjoy listening to this as well. Can you let everybody know how to find you and if you have any speaking events coming up or anything else that you'd like to share with listeners? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. It has been really fun and time has just flown. I'm on ZoeHarkham.com as a website. I'm on Twitter. I don't do Instagram, but I'm just at ZoeHarkham on Twitter. And who knows? I'm due a visit. I do get invites to come down to Australia. So I need to at some point we had pets for quite a long time that we just didn't want to leave because they were rescue animals and they get all upset. But we lost the last one now. So yeah, I know it's sad, but they had great lives. They can't complain. They really did have the best of times. We don't have that anymore. So who knows? We'll see whether it be next year or the year after. I don't know, but I will be down there at some point. And if not, as you say, there's plenty on YouTube to entertain you. Yeah, definitely. So if you're around, it'd be lovely to see you in person. And yeah, I'll buy you a steak. We'll see how you can get that ball rolling on your 30 days. Or maybe you'll have tried it by then. Maybe I'll be there by then. I'll take you off on there, actually. Well, we'll work out the dates and sort something out when you're over. Come to Wales. We have beef and lamb. I look out the window and those cows and their sheep. So there's my dinner. Yes. Yeah. Thank you so much. So it's been absolute pleasure. I thank you. Your links in our description and people can find more of you there. Thank you so much. Change your practice and based on that, I don't know. What are some hard facts? Well, hard facts are that, you know, and in botany and hard tools, we know that there are certain voisings in there that that plant makes to deter insects and animals from eating it, you know, especially in the bean, right? Because the bean is a seed, right? All organisms protect their babies more than anything by the March. And a seed is a plant's baby.