In this kitchen‑set conversation, Dr. Austin Perlmutter and his father Dr. David Perlmutter explain how the foods we eat act as information that rewires the brain and shapes our daily choices. They argue that the central problem is not a lack of knowledge but the way pro‑inflammatory foods trigger reward pathways, creating impulsive cravings and a feedback loop of poor decisions. Anti‑inflammatory foods, by reducing chronic inflammation, help restore the brain’s capacity for thoughtful decision‑making. The discussion ties these mechanisms to broader lifestyle factors—sleep, exercise, screen time—and positions their new book Brainwash as a bridge that moves patients from information to action. Throughout, they use everyday examples (apple vs. doughnut, sleeplessness leading to junk‑food binges) to illustrate how diet‑induced inflammation can dominate the brain’s decision centers, and how mindful eating can improve both short‑ and long‑term health outcomes.
Chapters
Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Austin Perlmutter, and I'm here with my dad, Dr. David Perlmutter. We are in the kitchen talking about food. And before you say, okay, I know about food, I know I need to eat healthier food, there's a specific reason we're here today, and that is because food changes our decisions. So here's the thing, you know that food is information, you know that food affects your health, but what is so important to understand is that the nutrition you take in is going to affect whether you make good choices or bad choices. What you eat for dinner is going to change the entire way you see the world the next day. And so you really need to consider how your foods are affecting your brain and modifying your decisions.
Austin and I, both doctors, Austin came home from his residency and he said, you know, I'm doing everything I can to learn about what I should be teaching my patients or giving information to my patients. And then he, as you see, is a great communicator and you're communicating your information to the patient. And he said, you know, Dad, the most frustrating thing is I give these people the best information that I know and they don't do it. And so we get back to the decision-making problem. Think about it. Yeah, we've talked for a long time about the importance of food. We want to have more fiber to nurture our gut bacteria. We want to cut back on certainly sugar and refined carbohydrates. Nowadays, we want to limit our protein consumption because we know that there is some concern about having too high a protein intake. But what is the central theme of our new book, Brainwash, is that our food choices are affecting how we make our decisions, not necessarily the other way around. We've talked about deciding to eat this food and that food, but now we know that making good choices— not just related to food, but making good choices as they relate to the amount of sleep we get, whether we're spending a lot of time on our computers, whether we decide to interact with other people— all of those choices are really highly influenced by our foods. Through the mechanism of— get this, you've heard this before perhaps— inflammation. Inflammation we've talked about in the context of Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, diabetes. Inflammation directly challenges your ability to make good decisions.
Yeah, and one of the examples that I brought up to you on several occasions, which I think is so relevant, is imagine you have an apple and a doughnut in front of you and If you're the doctor, you tell the patient, choose the apple, just pick the apple, it's so easy. But as you probably know, it really isn't like that, right? It's not as though you, you come up to a decision and you just are able to pick the healthier option. So instead of spending all of our time informing people as to here is the right choice, we wanted to take it a step further back and ask, why are we making these poor decisions in the first place? And then we said, well, if the brain is making the decisions, then maybe the way our brain is wired is determining whether we go the right way or the wrong way. And what changes the way the brain is wired? Well, that's why we're in the kitchen. It's our food.
Yeah, and I have to say, when this light bulb went off, Austin and I looked at each other, we said, this is something we have to share. Because, you know, the biggest problem that people have is not information anymore, it's putting that information into action. We consider our new book Brainwashed to be a The bridge between information and action, finally allowing all of you to take the best information that you have and putting it into play. And this goes well beyond what happens in the kitchen. It has to do with your decisions to get exercise, because we know that's good for us, to make sure you're going to get a good night's sleep, and really very— a whole array of other decisions that you want to make but just aren't making. Because, you know, when you eat food that's increasing inflammation, You're focusing your brain into that part of your brain that's impulsive and really not thinking things through.
I would echo that. The idea is that certain types of foods, specifically pro-inflammatory foods, are going to strongly activate reward centers in your brain, and they are going to keep you craving these short-term rewards, keep your thinking impulsive. And so what happens when you're looking for short-term rewards and your thinking is impulsive? You're going to turn to those same pro-inflammatory foods, and so you're going to get locked into this cycle of continuously making poor decisions. On the other hand, when you look at foods like these, these are strongly anti-inflammatory foods that tone down the inflammation, the chronic inflammation in your body. These are things that in the long run and in the short run are going to lead to making good, healthy decisions.
You know, the same thing can happen if you don't get a good night's sleep. That's something everybody can relate with. You know, I didn't sleep well last night, and this morning I just ate, you know, the box of donuts. I couldn't control myself. It's all about catering to reconnecting your brain to the part of your brain that makes better decisions. In fact, that is really the central theme of Brainwash.
Exactly. So if you think about how you feel after certain types of foods, intuitively it all makes sense. Food changes the way you feel, right? You could be foggy-headed after you ate a giant Thanksgiving feast, or you could feel hangry when you are eating a lot of refined carbohydrates and constantly feeling those cravings. So this really just builds on what we intuitively know, but it's based now on amazing research that shows how things like inflammation affect our brain function. So we're so excited to be able to make these interventions in the kitchen that are going to benefit your thinking.
So the important takeaway here is when you change your food, you change your brain, and when you change your brain, you change your decision-making, and that is really what this is all about.
