The TOP FOODS You Need To Avoid Eating To PREVENT Alzheimer's & Disease! | Max Lugavere

I think many of us are aware now that the foods we're consuming are hugely increasing our risk of getting sick in the future in your view with all the research you've done what do you think of some of those common foods or types of foods that we should think about cutting out or at least reducing to reduce the chance that we're going to get sick that is a great starting place and if you would have asked me this question five years ago my answer probably would be um a little bit different than it is today but at this point what I've come to realize is that um one of the biggest food issues related to disease and our predisposition for any number of non-communicable so-called diseases of civilization including Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia is the preponderance of ultra processed foods in the food environment so this is a category of foods um that has been classified as Ultra processed in accordance with the Latin American devised Nova food classification system and these are foods that you couldn't make in your own kitchen these are foods that typically line our Supermarket aisles they're the foods now that make up 60 of the calories that Americans are consuming worldwide and these Foods pull the trigger in many ways on our predisposition to non-communicable chronic diseases every 10 percent increase in Ultra processed food consumption has been associated with a 14 increased risk in early mortality and a 25 increased risk in the development of dementia these are the foods that are typically shelf stable they have long ingredients lists they don't rot right they're they're they're they're not the kinds of foods that have uh immediate shelf lives and they typically have a number of different characteristics that that make them in particular dangerous there's nothing about them that is inherently toxic but it's the Confluence of variables that make them a driving that make them a driver of of this epidemic that we're talking about one of those factors is that they tend to be hyper palatable which is a term a term that food scientists use to describe a food that is so delicious that it literally lights up the equivalent of uh the fourth of July's fireworks and sorry to drop an Independence Day reference uh on your podcast rongan but um you know on my side of the pond Fourth of July that's when like you get the biggest fireworks show um of the year right and that's when you consume these types of ultra processed package processed foods that are hyper palatable it pushes your brain to a bliss Point Beyond which self-control is nearly impossible I mean some people can do it right but I think a a very common experience that most people have you know for example with ice cream is that they open up the pint of ice cream intending to have you know one spoonful and before they know it they they're they're looking at the bottom of the Pint yeah and oftentimes we feel a sense of moral failure when we're not able to moderate our consumption of these foods but these foods are not designed to be consumed in moderation so it's not actually a moral failure it's something that these foods are are are quite explicitly designed to do yeah one of the key points there for me was the fact that these foods are hyper palatable we struggle stop consuming and I think everyone who's listening to the show right now or watching will know that feeling you know they've they've tried to embark on a new easting plan they've tried to you know exercise self-restraint yet if those foods are in their house you know many people really really struggle to stop how do you tackle that though for people because they are everywhere they're everywhere in America they're everywhere in the UK they're they're everywhere in the world frankly these days and they're foods that are absolutely contributing to how sick many of us are getting yet many of us just don't know what to do about that yeah there is actually a um a project uh done by a photojournalist I don't I'm not sure the name but um people can go to Google images and look for a week's worth of food like a a typical week-long shopping haul from both an American family a family in the US as well as in the UK in the UK it's a Caucasian family in the U.S it's an African-American family but you can see the week's worth of groceries typically consumed in both countries and you have to use a magnifying glass to find the fresh perishable food it's primarily Ultra processed food or these mixed dishes which combine fat sugar and salt the so-called Dorito effect that make foods difficult to you know not not just difficult to consume moderately but incredibly calorie dense so as I mentioned it's not that these foods are in are innately toxic or innately um fattening but they are obesogenic meaning they do Drive obesity and metabolic dysfunction because we tend to over consume them when eating to the point of satiety we tend to over consume these foods and this was proven in a very elegant study funded by the NIH actually led by a well-known obesity researcher named Kevin Hall who found that when people are given access to ultra processed foods and told to eat to satiety as as a human does right like we like to eat to a point of of satiety of fullness that when allowed only to consume Ultra processed foods people ended up eating a 500 calorie energy Surplus right so an energy Surplus is the way that's how we that's why we store fat essentially right it's like the law of thermodynamic of law of thermodynamics so these Foods by the time we've eaten to satiety we've already over consumed them but in this crossover trial what they were also able to show was that when you give the same people access to minimally processed foods these are kinds of foods that you are potentially able to cook in your own kitchen depending on food access and availability you know all important factors um of course that they ended up eating to the same degree of satiety but they came in at a 300 calorie energy deficit so that's a that's an 800 calorie swing that is a significant amount of calories determined purely by the quality of the food that these people were eating so oftentimes somebody who's overweight they get told by their doctors to just eat less move more right to moderate the quantity of the food that they're consuming but here's the kicker the quality of the food that a person is consuming dictates or at least influences the quantity yeah that's such a key point isn't it for people Max whether it's you know to lose weight reduce their risk of disease in the future to help them lower their blood sugar you know whatever their health goal might be you know a lot of people these days they want to find a way to eat less they don't want to be consuming as much as they're often consuming but a lot of people still don't realize that actually the quantity often is Downstream from the quality get you know get the quality bang on then often not always I know it is possible Right to over consume good quality food I've certainly done it myself but it's it's just a lot less likely isn't it it's a lot less likely and that's we attribute that um characteristic to the food Matrix so there are three factors we're getting a little bit off topic but I think this is important to the three foods the the types of foods that people should um generally avoid but I think it's really important for people to understand the qualities of the whole food Matrix so the the qualities of Whole Foods contrasted to these Ultra processed foods that make a food satiating and so the problem with these Ultra processed foods is aside from the fact that they tend to be hyper palatable they are very calorie dense typically and they are minimally satiating so the three factors that make a food satiating are one it's protein content protein is the most satiating macronutrient so when we talk about macronutrients what we're referring to is our protein carbohydrates and fats but more much more so than carbohydrates and fats protein is the most satiating meaning it's the most likely to fill you up and to turn off those signals and cues related to hunger right and so the problem with ultra processed foods is that they tend to be diluted of their protein content this is for I think many reasons one is that protein just tends to be expensive so when you remove the protein from a junk food you increase the margins so this is something that's very attractive to food manufacturers right this is why Ultra processed you know the foods that your grandma would look at and say that is junk food these Foods tend to be some combination of carbs and fat right they tend not to be high protein foods protein is the most satiating of the macronutrients so if you're hungry you want to look for foods that are high protein which tend to be Whole Foods the other factor that makes a food satiating is it's fiber content so when food gets processed and processed and processed and removed from this food Matrix what you lose among other things is the fiber and fiber we don't have a biological requirement for dietary fiber but it does seem to improve life it does seem to be associated with lower levels of inflammation and increased longevity and it does support the gut microbiome which um you've talked about many times on your podcast but the reason why fiber is satiating is because it mechanically it stretches out the stomach so it turns off the release of a hunger hormone called ghrelin yeah and it does so by absorbing water in the gut and then the third factor that makes a food satiating is it's water content now why are Ultra processed foods deprived of water because water impedes on a food's shelf stability right the more moisture in a food the less shelf stable that food is going to be right and so you remove water from an ultra processed food that just further depletes it's satiety um index it's the Tidy value and water is satiating because we obviously you know we can go a few days weeks maybe months for some of us without food but only a few days without water so water is of utmost importance to the you know physiologic functioning of of the human body but when water seems to be available for one of our hunt our hunter-gatherer ancestors where would the next play next best place um B right to find water it would be in food yeah so a lot of times our thirst cues are or our hunger cues rather are just uh the crossed wires of us just requiring a little bit more hydration yeah brilliant Matt super super useful so one food group that we want to think about avoiding are these Ultra processed foods any other Foods or food groups that you would you know encourage us to look at and go you know just be careful there yeah definitely so this is a bit more controversial but I think it is probably worthwhile to minimize your consumption of grain and Seed oils now this is controversial because the nutritional and medical Orthodox he still loves and uh and encourages the consumption of these types of fats in fact um I identified by going to the at least in the United States the my plate Paradigm which is um sort of the predecessor to the or the successor rather to the um the food pyramid which you know was was the first Paradigm that really told told Americans how to eat so now we have the my plate and if you go to myplate.gov I believe is the URL it still implores us to consume more of these types of oils these unsaturated grain and Seed oils and specifically what I'm talking about are industrially produced refined bleached and deodorized Grain and Seed oils like canola oil corn oil soybean oil grapeseed oil and I think it's it's very much worth in accordance with the research swapping these oils for extra virgin olive oil um which has a ton of evidence on uh you know being cardio protective being neuroprotective um being supportive of metabolic health and um and so I I make that recommendation for a number of reasons one the preponderance of evidence really does support that extra virgin olive oil has Myriad health benefits yeah right it's anti-inflammatory it's got a very cardio cardio protective fatty acid profile so it's rich in heart healthy monounsaturated fat it's chemically stable which is not that you can't say the same thing about these refined bleached and deodorized Grain and Seed oils so you can actually cook with it you can use it as a sauce um and we have whether it's animal uh research observational level data like looking at people who um adhere to a Mediterranean dietary pattern or the Mind diet which is protective of brain health extra virgin olive oil is the only oil that's recommended in the mind diet and in the extrovert and in the Mediterranean dietary pattern this is I think crucially important and tends to be overlooked when they're not recommending that people ingest more canola oil in these dietary patterns that are associated with reduced risk for dementia for Alzheimer's disease and other chronic conditions yeah I mean even when you describe those oils you use three terms refined bleached and deodorized if we just take a step back for a minute those are three terms that I don't think many of us want to associate with the food that we're putting inside our bodies describe it um do you think this is more of a problem in America than let's say in Europe like where does sunflower oil for example fit into this Paradigm here yeah great question um so there are different types of uh sunflower oil you can actually find on the market a variant of sunflower oil because sunflower oil typically is one of these kinds of oils that I'm suggesting that people minimize their consumption of but you can often find um especially now a variant of sunflower seed oil called high oleic sunflower oil which uh I think is actually um okay to use it's still not as good as extra virgin olive oil but it is primarily oleic acid which is a very abundant type of fatty acid found in nature it's chemically very stable and so it actually has a fatty acid profile that looks quite similar to avocado oil um and so I think that that's fine there I think manufacturers are becoming wise to the fact that um some of these earlier iterations of of these grain and Seed oils are just very chemically um unstable they're prone to oxidation they're prone to chemical degradation rot essentially that you can't see it's not visible to the naked eye but oxidation to an oil is essentially rot yeah so sunflower oil High olaic sunflower oil I think is a fine um alternative but but yeah you I it was so great um wrong in that you that you teased this out because we know that Ultra processed foods as I've mentioned is associated with all the bad things that you don't want right that we should there's no health expert um out there no nutrition expert that would say we need to consume more Ultra processed foods right everybody's saying we need to consume less so why do these refined bleached and deodorized Grain and Seed oils get a pass they are the very definition of ultra processed you couldn't make them in your own kitchen if you tried they didn't exist in the human food supply prior to 100 years ago that's a really key point for me when we're looking at these modern Foods or certainly This Modern food-like substance says if there is any doubts with evidence if there's you know conflict if there's debate on both sides I think a reasonable thing to look at is how long has this been in the human food supply for it's not the only thing but I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to look at and go well it didn't exist 100 years ago 150 years ago I think that notes of caution is pretty reasonable because it is really really divisive at the moment this whole vegetable oil thing um some people are saying there is no evidence at all for people to be reducing this in their diet other people are saying we should never be touching these things at all and you know I think you're making a very strong case that I think for most of us we should absolutely be limiting them this is where eating out sometimes becomes problematic for people when you know they're changing their diets because these are typically the oils that are used when we're eating out aren't they because they're cheaper yeah they're Dirt Cheap in fact many of them um are byproducts of the food industry it's like they're you know grapeseed oil for example which is now commonly used if you go to the supermarket most commercially produced salad dressings are gonna use grapeseed oil as the primary oil it's just it increases the margins of food of these food products these food-like products but grapeseed oil was actually grape seeds were thrown away and grape seed oil today is a byproduct of wine making until one industrious wine manufacturer realized that you could take these seeds you could press them and extract this oil from them but these oils tend to have noxious uh Aromas and flavors they're very bitter I mean if you've ever chewed on a grape seed they're not it's not a pleasant taste right that they impart and so they were thrown away until we realized that we could take this oil and we could run them through um and this same with corn oil with soybean oil you could run them through all these different steps and end up with a tasteless Bland product that could be used in any number of food manufacturing processes whether it's um you know the creation of cereal granola bars you can roast nuts in these oils you can use them in the restaurant setting to fry Foods in it's a food Industries equivalent of the witness protection program you take an oil that's otherwise noxious and you and you and you rob it of any character but in so doing you're also robbing it of the protection that that fat had in its Whole Food form right in a grape seed you have antioxidants that protect the fat in for example uh soybeans or corn you have antioxidants that protect these fats but when stripped of again going back to the food Matrix you deprive these these very uh unstable fats of the antioxidants that would otherwise protect them and it allows them it gives them this characteristic of vulnerability and then you put them in the restaurant setting right where they're kept in a plastic jug exposed to oxygen right which is what um catalyzes this oxidative process for months on end right because restaurants love to buy in bulk and then you put them in the in the fryer yeah right and you keep it there at temperature at frying temperature for days at a time sometimes in restaurants and that's where these oils really become dangerous so you know I think like the moderate message is that you know the dose makes the poison and if we're talking about the oils that you're bringing into your house I suggest um not doing that but it's not going to kill you right necessarily to have a little bit in your house here and there most people when they cut these oils out in fact they end up cutting out Ultra processed foods in general and so they see they'll inevitably see a health benefit to doing that but in the restaurant setting as you mentioned I think this is where these oils are become particularly pernicious and that's because they're kept in the fryer right and you just don't know how they've been treated yeah and so fried foods we know that fried foods are actually quite unhealthy again the dose makes the poison a little bit here and there is not going to be a problem but they did a very interesting and this was a mouse study just to be clear but where they took oil from the fryers uh this this lab took oil from the fryers being used at local Mediterranean restaurants that was used to fry falafel in right and they fed it to mice in doses that was that uh were reasonable to assume that a human could be exposed to right oil literally taken from the fryers of like of a restaurant and what they found was that it increased colonic inflammation and it increased gut permeability so leaky gut the translocation of of dangerous uh for example endotoxin or lipopolysaccharide um which is quite inflammatory into the circulation of mice and it accelerated the growth of tumors and mice that were genetically prone to developing um tumors wow and so Mao study just to be very clear but yeah I think that's where we have to be particularly Vigilant in avoiding the oils in the restaurant setting yeah I appreciate we said there about the dose making the poison I think that's one of the things mats have always loved about your approach you are very clear about what you think based upon the research you've done but I've always found needs to be very nuanced there's always context there's always yeah but look on balance this is where you should put your focus and I really appreciate what you're saying there because frankly it's very hard for people to avoid those oils 100 of the time unless they're going to just stay at home cook all their meals with extra virgin olive oil you know it's going to probably be impossible to avoid those things all the time so it's just about you know when can you have control over that oil what can you do I'll tell you you know something I do which again some people will will probably regard as over the top now a bit of background I'm actually very sensitive to foods which you know you may regard as a curse or potentially a blessing because I get an immediate reaction to certain foods and it comes in the way of mucus or I feel that my sinuses are clogging up so I rarely get that at home because you know I've sorted out my diet so I know what agrees with me which is basically a whole food diet but what I'm out of course it's a lot more variable even if I feel that I'm ordering something that I think I'm going to be okay with you know it's not like a life-threatening allergy but I can afterwards I can feel it when I'm lying in bed at night that there's mucus being produced and there's a local Thai restaurant that we really like and over the past two years if we ever go there I just take my own oil it's just down the roads like I could ever feel like it and I know them there I said hey guys can you cook it in this for me and they do and when they cook it in the oil I provide for them I don't feel a thing so I get to enjoy it I'm not kidding myself that it suddenly makes it really really healthy but I'm sure that's purely down to the oil and I think that really speaks to the point you're making right which is these oils can be problematic for us if consumed in large amounts so I don't take that oil with me everywhere I go this is in the town I live a local restaurant that we like eating in if I'm in London or I'm traveling I don't take my own oil with me I you know I take the hit and I know to some people it's an extreme thing to do take oil with you but for me like that works for me I'm very happy with that I feel I've got that sort of balance right yeah I love that and um and I think you know you're somebody who's like clearly taking taking his health into his own hands which I think is really important you know wellness and and Healthcare is something that we we need to realize it's something that we Institute in ourselves when we are negotiating with ourselves for example to get off the couch and go to the gym or when we're pushing our shopping cart uh around the supermarket I think it's it's super important to be to take an active role in this as you clearly do but there's one there's one other aspect of seed oils that I think is like worth talking about my passion is um food and brain health yeah and and specifically dementia prevention I think this is like a really important topic and we don't know the long-term brain health outcomes of uh regularly chronically ingesting these types of fats these fats are primarily um polyunsaturated so it's some combination of you know linoleic acid or uh you know the omega-6 dominant um fatty acids and alpha linolenic acid which is the plant-based form of Omega-3s which is incidentally uh more even more prone to oxidation more vulnerable than linoleic linoleic acid and the brain is primarily composed of these kinds of polyunsaturated fats and these fats have easy access to the brain because they're what constitute our brains and we don't have any long-term data on this Mass public experiment being played on a public stage where we're consuming three times more of these kinds of fats than we did at the beginning of of last century right and so we don't know the the implications and so that right there that looming question mark about what these kinds of fats do to the brain which by the way lipid peroxidation is a major so the the fact that these oils are so prone to damage is a major driver of um brain disease right it's it's contributing it's a contributing factor to Alzheimer's disease it's a big problem so we don't however there was a 2021 randomized control trial in humans led by the first author was ramsden and it looked at people who are prone to migraine right so migraine is interesting because there's a neuroinflammatory component to migraine right and it's something that you feel like you feel with unmistakable certainty and I actually personally myself um occasionally suffer from migraines a couple you know once or twice a month and what this randomized controlled trial found was that they took three groups one group was left to their control diet you know there this whatever diet they were they had been consuming the second group was given more Omega-3s to consume so about a gram and a half a day of Omega-3s and we know that omega-3 fatty acids are great because they resolve the inflammatory process and most people under consume omega-3 fatty acids so the thinking was that that would be enough to maybe um bring the symptomology down on these on these micro newers people who are suffering from chronic migraine right but then the third group what they did was they gave them also the Omega-3s the one and a half grams of Omega-3s to consume daily and they also told them to reduce their intake of linoleic acid which is the primary fatty acid found in these grain and Seed oils that we're talking about right and what they found was that in terms of headache frequency and severity the group that was told not just to increase their omega-3 intake but to also reduce their consumption of these polyunsaturated fat dominant grain and Seed oils the kinds of oils that we were talking about right canola oil corn oil grapeseed oil soybean oil they saw twice the reduction in migraine frequency and severity when they were ingesting more Omega-3s and also concurrently reduced their intake of these Granite seed oils so very telling the study involved about 200 participants you know certainly should be replicated um you know to to confirm those findings but I think very interesting and again there's a neuroinflammatory component here to migraines and the fact that these oils are are according to this study likely contributing in some way in this 16-week trial I just think very interesting and worth paying attention to yeah that is so interesting Matt so it makes me think about my clinical practice and you know full well that medical doctors like me and not really given much training in nutrition or lifestyle interventions and how they can help our patients um if anything we we may hear a little bit about it for weight loss and type 2 diabetes but beyond that you know depression anxiety migraines all kinds of other conditions really there's nothing around food and how it can help now what we do get when we get talked about migraines at Medical School is we get told there are some foods red wine and cheese that may be contributing to migraines so most doctors if we have a patient who is struggling with migraines we may inquire about red wine intake and cheese intake and you know potentially recommend our patients reduce them sometimes you know you get you hit the jackpot and you're like okay great and other times doesn't seem to make a difference but probably for about 10 years now with pretty much all of my migraine patients and frankly pretty much all the my chronic disease patients full stop I will go through a process of helping them completely change their diets certainly for a two three whip period just to see if you go all Whole Foods if you cut out all processed foods for two to three weeks what happens and more often than not there is some improvement but often there is complete reversal or some of the symptoms just go away now I've seen that in migraines again to be really clear not with every migraine but with many migraine sufferers I found that after this two three week trial onto a whole food diet their migraine frequency would go right down and why I didn't know what exactly it was in the diet that was causing it and bit by bit I helped them sort of reintroduce foods to see what it potentially might be but this trial from 2021 now is to make me think well maybe for a significant proportion of those patients it was actually the fact that their oils changed they weren't eating you know those highly processed refined oils that are in Ultra processed foods but also I would always encourage them to cook their food with extra virgin olive oil and poor extra virgin olive oil onto their salad so that's really really interesting absolutely and you know extra virgin olive oil has an anti-inflammatory aspect to it it's got it contains a compound called oleocanthal which is as anti-inflammatory as low-dose ibuprofen which is incredible because ibuprofen and all other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs chronic use of those types of drugs as you know rungen are associated with cardiovascular yes right so with extra virgin olive oil you get all the upside of taking like tiny doses of these of this category of drugs but none of the downside and I'll also add that ramsden 2021 study the patients who were on this intervention of simultaneously increasing their omega-3 intake and decreasing their intake of industrially refined grain and Seed oils they also I believe they were able to cut their usage of NSAID drugs in half so they were they they were able to take less drugs right like so this clearly proves that in a way food is is a form of medicine particularly if you're a migraine sufferer yeah yeah really really powerful sorry to interrupt the conversation we'll be back in just a moment now to live a long and healthy life it can be really helpful to understand what's going on inside your body people age at different speeds and the typical annual blood work doesn't properly evaluate your biological age but inside tracker does inside track Air is a truly personalized nutrition and performance system that's designed to extend your health span and slow down the aging process inside tracker uses your test results to give you personalized recommendations on things that you can actually control like food supplements workouts and other lifestyle choices for a limited time you can get 20 off the entire inside tracker store all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below and use the discount codes live more um okay Matt so so far Ultra processed foods we want to reduce as much as we can people have heard that on the show before I hope each time they hear it they just reduce it a little bit more in the concepts of their lifestyle what they feel is achievable for them you mentioned to really be aware of these refined seed oils uh try and limit them as much as possible you know try and introduce more extraversion olive oil any other foods that we should think about sort of reducing and cutting out of our diets I mean I think it's always important to underscore the Insidious nature of added sugar today in Western diets yeah um so I I would say that added sugar is something that people need to become uh as well more mindful of and to do their best to to minimize today your average adult consumes about 77 grams of added sugar so this is sugar removed from the food Matrix again and sugar for which we have no biological requirement 77 grams of added sugar every single day so just to visualize what that looks like that's about 19 teaspoons of sugar added sugar that that adults are ingesting every day that's way more than you know even if you were to look to the dietary guidelines for example like you know in our country we have the USDA um or the American Heart Association even this is way more almost double um the the recommended amount and when you consume that amount of sugar first of all sugar again dose makes the poison as with most things it's not inherently fattening but it does contribute empty calories to the diet and it also contributes to the fact that um it contributes to the hyper palatable characteristic of most Ultra processed foods you know the added sugar um component it's Insidious as I mentioned so you can't you know it's just it's it tends to be hidden whether it's in commercial bread products or sauces um added sugar seems to be everywhere we know that glycemic variability is associated with increased feelings of hunger so eating a high sugar snack or meal could actually perpetuate feelings of hunger as opposed to uh satiate um you know and then to reduce feelings of hunger which is you know kind of ironic and counterproductive um we know that high sugar boluses meaning you know in one single meal consuming a very high amount of sugar has been associated with a drop in testosterone by about 25 percent um we can see that high sugar boluses uh increase systolic blood pressure and this seems to persist for hours after ingestion we know that high blood pressure is a risk factor for not just stroke and cardiovascular disease but also for dementia um you know we we rely on the on the healthy functioning of the blood vessels that supply Fuel and nutrients to the brain and so they've shown this in um actually these are oral glucose tolerance tests where they'll they'll use 75 gram boluses of glucose and they show that when you give this to a patient you see an elevation in their blood sugar right now this is just in in one setting but we tend to consume um that amount of sugar on a daily basis so I don't know if there's a threshold effect that occurs but it's reasonable um to assume that you know consuming that level of sugar on a daily basis uh isn't good for our blood pressure isn't good for our Hormone Health in fact we see that added sugar consumption is associated with reduced testosterone in men um and so yeah definitely being mindful of the added sugar and uh and and doing your best to minimize that um I think crucially important and and one of the big problems I think and and contributing to this Insidious nature of it is that Sugar tends to go by many different names yeah um in the food supply yeah I think this is certainly a huge problem in the UK and Europe no question my feeling is that it's even more of a problem in America and you know you can see on the labels here in the UK that there is added sugar it sneaks in everywhere you know you whatever you buy if you're not careful you will be having more sugar than is good for you there's no question about that but I actually think it's worse in America I know you've traveled to Europe many times in the past I know you've you know reading your books there's a lot of research that you've done over in Europe in Finland and Berlin all these kinds of things fascinating recent studies that you've outlined in your book what's your take on how the land lies in the rest of the world compared to America well yeah we are now exporting our obesity uh epidemic and it's it's become our number one export in fact and it's unfortunate because you know there are many traditional diets around the world that are associated with longevity like in the medical literature we love to harp on the benefits of adhering to the so-called Mediterranean dietary pattern but we know that there are other dietary patterns that are associated with robust Health like the Japanese dietary pattern for example which is very high in fish contains white rice but again foods that take into account the whole food Matrix yeah so now this preponderance of ultra processed foods with added sugar has really become a massive um export for you know and and contributor to the the growing pandemic of obesity and Associated conditions so it's a big problem I think it has to do with the fact that sugar is cheap it again it contributes to hyper palatability which makes repeat customers for the food industry yeah um and uh and yeah we just you know we love we love sugar I mean we've we've evolved to like sugar when sugar is in the body it causes the hormone insulin to become elevated which tells our body to store fat right it not only tells our body to store fat but it keeps our fat our it keeps our fat siled away so that we burn sugar instead of our hard-worn hard-wone fat stores which back prior to the ubiquity of food stability right when food scarcity was a real problem for most people uh having being being a better fat store was actually an advantageous physiologic phenomena right and sugar is the primary food ingredient that tells our bodies that uh essentially it's summer fruit is ripe Gorge yourself on fruit and um and store fat and so that today has become hijacked by the modern uh food supply and it's not to say that sugar is the primary driver of obesity it's not it's it really comes back to ultra processed foods hyperpalatable mixed dishes and and the preponderance of these oils and the like but um but sugar when consumed especially in the quantity that it is consumed today um it contributes it's uh again empty calories and it's a it's a it's a it's a huge problem um yeah so yeah and it's it's now you know they're all of these like it's it's hard to find now populations that are adhering to their traditional diets which is uh which is quite sad so we have covered these three big categories of foods that if we can you know reduce them at least in some way from our diets we're probably going to experience benefits straight away and reduce our risk of getting sick in the future now of course if we are going to cut those things out we have to think about what we're going to bring in right and I know that's a huge part of your focus in all your books you know the new cookbook genius kitchen is fantastic loads and loads of fantastic recipes in there one of the central kind of underlying principles I think Max in your work certainly what I take from it is that we have agency over what happens to our brains as we get older right and that's something that I don't think is the prevailing narrative in society I think a lot of people accept that as I get older my brain is going to get slower I'm going to get dollar I'm going to lose my memory all these kind of things are just accepted as the narrative which I think your work is really challenging that I want to talk about food today foods that we can bring in and there's a line that I really like ingenious Foods we deserve better brains and the secret lies in our Foods expand absolutely I just got I mean is it weird to get goosebumps from your own writing I hope not but as you read that back to you know because it's been some years since I've written uh and released genius foods but it's it's so true and the more research I do the more that statement is confirmed by the research coming out from our most trusted medical institutions and I think it's so crucial crucially important for people to realize you know back when I got started in this there were not many rooms where you could use dementia and prevention in the same sentence and I'm sure you know this to be true from your training rung and like dementia was not previously thought to be a preventable potentially preventable condition and I think this is for many reasons one there's just the the Mystique of the brain right we know more about space than we know about the workings of our own brain which I think is unfortunate but it's just a it's a tribute to the elegance and the the complexity of the human brain and also the brain was thought to sit in isolation from the rest of the body so it's fairly easy to draw blood and to see what's going on for example in the body of a patient with for example type 2 diabetes or to look at lipids and see how that relates to cardiovascular disease but the brain was thought to sit in sort of the Ivory Tower of the body guarded by What's called the blood-brain barrier it was also thought previously that you were kind of stuck with the brain that you were born with and that the brain reached a level of maturity in about the mid to late 20s past which it would just sort of decline right begin this slow gradual decline toward the inevitable decrepitude that tends to be associated with aging but we now know that dementia is not a normal aspect of Aging we have certainly genetic risk factors but the vast majority of genetic of dementia cases are not attributable to deterministic genes for example many people carry What's called the apoe4 allele which is a the most well-defined genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease about one in four people carry one copy of the apoe4 allele and a smaller proportion carry two copies which is inherited you either get an apoe two three or four allele you get one copy from your mom and you get the other copy from your dad and depending on whether or not you carry uh an apoe4 copy or two your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease disease increases anywhere between 2 and 14 fold but that's risk right so we're talking correlation we're not talking causation a very small proportion of people have deterministic genes but this makes up only two to three percent of Alzheimer's cases so I want the people that are watching this listening to this to know that that you have a degree of control in terms of your cognitive destiny and food plays a major role here and so it was uh only very recently that we started to see real evidence come out showing us that dementia for many for the majority in fact is a potentially preventable condition and it was the 2020 Lancet Commission on dementia where um they they actually made a statement that uh also gives me gave me goosebumps when I read it that the potential for prevention is high and in this paper they stated very clearly that 40 percent of Alzheimer's cases are attributable to what are called modifiable risk factors now these modifiable risk factors that they listed and we can talk about them we're not in my view all-encompassing right so they didn't comprise the full breadth of ways that people can be affected by environmental uh variables that can ultimately predispose one to developing this condition so in fact I think that actually the majority of cases are potentially preventable but nonetheless this paper you know we have to take baby steps and um and this paper listed 12 modifiable risk factors so these risk factors are as the term modifiable suggests they fall within your control you have the reins of of of these different variables right and just to contrast them for a second the non-modifiable risk factors just so people know and get a sense of the science the non-modifiable risk factors would be age we can't modify your age you can't modify your gender that's the second modifiable non-modifiable risk factor right if you're a woman your risk for developing Alzheimer's diseases double that as compared to a males um your age your uh your your gender and your genes right so your genes would be the last not a non-modifiable risk factor you can't modify your genes but as we've already established genes are not Destiny right your genes May load the gun but it's your diet and lifestyle ultimately that pull the trigger um on this condition for many and so the non-moda modifiable risk factors when you go down that list you see things like obesity well we were we've just been talking about how food so strongly contributes to obesity right you see type 2 diabetes which is a form of advanced metabolic dysfunction right many people today about 50 percent of adults are either diabetic or pre-diabetic one in three adults is pre-diabetic and most don't even know that they're pre-diabetic and this is a condition that is largely if not completely lifestyle mediated right yeah hypertension that's another modifiable risk factor we talked about how consuming an excess of added sugar can contribute just one factor here right there are others but how excess sugar consumption contributes to hypertension hypertension is a modifiable risk factor this was actually shown very elegantly in a study we don't have many long-term randomized control trials that we can draw on in nutrition science especially where dementia prevention is concerned but the Sprint mind trial is was a seminal study that showed that when people with hypertension were aggressively treated for their high blood pressure and were given Pharmaceuticals to bring their systolic blood pressure down to 100 about 120 millimeters of mercury that they saw a dramatic risk reduction compared to controls or compared to rather those that were being treated less aggressively for their hypertension where their target blood pressure was 140 systolic blood pressure that they saw compared to that group a dramatic risk reduction for mild cognitive impairment which is considered pre-dementia so we know that hypertension that fixing your hypertension it goes a long way towards helping protect your brain as it ages and that's why it's one of these modifiable risk factors and so there are about nine others um but yeah I mean we can we can definitely start there yeah it's um it's funny how once we know something as a society it's almost crazy to think back you know maybe one decade or two decades ago oh we didn't know it back then like we didn't know it you know I know that's how knowledge moves on and we all evolve but you know it's crazy I think I I spoke to Professor Russell Foster from Oxford neuroscientist you know one of the world's leading sleep researchers for for decades and I'm pretty sure that conversation he said that back in the 80s I think he was at an event he was lecturing and talking about how light influences the Circadian rhythm and people care no it doesn't you know it like it's it was so new I'm pretty sure that was it and it's something that we all you know Universe commas know now and take as far as and take us a given but it wasn't that long ago so I think it's really fascinating that the knowledge you're putting out there is now slowly starting to infiltrate the mainstream I know that's one of your big goals is to try and get that knowledge out though I know you have a very personal uh reason for doing that with you know what happened to your mother I just want to cover on genetics a second you mentioned apoe4 and I think there is this slight misunderstanding with genes across Society where oh I've got the genes for this condition I've got the genes photography diabetes oh I've got the genes for dementia as you have already described many of us will have those apoe4 genes right well we'll have that but I've also heard you talk about how someone living in Nigeria with those same genes doesn't have any increased risk of dementia what if you could just expand on that and explain to us what conclusions we can draw from that right so it's it's really important to realize that when we talk about a gene increasing your risk for um a a condition usually what we mean is that that Gene increases your risk here right where that study is is is being run right so for example the a24 allele here in the United States increases your risk anywhere between 2 and 14 fold but if you were to move to a part of the world where perhaps the diet is less industrialized perhaps uh sedentary behavior is is less prominent right like in ibadan Nigeria so in ibadan Nigeria the frequency of the apoe4 allele is just as common as it is here in the United States but there it has little to no association with Alzheimer's disease so what that suggests is if you're genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease here in the U.S you might simply move your body to another part of the world and see that risk abolished which to me is insane to think about right genes are not Destiny and as I mentioned the apoe4 allele is the is the most well-defined um risk Gene but there's also this concept of uh polygenic risk right which we're just at the very tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding how this plays out in terms of our overall risk for uh given condition you might carry genes that cancel out the activity of the apoe4 allele which by the way affects fat transport into into the brain among other things but um but yeah genes are are something to I think be mindful of but with the recommendations that I make I don't necessarily I mean there there might be slight recommend differences in in terms of the recommendations that I make for a carrier with the apoe4 allele for example but they're not that they're not dramatically different I think for most people it's really the low hanging fruit make sure that your diet is is less industrialized make sure that you're exercising regularly all the all the things that you've talked that you so elegantly cover on this on this show yeah um all super important regardless of what Gene variants you carry let's get into some specific Foods Max um nutrition as you well know is a pretty divisive topic these days and I know you've taken your fair share of hits from different sides of the the dietary tribe spectrums but I want this conversation and I think you're the perfect guess for this to help navigate through the confusion for people because ultimately the people who everyone's trying to help are actually the ones who are getting caught in the crossfire they're the ones who are going oh well this doctor or nutritionist who I follow is saying this and I love all their other advice but it's in complete contrast to this other person who I follow who's saying something else I think it gets really really confusing so the aim of this conversation is to help people you know Empower them so they can make some positive changes afterwards you mentioned beautifully three key things that we can think about cutting out or at least reducing right in terms of things we can introduce now let's start with um the less controversial right so let's start with plants at the start right you've done extra virgin olive oil I thought we might go next to the wonderful avocado why are you such a big fan of avocados when it comes to our brain health ah great place to start and avocados are very non-uh people love avocados especially here in California which is where I live so it's a it's a great way to ease into the conversation um certainly that can be so embattled it's so you know so often but um avocados are great because among fruits and vegetables they contain the highest proportion of fat protecting antioxidants now this is important because we talked a little bit earlier about how the brain is a crucible for oxidative stress because it's composed primarily of fat but not just any fats the brain is composed primarily of polyunsaturated fats right like docosa hexaenoic acid or DHA fat or arachidonic acid right these polyunsaturated fats are the most unsaturated among fatty acids and therefore the most prone to oxidation which um is essentially again chemical damage and oxidation is in many ways a a driver of Aging right it's a it's an inevitable aspect of life right like just living generates oxidative byproducts and free radicals and the like and exposure to oxygen catalyzes this this process right it feels like it's an apple and you leave it out on the counter you watch it go Brown that's aging that's Decay and this process is happening at all times in our bodies at varying rates but we have antioxidants in our bodies that protect us ultimately from this process and aging in many ways could be thought of as the process of oxidation out running our antioxidant defenses right and getting ahead of us and so that's why it's so important to eat an antioxidant Rich diet and there are many antioxidants and you find many of them in the produce section of the supermarket but where the brain is concerned it's the fat soluble antioxidants that are of particular relevance so when I say fat soluble antioxidants what do I mean well vitamin E is one of the most important of these fat soluble antioxidants the best way to ingest vitamin E without question is from food because when you say vitamin E what you're really talking about are eight different forms of vitamin E and you tend to get all eight when you ingest them in Whole Foods when you take a vitamin E supplement for example you're only getting one or two forms maybe a handful right but in an avocado you're getting all forms of vitamin E which all serve similar but different roles in the body and particular the brain where vitamin E helps to protect the brain against oxidative stress against aging crucially important another uh category of antioxidants fat soluble antioxidants that avocados contain um are carotenoids carotenoids are crucially important when it comes to brain health I've talked about I think it was I was one of the early if not the first people talking about the value of lutein and zeaxanthin two um non-essential carotenoids that are found uh readily in produce and fresh produce that we've known for decades helped support Eye Health they help to prevent age-related macular degeneration but it's now become very clear no pun intended to us that our eyes are an extension of our brain our eyes are neural tissue so what's good for our eyes is very directly and explicitly going to be also good for our brains and so these same carotenoids actually also accumulate in the brain where we're starting to see emerging evidence show that lutein and zeaxanthin these these two carotenoids are associated with reduced cognitive aging reduced risk for dementia and even when given supplementally to young healthy college students for example like what was done at the University of Georgia that supplemental lutein and zeaxanthin can actually lead to a boost in visual processing speed by about 20 so you can actually improve the performance of your brain with these with these with the ingestion of these carotenoids so avocados literally to me I like to look at them I almost see like uh they're actually almost in the shape to me of like a bomb like a bomb being dropped on oxidative stress in the brain is how I like to think of an avocado it's again the highest proportion of fat protecting antioxidants it's literally almost a perfect brain food and so yeah it's one of the foods that I consider to be uh quote-unquote genius food why do you use the term genius food in your book in your work you know how did you come up with that well it's you know I guess it's borrowing from the term superfood which is not a scientific term um to be clear uh and and often is used to just sell foods like to Market to Market uh overpriced you know things in the supermarket in the health food section of the supermarket but I thought it was very sticky to me and I wanted to really surface foods that um people could easily Buy on Loop like buy regularly yeah um that we're going to supply that we're going to give people the most bang for their buck in terms of the nutrients that are going to support metabolic health brain health that are going to be the most accessible the most cost effective and I was actually inspired by a study um that came out of Tufts University that found that you know we're always told rungen to eat all things in moderation right that's sort of the Mantra uh in many ways nutritionism right and the junk food industry that all foods fit to just eat everything in moderation but actually this what this study from Tufts University found was that people who more closely adhered to that advice tended to uh include more junk Foods in their diet more um confectionary products more Bakery products more they tended to consume more sugar sweetened Beverages and in fact the healthiest people tend to buy a much narrower range of foods and they just buy those Foods on a loop yeah and so I was like if I were going to come up with the perfect brain health shopping list right brain and body metabolic Health boosting shopping list what would be on that list and so those are the foods that I call the genius foods and it's about 10 foods and avocados are certainly at the top yeah I I really like the way you have written genius Foods you know it's fun to read there's a lot of research in there but you've kind of interwoven it with these you know genius Foods you know and I think it's a really great structure to help bring the science to life for people in terms of practically well what can I do now based on what Max has just taught me what does that look like for me and I think all the foods that you do mention are commonly available you know they are you know things that people can get on Loop what you just said there made me think that this whole moderation piece you know you've you've already covered Ultra process fees right at the start of this conversation it's pretty hard to moderate our consumption off those Foods you know by definition it's just not possible to do and something I've been thinking a lot about Max and I I will put this to you in just a moment is whether it's more important for people to focus on what to eliminate versus what to bring in and of course you know that's quite black or white of course they're both important but certainly in the UK there's been a tendency for people now to say don't worry about exclusion it's all about what we're including in our diets and I understand it I think people want to hear that message I think it's a more palatable message and I I understand the rationale that if you are filling your plate and your diet with the things that you should be consuming more of there's going to be less room for the things that we're trying to avoid or limit I understand that my bias is that I have been a clinician for over two decades I've seen tens of thousands of patients and I'll be completely honest mats I have found more benefits in helping people cut out of their diets the problematic Foods in the modern food environments the modern food supply then by actively focusing on what to bring in it's not a popular opinion that you can put out there these days but I underlined this section the introduction of Genius foods which I thought was really powerful and again this is these are your words mats you'll see that actually slowing the aging process including cognitive aging is just as much about the foods you emit from your diet as those you choose to consume so I've said quite a bit there I'd love your perspective on that Max yeah it's I mean I think it's it's it's definitely um we have to lift the veil for people this idea that all foods fit right that all foods are good foods that there's no such thing as good or bad foods I understand like you where that comes from and certainly people listening to this watching this are coming with a lifetime of uh you know of of of of cultural attitudes about food preferences and and the like and I think that you know we have to we have to be able to remove the morality from food and be able to talk about food in terms of its empirical value right especially in a time where people are sick right so context is everything and we have to understand that we're talking to a population that is unwell a study came out just a couple years ago that found that about only 10 of people uh are free of metabolic illness meaning 90 of people in the US have some degree of metabolic illness so this is a sick population and I think that it's the responsibility of you know the health care provider to um to consider context right and so this idea that all foods fit indeed that is the Mantra of the junk food industry because what that says is it's not our fault it's not you know this sugar sweetened beverage that crams 30 teaspoons of sugar into a 16 ounce serving that's the problem it's your problem because you aren't able to moderate your consumption of these Foods well it's not innate to our biology to moderate our consumption of those kinds of foods right there is something wrong with drinking 50 grams of sugar you know in a beverage in one sitting there's absolutely something wrong with that there's not something wrong with you if you decide to indulge every now and then that's a very human characteristic it's a human Universal in fact and I think that's where we have to be able to separate morality from this conversation about you know what makes a food good or bad I think that in an environment where 66 percent of people are either overweight or obese and where we are trending toward a population where by the year 2030 one in two people are going to be not just overweight but obese right we're talking about clinical obesity here that obesogenic foods like sugar sweetened beverages like these hyperpalatable Ultra processed foods that drive you to overeat which we've already established right which we have good data now to say that these Foods drive you to over consume that it's hard to argue that that those foods are good right yeah you would argue that I think a strong case could be made that those foods are actually not that good right that they are counterproductive to Good Health yeah and I would also argue that if you can't say that certain foods are bad then we can't have double standards you also shouldn't be able to say that certain foods are good and so does that mean that we shouldn't say that like broccoli is good yeah does that mean that we should be censored when trying to say that like whole eggs are good whole eggs are great right we should be encouraging people to eat these Foods so I think we need to get back to a certain degree of of logic and Common Sense and reason when it comes to talking about food and again I understand that everybody's different and some people have fractured relationships with food right which is super important and we have to talk about that but not every message is for every person yeah so I completely agree with that Max and as you say everyone's different everyone's got a different relationship with Foods I think practically if people have never ever done two or three weeks where they are literally only eating Whole Foods right the sort of foods that we're talking about I think people will genuinely be surprised with how good they could feel and that's why my Approach as a clinician has always been let's have a 2-3 rep period where we cut everything out of course you have to eat something in that so it's not as if I'm starving people they're eating real Whole Foods in that time but the focus really is on what not to eat and that what I find like I mentioned with those migraine patients is that people experience their life in a way that they haven't done before they have more energy they're sleeping better their skin feels clearer often joint aches start to go like you see this so often and then people can go okay right this is getting a bit Bland what can I introduce you know and you bit by bit they start expanding their diet again very intentionally to kind of figure out ah you know I'm not so great when I have that type of food but you know that sort of Education piece when we're tuned in to how a certain food makes us feel for me that's the Gold Max because then it doesn't matter what I say or what you say right then they've become their own expert like they've used maybe me and you as their guides to help them get going but ultimately it's like yeah I know Max has to eat that food or wrong says to eat that one but when I eat that food I get sinusy I can't breathe properly I get itchy and I think that individualized components is so important I kind of feel that many people have really outsourced their expertise to other people and and I think there's value and obviously we're trying to help there we're trying to help guide people with our podcasts and our books and our work but I really feel that at some point the reader The Listener has to go no okay I've taken that on board but now I'm gonna be my own expert I know what works for me yeah absolutely I think we need to yeah the the this notion of self-empowerment of of agency and podcasts like yours all the work that I'm putting out uh you know my intent is that people use the advice that I give as a template to do their own research and to iterate and to Tinker and to see what works for them I mean we could talk all day long about for example the benefits of kale I happen to be a fan of kale right but not everybody is going to be a fan of kale and kale is not going to digest well for example for some people right and so I'm not saying that you have to eat this food right but generally when I'm talking about a a food and a specific food it's to represent really a food category and for example kale represents dark leafy greens for me which I think is one of these foods that you would think would not be controversial but of course today um is right I posted about the value on my Instagram of dark leafy greens and how researchers out of Rush University found that people who right who ingest on a daily basis about a cup and a half of dark leafy greens have brains that perform up to 11 years younger right so this this really interesting Insight which is correlational to be clear it wasn't uh that wasn't determined via randomized control multi-center trial right but you know carnivores come out of the woodwork now people who only eat meat and they're you know and they and they have a problem now a bone to pick with dark leafy greens but dark leafy greens are I think a wonderful food and for most people can be very well tolerated and provide a number of different important nutrients some of which essential some of which non-essential but which we see is associated with with Better Health and to me shouldn't should not be controversial a very empowering I think um idea that I have uh put forth ingenious Foods is that people should ingest a fatty salad every day just as a general rule of thumb so a box that people can easily check off every day to consume uh a fatty salad every day so that you know where if this Rush University finding holds true that you could prevent brain Aging in fact reverse brain aging by up to 11 years to me should be non-controversial what do you mean when you say a fatty salad so many of the um the phytonutrient the phytochemicals in dark leafy greens are fat soluble but greens don't contain a lot of fat and so there was a very interesting study that looked at the absorption of uh actually these carotenoids that we've talked about lutein and zeaxanthin and what the study found was that co-ingesting them these two compounds which are abundant in dark leaf figurines particularly kale and swiss chard and spinach they're these these uh these greens are rich in in those two compounds that if they're not co-inggested with a fat Source they essentially flow through you whereas consuming them with fat dramatically increases their bioavailability because they're fat soluble so the fat generally that I recommend people using liberally in their salads is extra virgin olive oil which increases the bioavailability basically the way in which your body can um the capacity for your body to access these very valuable um phytochemicals and so um yeah so that's a that's a I think a great tip but then there are all there are other aspects to dark leafy greens that make them valuable as well for example arugula is the top source of nitrates dietary nitrates which we know helps support our body's nitric oxide pathway which is important for maintaining healthy blood pressure yeah which again we've established super important for good brain in fact one high nitrate meal of for example arugula or beets which are another um very uh food group rich in nitrates can potentially boost cognitive function because it has the capacity to boost blood flow to the brain and so you get that in dark leafy greens you get compounds called flavonoids there is a very interesting study and carnivores which is funny I don't know how many gravitate to your work rungen but I seem to be a magnet for um people on all sorts of extreme diets not least of which carnivore diets I have some views on that I wanted to I wanted to talk about the carnival diet with you at some point later on in this conversation so I do have experience um whether on on a variety of different levels but but please continue we'll definitely get there yeah so there was a randomized control to actual actual actually multiple randomized control trials where they used compounds called flavonoids which are abundant in dark leafy greens another aspect of dark leafy greens that make them so valuable and and add scientific plausibility to this this finding right that regularly consuming dark leafy greens is associated with reduced brain aging this randomized control trial which is the kind of trial required to prove cause and effect right so that 11-year reduced brain aging was a correlational finding but this randomized control trial used compounds called flavonoids which were abundant in dark leafy greens and flavonoids are quite literally plant defense compounds which carnivores love to say are toxic for us right that they that these kinds of compounds should be avoided but in fact what this randomized control trial found was that it's these very compounds that have the capacity to boost bdnf which is brain derived neurotrophic Factor sort of thought to be like a miracle-grow protein for the brain supports neuroplasticity supports the suppleness of of your brain as you age right so they looked at levels of btnf and serum and also cognitive function with cognitive cognitive tests right and what they found was that when compared to low flavonoid uh foods high flavonoid Foods actually boost pdnf and support and enhance in fact cognitive function and so you find these food these compounds flavonoids in coffee and tea in berries and citrus and in dark leafy greens right so again these are a a food category that I refer to as genius Foods dark leafy greens they also were um surfaced in a study by Beale at Al 2021 I believe as being one of the most nutrient dense foods that we have access to because of the the concentration of folate that you get in dark leafy greens so not a food group to be uh to be avoid it you mentioned fatty salads and and I was flicking through genius kitchen today this is your cookbook mats and I'm gonna find it now there was a salad towards the end which I thought right I'm making that this weekend you may remember it had blackberries in um I think it had avocado in it the imagery was just absolutely beautiful I thought I'm definitely making that do you remember the one I think I think that would that would definitely qualify as one of your fatty salads I think it had in some of the genius fees we mentioned so far extra virgin olive oil avocado dark leafy greens I think it had was it walnuts or almond cans I believe yeah I know again those are another one of your Genius Foods right the category of nuts that specifically I think you mentioned almonds in the book but would you broaden that out Beyond almonds yeah definitely nuts I think are great they are here's the thing because nuts are um rich in fat but not just any fat polyunsaturated fatty acids they also contain they're an abundant source of vitamin E wherever you find polyunsaturated fats in nature you also find vitamin E so this is actually another Nuance that we didn't um touch on in our discussion of these grain and Seed oils which I think is very important uh to to bring up wherever in nature you find polyunsaturated fats you find a proportional amount of vitamin E because vitamin E in nature exists to protect polyunsaturated fatty acids and in fact the more polyunsaturated fatty acids you consume your requirement for vitamin E actually increases because it's vitamin E that protects these fats in our bodies Unfortunately today we're consuming more polyunsaturated fats than ever before in human history thanks to the preponderance of these grain and Seed oils but we tend to under consume vitamin E about 10 percent of people consume the uh RDA for vitamin E at least in in the United States but when you consume whole food sources of polyunsaturated fats they're actually incredibly healthy right like nuts are incredibly healthy they're a rich source of unsaturated fats but they're protected by uh a commensurate proportion of vitamin E so almonds great source of vitamin E also magnesium which is a macro mineral that about half the population doesn't consume adequate amounts of which contributes to everything from ATP synthesis to DNA repair DNA damage is at the root of one of the root causes of aging and possibly even um tumorogenesis and so magnesium is an incredibly important mineral and you get about 25 in just a handful of almonds every nut has its own sort of um array of of benefits so if you don't like almonds no big deal I'm also a huge fan of pistachios in fact what gives pistachios their characteristic uh color are carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin pistachios contain um these carotenoids which you won't find in any other nut so if pistachios are your jam go for it macadamia nuts are great a good source of monounsaturated fat and we see time and time again that nut consumption is associated with reduced risk for degenerative disease for cardiovascular disease for respiratory diseases for kidney disease so they're a great food group together where they are of course nuts are something that is easy for some of us to over consume I know I've been guilty of that before you know nuts are great for my brain they're great for my health and before you know it like where did that pack of nuts go so I I totally agree they're fantastic foods to focus on again like I mentioned right the salt even some Whole Foods some of us certainly can overeat and certainly I particularly find I have to be quite careful with my intake nuts I can easily go a bit crazy if there's a bag of nuts in the house certainly for me yeah so here's a good hack for that because I I completely agree that that nuts are very they're among the most calorie dense Whole Foods that that exist and I think it they become particularly easy to overeat now again sort of a byproduct of modern industrial food is that you can now buy them without shells right and they come salted oftentimes they have added sugar so just contributing to the hyper palatability of these nuts and making them ever so easy to to over consume so actually my hack for nuts is I very seldom snack on them I don't use them as a snack I use them in in recipes where they're portion controlled so a lot of my recipes will integrate nuts but they integrate them in a very deliberate and Portion Control way and so to me that's a great way to um to moderate my consumption of them also you know when you get them with flavored as I mentioned it just you know they become all the more easy to just like eat by the eat by the fistful there's other kind of plant-based genius Foods in your book of course we you know mentioned a few of them there's I think dark chocolate and broccoli and broccoli sprouts and blueberries and all kinds of things but I want to move on to animal Foods because I think it's really important you've you've touched on the carnivore phenomena which is growing at the moment where people well many people are going to meet only or certainly meet heavy diets and are reporting huge Health improvements from doing so sorry since you're UPS if you are enjoying this content there's loads more just like it on my channel so please do take a moment to press subscribe hit the notification Bell and now back to the conversation uh certainly in the short term at least but but some to be fair in the you know certainly over three four years and as an open-minded physician I observe that and because I think like umats I'm not wearing my dietary affiliation as my identity I feel I'm able to observe and and stand back a little bit and go well God this is really interesting because I kind of feel and maybe this speaks to why you can post about dark leafy greens and maybe someone from the carnival Community can be quite vocal I don't know because I don't know who that person was but my theory at the moment is if you have struggled for years with your health joint pains skin problems allergies and you've been to doctors and you've tried to empower yourself you've listened to podcasts you've read books and you've tried everything and your life has been really really negatively affected and then you have stumbled across for whatever reason the carnivore diet and you've gone on to it and suddenly a lot of those complaints have vanished or certainly got a lot better I get it I get it that it's like oh man this is it this is the Elixir that I've been waiting for and I get it it's like if someone goes suddenly vegan and they've never done it before and suddenly you know if they're going from a standardized Western diet to a whole food vegan diet or plant-based diet and feeling better we often you know we've all got biases as humans and we often feel oh my that's it that's the magic diet it worked for me and you know certainly my clinical experience has taught me that there is no one diet that works for everyone I've seen people following paleo diets Thrive I've seen people following vegan diets thrive and you know I've come to the conclusion that the right diet for you kind of depends a little bit on your previous Health what your goals are where you are at your life at the moment it's like all these things facts around and so like you I have these Frameworks and guidelines but within that I think people need to play around a bit and personalize them so my view on the Carnival diet is I know we don't have any long-term data yet on it you know but I never want to um I never want to make someone feel you know someone who's transformed their lives by changing their diets I get it like I really understand and again my bias matches I've seen sick patients for over two decades so when that person finds something that works them I get it I get why they're potentially even resistant to hear anything else it's like if I had pain my whole life and suddenly I went carnivore and it healed my pain you know what I don't think I'd listen to anyone I'd be like you guys say what you want to say but I know that this diet works for me so that's just a little bit of my perspective I don't know if any of that resonated with you at all oh 100 I feel the the exact same way a lot of people tend to be down on what they're not up on right so people that have that that bring to the field of nutrition their biases you know maybe they are um they're on a vegan diet but more so than their dietary uh choices they are there is a side of them that is actually an activist for various aspects of you know maybe it's animal rights or environment you know planetary health and the like and so people tend to get very um heated when confronted with facts that challenge their own their own biases right and I think that's a big problem because people as you mentioned are just out here trying to see what's going to work best for them and to cure to heal them sometimes or at least you know mitigate symptoms with regard to some very pressing I think health health challenges today many people are suffering from and so I think that it's um it's definitely something that we need to study more I know that they are trying to do that research um I think it's David Ludwig at Harvard or or I know Sean Baker is always on his like Instagram try who's a prominent you know carnivore personality trying to recruit people for his studies um and the like so I I think that the research is you know probably going to be coming out because of the number of anecdotes that you're seeing on social media but I think a lot of the people who are seeing the greatest Improvement of symptoms they're coming from uh they're coming from sick places you know they're they're coming from places of you know having crippling uh you know gastrointestinal disorders autoimmune conditions and the like and I think there there is some plausibility to the fact that when you cut out you know certain plant materials that can instigate what's called molecular mimicry in the body um to somebody who has a dysfunctional immune system or an impaired gut microbiome for example gut dysbiosis yeah uh that you're going to see a reprieve from from these symptoms and you know meat at the end of the day is a very nutrient dense food so I'm I've always considered myself um to some degree carnivore adjacent uh I definitely like to promote the value of plant Foods I think I think I think it should be a almost like a 50 50 mix I think you know my message is one of balance I think that we have to embrace plants but we also have to embrace animal products and I think that you know that can sometimes be the hardest message the hardest line to tow is that that message of balance right yeah because you offend both parties yeah I agree I think I think we're touching on something that's really important max if we're gonna truly cut through this and help people I have real sympathy and and respect for that individual who has found something that works them and if that's a carnivore diet I get it I understand that but at the same time that working for that person doesn't necessarily mean that the research you are sharing about leafy greens is invalids that's the kind of unlogical leap from that it's like okay cool for you maybe at this moment in time maybe you've got a damaged gut maybe you've got molecular mimicry maybe you've got leaky guts maybe at this moment in time you cannot tolerate a lot of the plant foods that Max is recommending but I mean look you live in America it's probably worse there than here in the UK but it's reflective of everything right whether it's food or politics like this kind of nuanced position in the middle it almost doesn't exist anymore you offend everyone when you take it you almost have to nail your colors you either are hardcore vegan or hardcore Carnival because your approach I really like it matters it's very balanced you know I'm not gonna out of the gates recommend a carnivore diet to one of my patients right it's not going to be my starting point but just as with let's say a patient with irritable bowel syndrome IBS a lot of the dietary recommendations people make often don't work for them if they've got severe IBS they have to be very careful initially maybe reduce their fodmaps with the help of a nutrition experts whilst they are healing their guts dealing with their stress levels and maybe in a few months down the line they can start to introduce foods that they couldn't tolerate you know my own health Journey mats you know I can now bring in foods that seven eight years ago I couldn't tolerate because I've you know I've repaired everything I've gone back to basics I've healed I've addressed all the areas of my lifestyle that you talk about you know in your second book The Genius life so yeah I kind of how do you find it as someone who is putting out nutrition information regularly with with the aim to help people you know do you sometimes just sort of bang your head against your computer and want to throw your phone against the wall I mean how do you handle it oh man lots of coffee and it's uh no it is it it can be um it's it's grading and it can be tiring but uh you know my North Star is I've I've never thankfully knock on wood had any major health problems of of note um other than the the occasional migraine which has been an annoyance to say the least but the reason why I got involved in this um is because my mom was very sick for many years she at the age of 58 um started to display the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a rare and Progressive incurable form of dementia called Lewy Body dementia which is akin to having both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease at the same time and so she had that for eight years and it was a real struggle and when she was initially diagnosed actually even prior to Her diagnosis when she was initially prescribed drugs for both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease I had a panic attack for the first time and only time in my life Googling the drugs right which is what any Millennial with a data plan would do they would just you know go to Dr Google and when I saw that that her condition would get worse and that the drugs had no disease modifying effect they were mere biochemical Band-Aids to me that was like a turning point in my life really where I I became obsessed I was going to say I dedicated myself but I wasn't even conscious I just became obsessed with trying to learn everything I could about diet and lifestyle and how all of these different variables play a role in terms of our predisposition to developing conditions like dementia like Alzheimer's disease like Parkinson's disease which we know even less about but um but you know I like you have seen I I'm not a medical doctor so I haven't seen it from the standpoint of a clinician but I've seen real sickness like real sickness that very few people um have you know have the have the ability to to see and in many ways it was kind of a privilege because you know I wish I could give it all back and and have my mom back in in good health but it really got me to see the world in a new way and and it really cracked open my perspective on all of the different ways that we could be living Better Living more healthily and and you know I think it's an Insight it also helped me have empathy for people and and people's struggles right like not everybody has access to the same kind of food that I have access to not everybody has the same kind of you know whether it's you know nutritional wherewithal or food access or financial um privilege right like so it it has made me very conscious of the fact that everybody is coming to this topic from a different place and to do my best um to to spread a message that's going to do the most good for the most people later in in my mom's health trajectory she actually developed pancreatic cancer and she passed away about three years ago and so yeah I mean what I've seen is just like I don't even know sometimes when I think about what I experience with my mom I don't even know how I am maybe able to walk on two legs like after that experience it was so incredibly traumatic but um but it's motivated me in a way that I've I've never experienced with anything else in my life to uh do what I can to help separate fact from fiction for for people to help dispel nutritional misinformation and getting back to your question to keep my eye on the prize right I have a what psychologist Jordan Peterson is called a noble aim and that's to help people so when people come at me whether it's carnivores or vegans attacking me and my work it literally it's like you know it's like rain on my windshield like it falls off because because I know that I'm motivated by helping people and that that that that that you know my truth is something that um is really motivated and will always be motivated by um understanding what it was that happened to my mom and the desire that I have to prevent it from happening to myself others that I care about and ultimately the public at large yeah I mean thank you for sharing that Max um you know very very powerful particularly that message about having a clear North Star I think that helps to insulate you and frankly all of us in our lives if we have that if we're truly aligned if we have something that we value that we're you know following and we're focusing on and we can bring our actions to align with that actually a lot of the noise then just starts to dampen down around it but it doesn't matter anymore it's kind of like okay cool you know you've got different perspective great no problem maybe my message isn't for you okay um you know and although you know very different because this was your mother and I know your mother unfortunately died a few years ago one of the things I think I've always resonated with you is that clear passion and drive it as you know Max my son uh when he was six months old nearly died he was he was very sick and I've spoken about that on the show before that drove me use the word obsessed that was me I was obsessed I didn't care about anything all I cared about was how do I get this little boy who I felt I had let down back to full health as if this had never happened that was the only thing that drove me and it came at a cost that you know that certainly I had a lot of guilt as a father for a few years which I don't think helped me and I don't think helped my son he didn't want a guilty dad you know he just wanted a present dad to be there for him but the point I'm trying to get to is I've reflected on this so much and I've now got to a point Max where I see the illness that jainham had when he was six months old I've come to see it as a gift and it was really hard for me initially to to to kind of sit with that but I really do now that was a gift that was his gift to me because without that I wouldn't be doing all the things that I'm doing I wouldn't be recording this show I wouldn't be writing all these books making TV shows to help people I know because I've heard that the work I've done like UMass has helped hundreds of thousands of people if not Millions I know that and so I've come to the point now where I think no what happened to my son was a gift he gave that to me and he gave that to the rest of the world and I know it's not how everyone wants to see their life but that's the story that sits really well with me at the moment yeah it's beautiful I mean there's there's no stronger of a motivating force than when a loved one is sick I mean that's just it's it's a stronger motivator I think for people than even when we get sick right like like if I were to get sick I don't know if I would have gone on this journey that I went on to potentially you know save my mom which I was not able to do but um but yeah when when a loved one gets ill it's just that it's there's there's no greater uh tragedy or motivating force you know and and so you've experienced that I've experienced that and um and yeah so when when for example the vegans come at me um you know it's just uh I'm just I'm just helping people you know that's that's what it's all about and and you know I I find that there's actually a lot of undisclosed bias in the world of nutrition um particularly with regard to uh you know the the more vocal uh advocates for the plant-based diet there's a bit of covert activism that's not always disclosed there when you receive their nutritional advice for example um and so I think it's a I think it's just a big problem and the reason why I think um it's particularly uh why that is particularly like resonant with me is that my mom was on a more or less vegetarian diet she wasn't 100 vegetarian she would occasionally eat uh lean chicken breast and and Fish on occasion she was my mom was very attuned to um the messaging surrounding cardiovascular disease prevention diet as it relates to cardiovascular disease prevention so she was by and large on a you know very low fat diet um I never saw her ever eating red meat um and uh you know she never ate eggs because she was afraid of dietary cholesterol which we know now has very little impact on serum cholesterol so she was like she was on that kind of of dietary pattern and on top of that she was a big animal rights activist herself which God bless her you know she was an incredible advocate for um for for Animal Welfare but in my view you know we have to be able to separate our view of how the world should be with what we know to be true about human nutrition and to me the most virtuous thing is to eat in a way that's gonna bring you the most health and to bring the most health to your loved ones you know I'm not about martyrdom I think it's you know we can invoke the cliche of putting your mask on first right I think it's really important to take care of yourself so that you can show up best in the world as your best self and then have impact yeah you know elsewhere yeah I completely agree My Philosophy you know is very much you know for you know the quote that's attributed to Gandhi you know be the change that you want to see in the world you know if we want to change what do you want to say the world let's save ourselves first so you know nourish yourself eat properly for use you've got energy and vitality and then you're gonna have more empathy your relationships are gonna be better you're going to do more things for other people because you're going to feel fantastic in who you are but when you're struggling with ill health you know it's hard it's hard to motivate yourself it's hard to do things it's hard to change the world you know I was chatting someone earlier today who literally said to me not long before this podcast started that they're vegetarian by choice for ethical reasons but recently they've had a blood test done where you know there's a low B12 come up and the doctor's given some advice on what that person can do about it and the chat says something really interesting to me he said you know what I said I'm gonna do it I'm going to be vegetarian unless I get evidence that it's not helping me with my health and I thought okay that's a pretty reasonable take I understand that um so that's the kind of backdrop here Max right animal products why should someone consider bringing them into their diet if they don't currently oh man I love this topic I think it's so important because you see this shame about the the the consumption of animal products and you see all this misinformation about where animal products fit within an optimized uh diet and to me it's uh an uncontrovertible fact that animal products provide some of the most nutrient dense foods available to us you can go to any um town in this country and find a pack of ground beef or a can of tuna for example so let's start at the high level when it comes to the brain fish is and cardiovascular health ultimately fish is at this point the least controversial Animal product right fish provides a bevy of important micronutrients from pre-formed omega-3 fatty acids like as I mentioned earlier ducosa hexaenoic acid or DHA fat which is one of the most important structural building blocks of the brain as well as EPA fat which is um icosapentaenoic acid really important for an anti-inflammatory effect for reducing triglycerides and everything like that so fish is great also wonderful source of protein moving on from that you've got Dairy the research seems to be very supportive of dairy particularly full fat Dairy as being beneficial to cardio metabolic Health it's a great source of protein now granted 75 of the global adult population depending on genes is lactose intolerant but if you tolerate Dairy wonderful source of dietary protein great source of myriad micronutrients minerals um and uh and healthy fats in the whole food Matrix dairy fat seems to be even though it has by proportion the highest uh proportion of saturated fat of any other Natural Food Source seems to be neutral from the standpoint of um blood lipids so dairy fat perfectly safe to consume in fact healthy it seems to consume and so I'm a huge fan of dairy the one exception to that which is going to anger some paleo followers see I can't I can't give an interview without offending at least some group uh the one exception to that would be butter so it seems that butter um and ghee unfortunately because ghee is so tasty um seems to be actually uh distinct from Whole Food Dairy because um in the process used to create butter you disrupt what's called milk fat globule membrane so they've done studies where they feed people either heavy cream which is the or original product right before it becomes before we Churn it to make butter or butter and you see that butter actually leads to an adverse effect on blood lipids heavy cream does not so butter to me is more of an Indulgence food um it's more of a YOLO food if you will uh I'm not afraid of it or anything like that but I don't think that butter is as good for you um relative relative to other dairy products yeah but but I regularly use you know I'll eat Greek yogurt um all the time I think heavy cream is a wonderful thing to add to your um to your coffee in the morning and even whole milk you know I've started for a long time I wasn't I was avoidant of of whole milk and I would opt for these Ultra processed plant-based milk products that are filled with gums and thickeners and and all the like and I've actually started using you know whole milk again and I think it's a it's great it's a good source of protein so so there you've got like those tend to be the least controversial of animal products yeah I'm a big advocate of the consumption of eggs of beef um eggs to me are one of Nature's multivitamins an egg yolk contains a little bit of everything required to develop and and sustain a healthy brain um it's rich in cholesterol that's that should be no surprise because the brain is rich in cholesterol in fact despite accounting for two to three percent of your body's Mass 25 of the cholesterol on your body is in your brain you don't need to eat cholesterol for better brain health certainly not your brain produces all the cholesterol that it needs uh and so too does your body um primarily your liver but where you see cholesterol in the supermarket you also tend to find a bevy of brain supportive nutrients and this is certainly the case with eggs which are an amazing source of um B vitamins you get beta-carotene which is a fat protecting carotenoid you get choline which is crucially important to the developing brain and Myriad other micronutrients is also a wonderful source of protein animal products contain the highest biological value protein biological value protein in nature this is uh you know whether looking at um their the the animal protein digestibility um or by looking at the amino acid profile animal protein is just uh it's just I mean it's great and then I guess the most controversial uh food item would be beef grass-fed grass-finished beef ideally but even grass-fed grain finished beef is one of our most nutrient dense foods you could again look to a paper published by Beale um at Al I believe it was 2022 I think this year um animal products including beef consistently at the top of our most nutrient dense foods a great source of protein dietary creatine which we know supports brain energy metabolism taurine carnitine carnosine it really is a a wonderful food and I think the a lot of the problems that people have with beef is the fact that it contains saturated fat right it also contains dietary cholesterol but as I mentioned we now know we we need to be able to separate these two um when talking about them because dietary cholesterol has no effect on blood cholesterol but saturated fat can have an effect on on blood cholesterol but we now see that um that red meat consumption is not associated with any of the bad clinically relevant Health outcomes that um that we ought to be mindful of right like there was a paper that was just published for example uh this is hot off the press is in nature medicine that found that red meat consumption had there was very weak association with red meat consumption and various types of cancer colorectal cancer cancer um included which tends to be the type of cancer um most closely associated with with red meat consumption and no association with stroke both ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke so you know in this idea that red meat is bad for the brain no association with red meat consumption and and stroke there was another paper that came out again controversial because you're always going to get controversy whenever you have anything that supports red meat consumption called Nutra Rex where a global Consortium of experts came together and said that when looking at all the highest quality evidence there's no good evidence to say that people should reduce their consumption of red meat it's a very nutrient-dense food and for some people going to be the most nutrient dense food that they have uh actually in fact on that Max in uh your first book genius Foods you mentioned this really powerful study I think of children in Kenya uh then if you remember it or not I know you wrote the book a few years ago but you know again showing the potential benefits of meat consumption right yeah led by Charlotte Newman I tend to remember that I have a my the way that my memory works and certainly eating genius Foods on a regular basis helps but um but I I tend to have a photo gen a photographic memory for this stuff but just because I'm so obsessed with it yeah so yeah that was a UCLA study um a randomized controlled trial LED in Kenya where they found that now granted this was a a population that tends to be um undernourished in general right so so animal products for that population are particularly valuable right so I think that the debate and granted for people who are older right for elders even in the Western World this tends to be an issue so yeah this paper what this paper showed was that for children in Kenya it was the supplementation of meat not necessarily Dairy and not uh an equal amount of plant-based protein it was meat that led to an improvement in cognitive function yeah which I think is crucially important especially for children right children today in the Western World tend to consume Ultra processed foods more than adults do right about 70 of a child's diet today is ultra processed yeah red meat is an amazing source of nutrition for children given the time we've got left that's so much now we've opened up that that kind of needs exploring I just want to make a couple things really clear for people listening and watching um we're not covering the environmental aspects of food at the moment that is a longer conversation that's a nuanced conversation which I think I do plan to have on the on the show at some point in the near future we're not typically talking about LDL cholesterol and its role in heart disease if we had more time we'd definitely go there Max I just want to make that super clear so that people understand that we're aware of that we just not gone and explored that I always think what you said about that Kenya study was really important that this was an undernourished population and that kind of speaks to what you're saying which is animal products are very nutrient dense when an undernourished population it may have an oversized effect potentially compared to in a well-nourished population that sounds pretty reasonable but let me put this to you Max with your views on animal products as you've you know briefly tried to quickly outline for us is it possible in your view for someone who chooses not to eat any animal products is it possible for them to have a healthy brain now and in the future definitely well any animal products um yeah it's it's certainly possible um but I don't you know I can't say with certainty that a person who is subjectively seemingly thriving on a plant-based diet wouldn't do better with the integration of you know some some form of animal protein so we always have to ask compared to what right when when making these recommendations but is it possible for somebody to to do well on a plant-based diet yeah it just has to be well calculated and well planned right um so there has to be a level of attention given to one's diet if one chooses to um adopt a fully plant-based diet I don't think one needs to eat beef I don't think one needs to eat eggs or anything like that I think as long as you're you know if you're integrating fish on a regular basis or even Dairy um you know there are ways to get all of the different nutrients provided by different you know animal products into into one's diet um but it's just going to make it I think a little bit more more difficult and I think that it should be informed consent when one is choosing to exclude these nutrient dense foods from their diet and I think the issue that I take sometimes is that it's not always informed consent people make these decisions based on misinformation right they maybe have seen a documentary on Netflix or something about you know going fully plant-based and then based on that they exclude this this huge food group from this huge and valuable food group from their diets and I think that's a big problem but should you have all of the information that you need to make an informed choice and you know you and you want to make the choice or perhaps you just don't like eating eating animal products then by all means like go for it and and and you know and and work your way around that I think informed consent is it's important for every aspect of medicine it's also very important here regarding diet isn't it because with the information that you've shared someone may go hey you know what Max I hear what you're saying I understand the scientific rationale for introducing animal products into my diets but I feel so strongly that no animal should be killed in order to feed another human being this is not my perspective just to be clear but that person is absolutely entitled to say I live by this principle that's very important to me that's informed consent isn't it that is give the information and then we're all entitled as individuals to make the decisions that we want to make right yeah absolutely 100 I mean I'm I'm All About personal freedom so at the end of the day yes I'm I support anybody in there in their health Journey but I'll add that it's not always clear the effects that our choices have on the welfare and well-being of of others right and I think a great example of that is you know yes by abstaining from for example um we'll just use beef and I have no you know like affiliation with the beef industry or anything like that this is I mean I guess my bias is it's a food that I that I enjoy and I think that I derive value from but um you could say that avoiding meat beef um specifically you are uh mitigating the suffering amongst cows right but if you're shopping in a modern supermarket and you're buying you know greens that come in those plastic boxes triple washed and partaking in modern agriculture there's still unfortunately blood on your hands because modern agriculture today um leads to the death of billions of uh animals whether it's field mice squirrels Birds fish that are victim of uh you know chemical exposure due to the spraying of herbicides and pesticides microorganisms in the soil um insects so Unfortunately today in the modern you know incredibly complex web that is modern agriculture there's blood on everybody's hands and so where do you what is going to lead to uh the the lowest area under the curve of suffering right the the lowest area under the curve of suffering and to me um if you can find a local Rancher and and and partake in maybe you know the the sharing of uh of a cow which can feed an entire family for months um to me that's just one not to minimize it but it's one life lost compared to you know there's a there was an estimate that seven billion lives are lost annually due to plant agriculture alone yeah so these are all I think interesting questions I'm not telling anybody how to think about this but my intent is to is to share that it's it can be sometimes opaque the effect that our the downstream effect that our choices have and it's not always so clear yeah as and so cut and dry as I'm going to abstain from animal products and therefore the area under the curve of the impact that I'm having is zero that's not necessarily the case yeah I mean thank you for sharing that Max um I agree with you Matt so I think there's a lot of evidence suggesting that at least having some animal products in your diet is probably if you were hedging your bet it's probably going to help you with your brain function I think we can say that I believe it is possible for some people to have really good brain function without I've got some patients who I think from what I can tell and their blood work are thriving as I say on vegan nights but also on meat heavy diets I think supplementation can help fill in the gaps of people and again I don't mean to be so vague that we're not giving anyone any clear advice I just want you know I'm tired of Max I'm tired of all the fights in this area I'm tired of all the camps and it's like people just want to have more energy and more Vitality people don't want to get dementia if they can help it right that's kind of it right and all I'm trying to do on this show and I think all you're trying to do is help people say well if you make these small changes you're going to reduce your risk amen I uh I would underscore that a thousand times it's absolutely true it's it's yeah at the end of the day people show up to their Dot and you've seen this you've been at the opposite end that I've experienced where you're actually giving the diagnoses but when a person shows up to their physician and receives that diagnosis oftentimes the question that arises is why me you know why and many times these conditions take years if not decades to manifest like if you have a heart attack and you show up to your cardiologist um or the the emergency room it's not the night before that those conditions began to develop that led to you having that heart attack and in my world dementia this is a condition that takes decades to to manifest right so this is not overnight you have Decades of agency to change the course of your of your cognitive path and I think what's so crucial about that is that you know you have choices that you make every single day right like we eat three times a day if not more and um and why not make a decision that is uh hedging your bets to some degree but also makes sense through the lens of evolution right these are conditions that for the most part were rare in Antiquity right throughout human history and now they're increasing in their incidence right so I think um you know take what you hear on these podcasts integrate them tinker and experiment but also always be willing to to challenge your assumptions and your beliefs about this whether it's you know through the lens of planetary health or Animal Welfare always be willing to challenge your assumptions and don't take your dietary ideology to the Grave that's not what you want to do don't let your ideology take the reins of your biology because when that happens it's seldom works out well Matt's it's been such an honor talking to you today I really wish we could have done this in person but I think we have left a lot of Unfinished Business there which absolutely needs a part two face-to-face conversation even at some of you in the UK or next time I'm in La for sure we'll make that happen you've got three fantastic books out if someone's new to your work if someone's inspired and thinks Hey listen Max which one should I start with where would you point them great question I always uh recommend people start with um genius foods which is my first book uh still everything is fully sound in that in that book in fact the research that comes out continues to underscore um the ideas put forth in that book and uh I'm very proud of the fact that my books make up a Trilogy and they don't have to be read in any order but for me the journey um in my life of writing them you know was fairly chronological so I yeah I like people to pick up that book first but you know my latest book genius kitchen is a cookbook um it's more uh it can be a bit more user friendly and you know it's packed with recipes and the like and the more high level takeaway notes of my recommendations so whatever you choose um you can't go wrong but yeah I just I there's always a gonna be a place in my heart for the first and that is uh genius Foods yeah I know that feeling and I'd highly recommend guys you follow Max on Instagram you know he's a really great follow post regularly loads of Pratt schools super helpful information uh to finish off find a question then this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of our lives and I think that really speaks to all the work you're doing it's helping people to feel better so that they can live more with all your experience from all your podcast type of social all your books if you were to share just a few final practical tips my audience to help them start living Better Lives immediately what were some of your top tips be wow well I think um we can't let perfect be the enemy of the good I think there is this tendency to want to live perfectly um and to adhere to uh some oftentimes somebody else's ideal of what Perfection looks like and um I think this can be perpetuated by you know whether it's social media or um Netflix documentaries or the like I think we have to be really kind and gentle with ourselves we live in crazy times and many of us have lots of obligations on a day-to-day basis that we have to uh tend to um whether it's our social lives our romantic lives our professional lives and these are all important right um but for me sometimes you know even being able to pull myself to the gym for a 20 minute workout right uh is better than um not having gone at all right so I think we have to not be perfectionist about this and be able to um recognize that you know sometimes it's the little gifts that we give ourselves over the course of the day um that ultimately will add up to make a big impact right and it doesn't have to be these extended hour and a half long workouts for example or a complete revamp of one's diet right incrementally if you for example reduce your intake of ultra processed foods um even just a little bit or up your intake of protein even just a little bit you'll see a benefit and so I think that that's um I think a a solid place to leave your your audience especially because we've talked about so many different topics but you know if it's integrating you know more whole eggs or um reducing your intake just a little bit of the you know the Grain and Seed oils or the added sugar that we were talking about or maybe using a little more extra virgin olive oil or or even just you know a fatty salad every day yeah um or five days a week uh even I think you know all that will go a long way um at the end of the day it's baby steps it's baby steps if that conversation resonated with you here is another incredibly powerful one that I really think you're going to enjoy as we sit down every day to make a decision about what we eat or we go to the store to buy some food we need to realize whatever we put into our bodies either going to take our health down or build our health back up

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 233,394

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: 5lmNATOVl6k

Length: 123min 32sec (7412 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2023