The Scientific Landscape of Healthy Eating | Dr. Mike Israetel | TEDxSpringfield

hey guys thank you for having me today I am apparently dr. Micah's hotel and I will be talking to you about the scientific landscape of healthy eating all about healthy eating from a scientific approach so just a little bit of background I think understanding healthy eating or talking about it is pretty worthwhile because if you eat healthy set supposed to increase not only your lifespan but it improves your quality of life as well so everything gets better when you eat healthy and it's a very common concern because pretty much everybody knows that right if you look at somebody's food and you point at it they're gonna do one of two things they can be repotted about how it is they really uh-huh see ya or they just start making excuses like well today is well you know I've been really stressed then who knows don't judge me right let's see the 1 of 2 everyone knows that eating healthy is pretty important unfortunately there's a lot of contradicting advice on the internet and all forms of media about what it is that eating healthy is and a lot of that advice is very ideologically based by ideological mean that there is clear moralistic right and wrong if you eat some kinds of foods you're not just unhealthy you're a bad person altogether and if you eat some other foods you're at home with the Angels so some of this is helpful a lot of it's not really helpful the way I got into this sort of thing was that I have been an athlete my entire life I wrestled for a long time power lifter for a long time now I'm a bodybuilder and Brazilian jiu-jitsu grappler you can tell by my funky ears right and as I got bigger and stronger more muscular I realized that the size and all this hard training was probably going to be costing my health somewhat I wanted to minimize it by at least understanding how to eat healthy and then later as a professor teaching the scientific basis of healthy eating I really had to know my stuff so here I am talking to you guys about it so of course the closest way we can get to the truth the path of the truth that is the most likely is science I think we all know that by now we just saw an awesome video about the physical state of the Internet no one's doubting science anymore but when you talk to people about the science of healthy eating a lot of times they'll say things like well you know I can go online and find a study to support anything you think milk is good I can find a study that says milk is bad it's all up in the air but unfortunately that's a misunderstanding standing of how the scientific process works it turns out that science works based on the some of the evidence and it's very difficult to do you have to take all of the studies at the same time and look at the net perspective that they offer into what the structure of healthy eating actually is because if you just go one study at a time you can just cherry-pick accidental studies right studies have error rates and then you find all kinds of things just aren't true and then balance you could be looking at the one percent of studies and a field that say one thing whereas ninety nine percent say something completely different so if you look at everything you end up with a ton of data when my team and I wrote a book on this very topic we ended up pooling so much data together to support our position and learn that the size of the citations was the exact size of the length of the book itself so we just put it online because it would've been ridiculously a hundred fifty page book and page 75 runs out of stuff and just starts citations how how many people read links for fun but we had to put it somewhere else because there's so much data but that's really good because that means we know a lot about healthy eating there is a lot of consensus there and remember in science there are no absolutes so the rest of this presentation is presented in likelihoods right it is a very good probability that what I'm going to say is true but of course everything is always to some extent at least up in the air what does the landscape of healthy eating look like according to science well it's really kind of a pyramid not the USDA food guide pyramid or said apparently you have to eat breakfast cereals at the bottom of the pyramid all the time you guys remember that like breads and cookies and rice and stuff all the real food was somewhere else so this pyramid is more scientific it's more theoretical it says that some features of healthy eating matter a whole lot they're the base of the pyramid other features matter a little bit less and a little bit less and some of them are just almost trivialities and when people concern themselves too much with those and not enough with the base they make mistakes and healthy eating right now we're gonna take a look through all of the phases of this pyramid together and try to make a little bit of basic sense out of all this so the first most important part of healthy eating is calorie balance it is by far the most important it has probably around a 60% effect size compared to everything else you can do for your diet so if there's one most important thing watching how much food you eat is the most important thing for your diet as far your health because primarily body weight is very impactful to health having a healthy weight is the number one thing that nutrition can offer you to make you healthier it's not the only but it's certainly the biggest healthy weight it doesn't come in a perfect you know just one number that you have to be or else you're bad remember no moralizing there's actually quite a broad range over here so if I were hypothetically 5'4 which clearly I'm at least six feet tall so I don't even know I picked that number you know I could weigh anywhere between a hundred and five and a hundred and seventy pounds and be okay and not have to worry about my way too much but the reality matter is that in a lot of Western countries the USA included a lot of us are above those top and ranges and weight loss is the most often prescribed and best idea for a lot of individuals who are struggling with their health from a dietary perspective there have been some individuals that say body weight is not important that we should just focus on the kinds of food we're eating I don't think that is supported scientifically calorie amounts the amount of food we eat and our body weight is ignored at our health peril it's very important to be clear about that so okay we got the calories down how much food you're eating how much away matters for sure matters a little less maybe about 20 percent is what kind of food composes those calories that you eat the calorie sources themselves it turns out that there are a couple of groups of food that are very good to eat for the majority of your intake for example fruits veggies and whole grains lean proteins and healthy fats like avocado and olive oil those foods should pretty much be the preponderance of your intake but it's not all or none it turns out that if you get most of your diet meaning about 75% from these healthy sources you can have a little bit of junk food on the side and I promise you're not an evil person well maybe our I just don't know you that well but has nothing to do with your food right it turns out that if you do most of your healthy eating you could have a little bit junk food and it's not a big deal there's no reason to have these all-or-none plans of cutting out junk altogether you just have to eat a little bit less of them next for about 10% of the variants already a very small component but an important one our macronutrient amounts the Macan traits are proteins carbs and fats and it turns out that our body needs all of these in a minimum amount but it turns out it's only about 10% of calories so if we add all those together we get 10% protein 10% carbs 10% fats we have 70% left of calories to fill in with any macronutrients we want and that means that as long as you get your minima extremes in macronutrient intake are totally fine and very much equivocal for health what does that mean that means that anytime someone says well carbs are really bad for your health you can simply point them to vegans who consume up to 80% of the Dighton carbs and some of the healthiest people in the world individuals that follow the Paleo diet eat lots of protein in fact more than many recommend and our healthiest can be even individuals involved in bodybuilding right they eat amounts of protein that seem completely obscene and very little of anything else and there's some of the healthiest people in the world as well and even and then they're saying this and the 90s would have been pure insanity high fat diets that are low in carbs and low in protein are very much vetted as super healthy via direct scientific investigation as long as you get your calories right and you make sure most of that food is from healthy source what about nutrient timing how many of you guys have ever heard not to eat past a certain time at night or else and who knows that that or else's and crazy elves come and get you that's always what I thought it was I try take out a couple elves I ate late at night I kept waiting for them to show up but nothing ever happened so it turns out that nutrient timing is a little bit overrated people seem to think there's some kind of magic formula but they've studied alternate daily fasting where they literally you don't eat for a day and then the next day you don't eat for a day and people would think how many of you guys just intuitively raise your hands do you think that like just feels like not a good idea like that's not healthy right that seems crazy and they've studied up to eight meals a day which a lot of us think oh man you see someone who eats a you take meals a day and you're like that must be the healthiest person of all time that's sheer dedication it turns out both offer their health benefits and trade-offs on the net balance alternate daily fasting is just about as healthy it even has some unique health benefits compared to eight meals a day or something like that there's a wide range of meals that are totally cool to eat nutrient timing by itself accounts for roughly 5 percent of the variance and health most of it coming down to that little tip right there if you eat about three to six times a day for most people you get all the nutrients you need and you supply your body with energy how do you guys think it feels to take a call from your boss at 5:00 p.m. saying you have another project stay late at work when it's one of your alternate daily fasting days and you haven't eaten all day right you pick up fella who's this I'm your boss I don't have a boss man I just need a nap let me call you back tomorrow when I have food right that's a little bit weird so usually three to six meals is best fit to your own personal schedule and your own lifestyle goals next we come into the last five percent tip top of the pyramid not accounting for a lot of the variance in Health contrary to a lot of popular opinion our hydration and supplements here's the good news about hydration it's largely self-regulating over millions of years of evolution all organisms have pretty much figured out that when they get dehydrated there's a thirst response and it works incredibly well it doesn't work well in a couple quirky scenarios like if you're sweating a ton in sport your thirst actually lags behind your hydration enough not to ever endanger you but usually to make you too dehydrated to perform at your best but for just walking around daily living your thirst does a good job of telling you in a drink so you don't have to slam water preemptively right that's actually myth in the early 2000s everyone had Nalgene bottles running around and if you stopped drinking water for a second that's it you were done right it turns out that's really not the case right some more sort of bad news I guess a lot of supplements most supplements almost all supplements are unfortunately ineffective at their claim goals yes that means if you go to any popular nutrition store you can walk across the walls and point to stuff and if you point to it and asked grandfather science or something like that me really if I was to walk in with you right what does this do what does that do what does that do the answer is generally pretty much nothing right and that kind of stinks but it's good news because it really simplifies stuff here's the deal there are a couple of basic supplements that work for health multivitamin maybe for some people although if you eat a very complete diet even that's not really necessary a fish oil tab or something like that healthy fats but if you eat a really good diet with a lot of fish sources you don't even eat that and then if you get in regular fluids you're doing okay for yourself you don't have to worry about this stuff overly compared to something like calories and food composition right you do however have to be very wary of claims how many supplement claims you guys ever watch TV way late into the night and watch the super supplement will make you literally Superman you're like where's the buy now phone number it can't be here all day I gotta go to sleep there it's number down so you me Superman tomorrow and our fortune that just doesn't really add up and many of these claims are just a waste of money unfortunately a waste of your time alright so lastly let's figure out some take-home really simple implications from all this because we just ran through like volumes of data in the span of about 10 minutes here's the deal completely unequivocal that being physically active and the more you can the better is awesome and you want to stay at a healthy weight by controlling the number of calories you eat you don't even have to count calories just food amounts if you're gaining weight or if you're in a healthy weight eat somewhat less get back into the healthy weight that is huge it's the number one thing you can do to help out your health through nutrition when you are choosing foods eat mostly healthy foods just like we talked about fruits veggies whole grains lean meats healthy fats a lot of you how many Ventoux ative lis know what healthy food really is like if I point to a cheeseburger I'm like healthy how many of you yeah sure hey potato chips of course right no we all pretty much know what healthy food is but we can have a wide ranging variety of but we don't have to restrict ourselves no carbs no fats no proteins all that kind of stuff we just have to do a good job meet the macro minima I'll tell you this meaning the minimum amounts of protein carbs and fats is incredibly easy unless you do some kind of really really wonky diet where you're intentionally trying to cut stuff out right there are diets that fruit at Aryans for example propose where you only eat fruit I mean and I mean that completely literally there is no caveat to that right it's a fine way of doing things if you take some extra precautions but you have to take a lot of extra precautions so if you're eating a relatively normal diet you don't have to worry about meeting macro minima that really happens itself you get out of protein carbs and fats just eating healthy and eating a varied diet time sensibly when you're relatively hungry and you need energy eat when you're not don't and if we're ever a number of meal times you land per day that's on you and it's really not a big deal either way for your health don't let people guilt trip you into eating after 6 o'clock all right tell them that you I've also been waiting for the point 6 p.m. attack gnomes but they just never showed up right how long can we wait you want to hydrate normally drink water with your meals if you're not thirsty you don't have to drink you can consider some basic supplements maybe a multivitamin maybe fish oil and maybe not that's something to talk about to nutritionists or a doctor if you don't have any deficiencies you're probably good to go most people don't and here's the deal there will be another health documentary coming out probably soon like there have been many health documentaries before and health documentaries are usually not the kind of boring stuff I'm talking to you guys about today it is life-and-death stuff like we've all been poisoned by insert group here big pharma big food big beef who knows right and they're all out to get us and a lot of this kind of ideology just turns out to make these diet rules that are ineffectual because they put so much pressure on us to alter our normal lifestyles it turns out if we eat relatively healthy and are physically active we don't have to buy into crazy ideologies that steer us away from doing the right thing here's the deal it's an amazing world we live in but I think it's even more amazing if you approach it with logic science and evidence

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 364,776

Rating: 4.9195108 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Health, Nutrition

Id: TYeZVfPxwKM

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/pandemoniker]

Enjoyed the talk quite a bit. Especially his point of view about not stating "facts" but "highly likely" theories. It's the only way, really, to talk about nutrition in a sane way.

[u/AhoyGoFuckYourself]

"Eat food, mostly plants, not too much." Michael Pollan

Since this is r/weightroom, adjust the not too much part to a caloric intake that's appropriate for your goals and make sure you get enough protein.

[u/psychop4th]

Part of the video description:

When your health is a top priority, trying to make sense of all the information on nutrition can be quite confusing.In this talk, Dr. Mike Israetel summarizes the scientific findings on diet and health and lays out the simple rules of diet design that can be used by nearly everyone to get the most out of their health without the confusion and contradiction of typical diet advice.

[u/[deleted]]

all the tens of hours of content on dieting he has spread across youtube, interviews, seminars etc. you can get from skimming his diet book for 20 minutes and taking notes per copy & paste - he's ridiculously long winded (or rather: aware your seminars/videos/books need a minimum length to be properly monetized) but nutrition for optimal sports performance and good health just isn't that complex if you exclude weird supplements and steroids

[u/vuxanov]

Isn’t Tedx basically open to anyone? With a bunch of completely crazy people talking nonsense? Not saying that is the case here but Ted x isn’t very reliable source of information in general.

[u/[deleted]]

He honestly didn't really summarize anything.