(Dr Joel Kahn) Klaus, there's
been so much confusion
and fighting and misinformation
that the public has no
idea what to eat anymore.
And at least in the last decade,
the most dangerous
figure in that confusion
has been Nina Teicholz
and her book "The Big Fat Surprise".
It is no surprise to us
that knew that science
that it's wrong,
and now confirmed by the
best database there is.
Her book has harmed people,
and we need to call her out for it.
- Dr Joel Kahn, thank you
so much for doing this.
What is the big breaking news this week?
- Yeah, Klaus, the breaking news is
a decade of fighting,
a decade of debating,
a decade of appearing on
Joe Rogan for four hours
and talking about saturated fat,
saturated fat, saturated fat.
Everybody's confused.
The big breaking news is that's over.
The most respected, the
most esteemed research group
in the world, the Cochrane Database,
has concluded what we knew long ago.
Excess saturated fat in the diet
will increase your risk of dying
of the number one cause in
the United States, in Britain,
in the Western world,
heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms.
We don't need to die of those deaths.
- Mm-hmm.
And can you just talk a little
bit more about the study?
What does it show?
How many scientific papers did it review?
And, yeah, we could just talk
about some of the specifics,
that'd be really great.
- Well, this new super-review
by the Cochrane Database,
so respected worldwide
for their ability to pick
only the highest quality research projects
and incorporate them in their analysis.
They looked a 16 of the best studies,
59,000 people, very detailed
information about their diet.
Some had high saturated fat
diets by design of the study.
Some had low saturated fat diets,
more meat, more butter, more cheese,
less meat, less butter, less cheese.
At the end of the day,
they found that within two years,
we can enjoy a 21% reduction
in our risk of heart attack, stroke,
of congestive heart failure,
dying of heart disease.
And if we do more than the average,
if we change our diet
more than just average
so there's essentially
no meat, butter, cheese,
turkey, and pork,
we'll see even bigger results.
So they threw out the weak studies.
The threw out the tainted studies.
They threw out the studies
that were conflicted
by funding from industry
because the dairy industry
has done a very big job
of funding a lot of these
studies that led to confusion.
They only incorporated
the highest quality study,
and that's what we need,
trusted comments, trusted science,
and the conclusion is clear, we're done.
The big fat war is over.
- And how do you think this new data
will change the current guidelines,
whether it's dietary guidelines
and the information put
out by the powers that be
about nutrition and health?
- Well, in the United States,
we're just coming up to the next cycle
of the USDA
guidelines on food.
And that's a very long process
with initially a committee
making recommendations,
and then the full panel approving.
There's already been a movement
before this new major study came out
to propose to the USDA
that foods like bacon,
salami, pepperoni, be labeled
as cancer-causing foods
based on the analysis that's
gone on since at least 2015
and really has not been
questioned or second-guessed.
It's the real data that bacon
can lead to a risk of colorectal cancer
and other foods don't,
it's the processed meats.
But now we have ammunition
to go to the USDA
and ask them, can we incorporate,
their already recommendations
that you limit saturated fat in the diet.
They have a comment in
the current guidelines
in the United States,
as little cholesterol as possible.
And I believe it's less than
7% of the calories in the diet
should be from saturated fat.
Now with this new big
Cochrane Database study,
we need to go back when there's hearings
and an opportunity for
appearances at Congress
to call for even tighter
recommended reductions,
'cause that does translate to school meals
and institutional meals
and dollars that are
spent in this country.
And more beans will be
bought and less beef,
and more water will be bought
and less full-fat dairy,
and there'll be more
salads and less cheese,
because that's how the dollars are spent
based on these guidelines.
So we need to get politically active
and demonstrate that this confusion
that you've seen in front
of the USDA and Congress
in the United States
is all been a charade,
and the science is very clear and strong.
- Mm, and before we talk about
the sources and misinformation
and maybe disinformation,
can you just talk a little
bit about the background
and the story of saturated fat?
You seem to be a bit of
an expert on this topic.
- Yes, when there began to be a real rise
in the rate of heart attacks in the 1940s,
after World War II,
people came back smokers,
people came back eating rich meals.
We soon had drive-ins and
fast food restaurants.
Number of heart attacks
started to skyrocket,
and our government in the United States
started funding projects
like the Framingham study
and the Minnesota Epidemiology study.
Soon it became apparent
diet and heart were related.
That was a whole new
hypothesis in the early 1950s.
And it focused more and more on a war
between was it saturated fat,
that's, again, butter, cheese, meats;
was it sugar?
And the overwhelming data actually was
excess of either are not good for you,
but it was the saturated fat
that directly led to
your cholesterol going up
that could directly lead
to arterial blockage,
heart attack, stroke,
aneurysm, loss of a leg,
erectile dysfunction, and such.
And it went to the point
that there were what are
called metabolic ward studies.
Let's take people and put
'em in a scientific study
for eight weeks where they eat
only the food you give them
at the National Institutes of Health.
There's a very famous equation,
more saturated fat in the diet,
the higher your cholesterol will be.
It's very predictable.
And that led to
governmental recommendations
around the world.
Every guideline around the world,
whether we're looking
at Canada, Australia,
England, or any other
health-oriented society,
including the United States,
have said over and over,
reduce saturated fat,
reduce saturated fat,
because there actually had
been more than 300 studies
in metabolic wards that
confirmed this relationship.
Eat more cheese, butter, and meats,
you'll see your cholesterol go up.
And if you wait 10 years,
heart attack, stroke,
aneurysms are a concern.
So now we have some clarity
that that was the true science,
that was the true message.
And it's never possible to get every study
consistent and in line,
but with this high-quality review,
we know that the best
data should guide you
to eat from that beautiful
rainbow-colored plant dish
that we all recognize as the science.
- Definitely, and can you talk about
some of the sources of misinformation,
some of the kind of leading
sources of corruption
that have led to people being
confused about saturated fat,
thinking it's really, really healthy?
- So we've gotten confused.
We've had major magazines,
Time Magazine, butter is back,
New York Times, butter is healthy.
And it reads like a spy novel.
In late 2008 in Mexico City,
the International Dairy
Community got together
and they struggled with the issue,
the public's getting smart.
They're buying soy milk
instead of cow milk.
What are we gonna do about this?
They actually published these notes;
this isn't speculation.
They said, "We're gonna find
researchers and influencers
"that'll start praising
dairy and high-fat dairy
"and butter and cheese and such."
That was 2008.
2010, a paper is published
that challenges saturated
fat and heart disease.
The senior author is funded
by the dairy industry.
Nobody paid attention to that;
the headlines were all over the world.
Questions come up about
many decades of research,
maybe saturated fat isn't bad for you.
Second paper gets published like that,
these research papers
were widely criticized.
But once the news is out,
and once there is confusion,
the media likes clickbait headlines
that challenge the conventional norm.
And then there's Time Magazine
and then there's Nine Teicholz
"The Big Fat Surprise".
There's money in the dairy industry,
there's money in the beef industry.
There's the famous Beef Checkoff program,
where government of the
United States provides dollars
promoting cheese and beef
and pays for some of the advertising.
A research article just a couple weeks ago
that suggested meat was an
important component of the diet,
you go to the very end of the study,
you see that it was funded
by the Beef Checkoff program
that our government pays for.
So that is the back story,
that there's been a concerted effort
between the milk, got
milk? mustache campaign,
between the idea that chocolate
milk was good for athletes
and you see signs in high school gyms,
so that children get increase in the,
focused on the idea
that milk is necessary,
when the real science hadn't changed.
It was just a struggling industry
striving to confuse the public
like the tobacco industry
did so well for decades.
But ultimately the real truth comes out,
and this Cochrane Database indicates
that that was just a
unfortunate and costly,
and costly in term of lives
kinda path that we took for a decade.
But it's time to squash that
and clarify for the public.
I hope the headlines
through Plant Based News
and other outlets will be as big and bold
as the butter was back headline,
'cause that's what we need
to catch the community's
imagination and attention.
- And if you had to pick one person
who is kind of the most dangerous,
who's kind of one person that's pushed
this high-fat, saturated
fat is healthy narrative
over the years, who would it be
if you had to pick one person?
- You know, there's been
a whole cast of characters
that has led to this confusion
for the past 10 years,
but I would put the head
character as Nina Teicholz,
because she had been researching a book
for a number of years
that came out in 2014,
"The Big Fat Surprise",
encouraging people to eat
meat and cheese and butter
and ridiculed scientists
who'd been working for decades
on identifying a very
sophisticated studies
that saturated fat from
animal products was an issue.
She completely discounted
all of their research
without doing any of her own.
But because of her upbeat personality
and a real concerted media effort,
that book won awards year after year.
It was praised in medical journals,
a non-peer-reviewed trade book,
praised by The Lancet out of London,
one of the most esteemed medical journals
as a breakthrough book.
And it so frustrated many of us,
and she would be on TV
shows and talk shows
and would be standing in front of counters
full of red meat,
indicating this is where
people should be eating.
And people rallied around her,
Dr. Mulhotra and Gary Taubes
and some of the luminaries
that, all of a sudden,
the message is getting out
to hundreds of thousands
and millions of people.
Had that not happened,
had that book "The Big Fat Surprise"
not distorted the science,
had it not won those awards,
had she not been on the talk shows
rallied around by other people
with the ability to reach a lot of people,
I think the one cover of
Time Magazine would've faded,
but she sort of stoked
the fire over and over,
which is why the book
"The Big Fat Surprise",
the surprise is her
science was never right,
and surprise is the science
over the last five or six decades
was spot on right from the 1950s.
Cut back, cut out meat, cheese, butter,
pork, turkey, chicken, and enjoy plants.
- And what do you think of somebody
that I think's spearheading
the movement in a little way,
certainly in the UK, he's
called Dr. Aseem Malhotra.
He's from London and he's
very, very well-spoken.
You debated him in 2016.
Do you give any credibility to the ideas
that he puts forward,
and what do think of him?
- Yeah, Dr. Mulhotra and I
have very similar training.
He trained as an interventional
cardiologist in London.
I did the same across the United States
and in Detroit, Michigan.
We both have a platform for health.
But he chose to focus on the controversy,
of which there isn't,
but the controversy that saturated fat,
butter, cheese, and meats
may actually be advantageous
for your heart health,
completely in the face of
decades of good science.
He did know science himself.
And I think he did a lotta
harm, a lotta damage.
We debated four years ago.
He's very good in front of the camera.
He has a great James Bond accent
that plays well in the United States.
He's well-spoken and educated.
It's just the message is wrong.
We happen, by coincidence,
to both have been in a
little town in Italy.
It's called Pioppi, it's a town of 300.
It's only famous 'cause
that's where Dr. Ancel Keys,
American researcher, lived
every winter for 40 years.
And there's a museum
honoring the Mediterranean diet in Pioppi.
That's why I went there,
it's a beautiful coastal
town south of Naples.
He went there for a week,
I went there for a day.
His book claims that based on one week
in a town of 300,
he's got a program for
everybody everywhere.
And surprise, butter, cheese, eggs, meat,
poultry all should be added to your diet.
It couldn't be more wrong, it
couldn't be more distorted,
it couldn't be more manipulated.
No fan, this new review clearly confirms
that this was just black magic.
It wasn't science,
and I hope that he'll
pursue the message he has
to reduce added sugar and
processed foods in the diet.
We all agree, great platform.
But stop encouraging people
to add butter, meat, eggs,
cheese, and poultry to their diet.
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