Dr Zoe Harcombe PhD - Facts About Food To Help Real Foodies Fight Back

anyway I'm on my own today I'm gonna be talking what I'm trying to do with this session we get a whole heap of nonsense don't we guys we eat what we eat it's really healthy we all look terrific we all feel terrific and we get so much knowledge from other people you'll clean yourself you're going to clog up your arteries and fall over and die any minute and I just want to take four of the most common bits of nonsense that we get and to arm this audience with some facts about food to help us fight back so the four beliefs that I want to shatter in the next 25 minutes are the three and a half thousand calorie formula and the idea the very idea that red meat is full of saturated fat and all these wonderful plant foods are full of nothing but unsaturated fat the notion and Trudy is going to cover this a lot more in the afternoons I'm literally just going to touch on it but the idea that total fat especially saturated fat is going to kill you and if the fat doesn't kill you then the cholesterol will and then I just want to end because I think we're all going to be giving upbeat messages during these talks I want to end by saying what should we be eating or watching our approach to food B and I'll suggest something at the end so straight into the calorie formula and what I'm going to be getting you to do is we've got a stop defending because we're not the public health advisors we're not here to defend did we reverse type 2 diabetes or did when do we not they're the ones who've set the agenda we got to start lobbing some questions back so here are the kind of questions that you've got a log back here is the statement of the calorie formula from the British Dietetic Association it has two parts a pound contains three and a half thousand calories so to lose the pound you need to create a deficit after an hour thousand guys either by eating less or doing more this is the heart of all the calories in the calories out nonsense so the question we ask back anytime we get people saying oh it's all about calories is please can you source and prove the calorie formula because let's just start off with the one-pound equals three and a half thousand calories I fail to get any public health advisor and you'll see how I've approached in a second actually put this together but this is me as a background in math just playing with a few numbers one pound equals 454 grams decimal places aside that is a fact one gram of fat equals nine calories not correct a pound of adipose human fat tissue approximately 87 percent lipid also not a fact and you put all of those together this is me being really as kind as I can and you end up with a pound equals three thousand five hundred and fifty five calories and you think well that's close enough except on 14 this is still on the national obesity forum website because they are of course our best friends at the moment but they do have this statement one fewer 50 calorie plain biscuit per day over the year you're going to lose five pounds one fewer biscuit whatever I mean it just doesn't happen you're out by a plane digestive biscuit already on the best that I can do with your numbers no biscuits required your weight is going to go wild so let's have a look at what we can actually do with those numbers we'll keep the 1 pound equals 454 grams a gram of fat now this is really interesting because the original nine calories for a gram of fat was actually 9.3 it was the work of Rudner and Atwater back in 1901 and we haven't revisited it since so I meant to say the references here are all on Zoey Holcomb comm /ph see so I haven't gone enlisted Vishnevsky 1958 and all that kind of nonsense they're all on there for those of you who like the paper references so the lower end of what a gram of fat could be we have the work of Jeff Lipsy from 2002 when a group were asked to relook at this and he said we think a gram of fat is about eight point seven calories now the nine point five comes from the 1958 which not speak paper where he said I think it's about nine point five and the guys actually said it was nine point three now when you start playing with the numbers those decimal places really count and they count on human fat tissue as well because the article where I got the idea that human factor she could be 87 percent lipid is the very same 1911 bozo had article that said it might be 72% lipid that's a heck of a range now we play with those calculations and we put in the lower number or the higher number put in the lower number we can make a pound equal 2843 carrots put in the higher number and we get almost the identical number that wish lava ski was using back in 1958 but there is one heck of a range and if you look at those numbers in the brackets at the end if you think you can maintain weight currently with one pound equaling three and a half thousand calories and in fact one pound equals 2,800 you will gain 84 pounds each year if on the other hand it's bigger than we think it is you're going to lose almost two stone each year that is how barking this stuff is and yet go to journal articles pick up any women's men women health myself those are the two best magazines for the examples of this they will have some diet features saying throw a half thousand fewer calories deficit you'll lose a pound oh no you want so where does the calorie formula come from here's where I think it might come from but again you won't get this from public health advisors they haven't got a clue so there's a book that's now out of copyright so you can get it freely available on the internet references again at the bottom diet and health Lulu hunt Peters lived out of America I think it was Los Angeles I kind of see her a bit as the Gillian McKeith of her daily lover but she wrote this book and in the book she said 500 calories is about two ounces of fat two ounces per day is about four pounds months you think does that little calculation and she goes slightly wrong with the mass because if you actually cut back by thousand calories a day you reduce your weight by 104 pounds in fat alone by the end of the air as I like to point out I'm about 110 pounds so if I cut back by a thousand calories a day which should be achievable I eat quite a lot I'm due to be 6 pounds in a year's time me I should have lost lean tissue in water on top so I probably should have died you know somewhere a couple of months it that's how crazy this is and we have people coming in saying you know I want to be losing at least two pounds a week you know 104 pounds a year isn't fast enough for me we'll check out the fan study from 2007 and see what actually happens when you follow calorie deficit people for four years they're lucky if they're a cup of kilos down at the end of that period so I think she came up with this because she actually said in the book the words are clever I wrote them myself and I don't think she's been cocky I think she's saying I'm original here she might have invented this whole stuff and nobody since knows what's happening so this is the group of people that I asked that little question that I just told you guys can you source the formula and prove it British Dietetic Association they're going to crop up a bit today I suspect National Health Service national obesity forum Department of Health National Institute for clinical excellence as it was when I asked them back in June 2009 National Institute of care and health excellence as they like to call themselves now dietitians in obesity management it's an arm of the BDA looking specifically at obesity and the Association for the study of obesity so the first three no idea try the Department of Health try the Association for the study of obesity so I did and those four then came back as follows the Department of Health it's Department of Health UK's Martin fill the differently is unaware of the rationale behind the weight formula you refer to I don't refer to it's not my formula I think it's a heap of ants it's your formula and you don't even know where it comes from National Institute of care and health excellence our evidence body in the UK while we are shortness quote for you while we are an evidence-based body we have no evidence for one pound equals three and half healthy calories okay then we had dieticians in obesity management and I'll bring them up together the Association for the study of obesity working independently quite impressive came up with the same study which makes you think there probably is only that one study and the dietitian said there's good evidence that a 600 calorie deficit produces a weight difference of about five kilograms at one year and the Association for the study of obesity put a bit of meat on the bones we then found out this study has 12 people on that 600 calorie a day deficit so apply the formula they should have lost sixty two point five seven pounds of fat each and every person doesn't matter what age what gender what starting weight was a formula is a formula we all start off with the same formula and they want average 11 pounds lighter and the range was 0.8 to 17.2 now I hope Andy doesn't worry me saying my husband you know 0.8 you just went to the toilet you know it's not much it's not a spectacular weight loss at the end of a one-year clinical trial and we have this small issue of fat versus water that was sixty two point five seven pounds of fat probably you should be enough at about 80 pounds in terms of lean tissue and water and he's the big killer guys I've asked all these organizations we have one study with 12 people we have 1.5 billion overweight people in the world and we can't even get within a multiple of 5 on 12 people and you want to have a debate about calories in and calories out right second one animal fat is saturated plant fat is unsaturated I'm going to give you one question now and then there's a slightly different one at the end but to keep the pace up shout out very quickly if you've seen this in South Africa I did use this slide because I loved it here's a sirloin steak here's some eggs here's some oily fish here's some lard almonds olive oil and low-fat milk do any of these all of these how many of these shout out any that you think have got more saturated than unsaturated fat lard now we've got shakes of nofa lard from the front because I know they know not read to me I mean come on read me get Sebastian okay so this one this is the only one that's got more saturated fat than unsaturated fat some listeners stick on the numbers now these are all per hundred grams of food so you can immediately just see them as percentages so what you've got here is the total fat the first number saturated fat as the second number so you can see that only in the skim milk do you actually have more saturated fat than unsaturated fat because all the other foods have more unsaturated and saturated fat not the one is better or worse for you than the other but here's where we have a bit of fun because our dear public health advisors say have oily fish you remember supposed to be avoiding total fat and saturated fat have oily fish but do not have red meat well it's got twice the total fat of Road me and one and a half times the saturated fat what about this olive oil fourteen times the total fat seven times the saturated fat of rate means and yet we're not supposed to have one we suppose either oh yes but we wouldn't have a hundred grams of olive oil I hear you say no but one tablespoon of olive oil has got more saturated fat than a 100 gram pork chop so if you know a little bit about food and that's what this presentation is about it's nonsense and I'd like to start a renaming campaign I'd like to rename saturated because I've got a really bad name as stable because the reason it's called saturated any of you remember your chemistry facts to just change of chains of carbons with hydrogen's attached to them the saturated just has all the hydrogen slots filled so it's the safest to cook with it's the most stable so we're going to now call it stable fat then when you've got one pair of hydrogen bonds missing it's called mono unstable when you've got many missing it's called poly unstable so those are the different paths so you now know from that last slide there are only two things about fat that people need to know that seemingly some people don't know they talk as if you can avoid saturated fat in your diet and not die and it's actually completely impossible because every food that contains fat contains all three fats there are no Sections whatsoever and the second fact about fad which is not well-known is only dairy products as a food group have more saturated than unsaturated fat now you will of course be aware coconut oil has more but it's not a whole food group as a food group it's dairy I'll throw in a bonus factoid about nutrition because it's going to be fun on the next slide all foods contain protein except your pure fats or oils and lard and chakras which isn't really a food so we can have a quick look at this on this little table here what we're doing is just taking a number of foods on the link you've got all the sources so you can see these for yourself shuco is not really a food but it's 100% carbon or even water no protein no fat and then this column is going to go up in order of fat content I love this already I mean look pork and whole wheat pita bread because of course whole wheat pita bread tends to be commercially produced full of vegetable oils and it's actually got more fat than your pork chop and you can see some of the other statistics from the previous slide now the two things to point out about this are the carb protein and fat thing you've got pure fats you've got puke up your carbs everything else has protein then when you take the fat column it doesn't quite add up totally to rounding errors but then I've pulled out in green the highest fat from all of those so you've got monounsaturated Paulo morning mono mono mono mono that's the only one butter dairy product that has more saturated than unsaturated fat not that it's bad but just to set the record straight so believe three total especially saturated fat will kill you and here's the only question you need to remember show me one RCT randomized control trial with healthy men and women ideally greater than the year I don't think you'll find one and Andrea with showing that total and all saturated fat increases mortality you pick the mortality whatever you want CVD CHD cancer all cause whatever give you free reign because of course I know the answer you are not going to be able to find it I just to give you some headlines on why I know we don't have that evidence we had a paper that came out in February last year created a bit of a up with public health England that basically said if you went back to when the dietary guidelines were introduced there were only six trials available and they did not support either of those two fad recommendations 30% total fat 10% saturated fat second massive finding was those six studies involved not even turning our thousand sick men so women globally have been doing all this nonsense and we didn't even prove it in those unhealthy men now the Phe defense bless them was our yes but we've got loads of evidence now and then oh yes but there was loads of epidemiological evidence at the time well actually there wasn't and there are a couple of papers in submission and one in production that they're not going to like any more than the first one because the RCT evidence today still comes to the same conclusion there is no evidence epidemiological evidence at that time not their epidemiological evidence today not there there are still no dietary fat intervention trials that study healthy men and women for those be really familiar with a subject there's the Minnesota mental institution patient bit of a clue there okay they weren't suffering from heart disease but they were patients in a mental institution and we know a lot about mental illness and heart disease and the sympathetic nervous system so we haven't had that generalizable study as it's called that we can apply to whole populations and for the final chapter of my PhD looking at this I looked at all the meta analyses and all of their conclusions 39 findings 35 were non significant that is never reported the only thing that's reported is the significant findings I think it's even more important what wasn't found and in 35 studies so 35 lines across seven studies nothing was found one found against trans fats no surprise one fan in favor of polyunsaturated fats I'm part of a paper that attacked that for including the wrong papers and to Raymond said there's a little bit of something almost touching the line of no significance with events but not mortality so you're really safe asking that question can you show me that one RCT on healthy people that's going to prove either of those dietary fat guidelines because it isn't there now the final one if fat doesn't kill you then cholesterol will so ask them this what's the association let's start with the association between cholesterol and deaths CVD or cause what do you want for men and women not just for seven countries or for however many countries one pick but for all 192 countries for which there is data available at the World Health Organization I did this a few years ago on a Saturday afternoon it doesn't actually take very long on the link I've explained how you could do it this is men and cardiovascular disease deaths and you can see that it's just a very slight downwards trend line but basically saying the higher your cholesterol the lower the death rate the lower your cholesterol the higher the death rates only very slight and for the statisticians they're not terribly exciting but it's not doing that which is what we're told it should do this is now women and cardiovascular disease deaths it's getting quite a bit steeper I stuck the UK on just for interest we're pretty low on the death rate and pretty I think we're pretty low on cholesterol actually but there we go then we go to all deaths and it's getting steeper again this is men and all cause mortality essentially do not want low cholesterol if you want to stay alive for a long period of time on the evidence of 192 countries in the world and women and all deaths whoa we really really really do not want low cholesterol women this is not a good position to be in now Malcolm Kendrick has shown people those sighs and doctors have said on my goodness it's even worse than we feared and I said did you look at which way round they were and they still can't change the mindset but we know cholesterol causes heart disease um sometimes your Malcolm is now working on when the evidence is overwhelming what you do to get people to accept it because the Henry point working on the evidence anymore it's that second question we need to work on what what should we eat um number one real food such a shame we have to call it real food I want to reclaim food as what grows around us and what we're supposed to eat so number one eat real food I used to say three times a day because of the work of people like Ron Gahan and Jason Fung I now say three times a day maximum we have got to stop this grazing I said on a radio show once you know unless you are a cow or want to be the size of one stop grazing you can't do it thinking and number three manage your carbohydrate intake and I think that will get most people a long way there when I think you need to do that the other way around is there are certain conditions we talked about one type-2 diabetes epilepsy would be another there will be occasions when you need to manage carbohydrate intake so you basically come in from the other end but you might then start doing some things a little bit unreal in terms of food putting butter on eggs and all of that kind of thing but that should get most people most of way there the only debate for me then in nutrition is what should that real food be should it be plants or should it be animals declaration of interesting I was a vegetarian for twenty years so I did make mistakes we're not all perfect Michael Pollan very famously says eat food mostly plants not too much I think we need to eat food mostly animals quite a lot and I'll show you why in the next side so he's much more on the whole grains beans pulses fruit we agree on real food we'll be good friends when it comes to real food we won't be quite so good friends on what that real food should be pasture fed meat and eggs and dairy from those animals fish nuts fruits in season we'd agree on vegetables and salads and we'd agree on real foods I've asked it why would I say animals and not plants because your second question should be look at the micronutrients not just the macronutrients I've just picked out half a dozen foods I've picked out what I have so far found to be the healthiest food on the planet if anyone finds a better one I'm happy to swap out liver but it's going to be awful of some kind I'll give you a clue oily fish sunflower seeds broccoli vegetables your five a day kind of stuff and then whole wheat flour which is actually the single flour I was really generous going for whole wheat because we actually flour white but white flour is the single biggest substance consumed by both Brits and Americans so I thought it's important to put that one up there and then what I've done for all the vitamins on this slide and I've just pulled out in red the winner in that row so the winner for sunflower seeds on color is sorry on calories these sunflower seeds and then the winner on protein quality and so many of the vitamins is of course liver sardines great for vitamin D sunflower seeds for E and so on but you notice that fruit five-a-day hoho and whole wheat flour even whole wheat are not cleaning up on anything that's why I think you should be choosing animals over plants I love this one did you know that liver has four times the vitamin C of an apple not many people know that and yet we're supposed to have our Apple when that liver has so much other good stuff so we come to minerals and the plants come from the ground so you would expect plants to start doing quite well here they still don't do terribly well sunflower seeds really come into their own and they do pretty well on manganese which I must admit irritated me a little so I then change the table and I said oh if I put in cocoa because I really like dark chocolate cocoa wipes the floor with everything else so enjoy your dark chocolate cocoa powder cocoa powder on your cappuccino the evidence is there girls this is not a fiction this chocolate thing we have going on we need to be eating it so I'm gonna wrap up now we've covered the three and a half thousand calorie formula all food that contains fats contain all three fats Darius the only group that has more saturated and unsaturated not that we care there was no evidence RCT or epidemiological against total or saturated fat at the time and there is none now and cholesterol is actually inversely associated with deaths so your questions can you source improve the calorie formula I suggest your question on saturated fat unless you carry around that little chart should be what's your beef with dairy products because that's all you're having a row about if you really want to talk saturated fat the government list of saturated fat mirakl pies ice cream confectionery biscuits pastries junk food you know there is room for heated agreement with the other side to say look just stop calling that nonsense saturated fat call it what it is can we agree on real food then can we sit down and look at the evidence from the micronutrients and you never know we might actually end up not having slanging matches on Twitter can you produce me that one RCT no you can't and what's the association I love little Malcolm Kendricks saying you know Association does not prove causation but lack of Association disproves causation if you cannot even show me an association between cholesterol and heart deaths or cholesterol and all deaths you're really going to struggle to take me to the place that cholesterol is causing heart disease because the evidence that I'm looking at is saying the opposite this is the final side and I'm bang on 25 minutes I call it some fairy grouse bless his soul I saw Barry speak at a conference it's actually Barry you ended my 20 years of vegetarianism and Barry said you know what is it we don't see animals in the jungle queuing up to see the jungle doctor you know civilized so-called civilized man is the only chronically sick animal on the planet so I'm sort of driving back to Wales thinking what's my first meat going to be and it's only occurred to me is this because man is the only species clever enough to make his own food that's stupid enough to eat it thank you for listening you

Channel: Public Health Collaboration

Views: 34,573

Rating: 4.8672199 out of 5

Keywords: health, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, protein, calories, public health, diet, nutrition

Id: wdznfiWvGq0

Length: 25min 13sec (1513 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2016