Raw Pet Medics Tackle Nutrition Myths, Big and Small

Good evening, great business Tuesday. It's Tuesday, 7 o'clock, and it is time for Raw Pet Medics. Dr. Conor Brady and I are here. My name is Nick Thompson, and, uh, Dr. Brendan Clarke is away skiving in the Canadian— where is he? Is he in the Rockies or something?

I don't know, he said it 5 times. I keep ignoring because the pictures are too nice, so I can't bring myself to look at them too long or I cry.

British having a very fine time. BC. Yeah, amazing, amazing.

Moose. I can't believe moose are so big. They are. That's one big animal. I'm very surprised at how big they stand at the shoulder. Huge. Have you seen the size of a male moose?

I just buy the small ones because they have less calories per pound. Hey, ba-boom!

Do you know what I love from Tesco? This is proper bad. I'm talking about bad food here. We're supposed to be nutrition. Everyone's a nutritionist, but we're not dietitians, so I can say what I want. And do you know what I love for proper naughty food? Little mini trifles. I love trifle. Trifle is one of my favorite things to eat. Not like trifle, yeah, filthy trifle with a bit of sponge, jelly, crappy bit of fruit, loads of sherry, uh, and a load of custard, or maybe cream. I can't decide.

Homemade is amazing with loads of sherry and custard.

Even the filthy bought ones, I will, I will eat them if I find them. But, uh, anyway, that's a bad start to our, to our nutritional stuff.

Yeah, well, it just shows that we are human after all.

Well, I am no pure—

I am after all.

Yeah, absolutely. Delightful.

Amazing. Listen, um, how have you been? How's your week been?

Good, good. Yeah, I've been, uh, what have I been doing? Um, something struck me there today. I've been watching this show, uh, on Amazon called The Terror. Uh, what's his name directed it, so he, um, what's his name? It wasn't Spielberg, but it was somebody huge was involved as one of the directors. I thought, oh, this could be good. 10 episodes up in the North Pole, and it involves a bit of a beast and it's set back in the 1800s and sailors trying to find a gap through Canada and they get frozen into the ice and it turns absolutely terrible as they get very, very hungry and you can imagine what they start doing. So, and there's a scene in it where the poor old captain's dog disappears and then some guy's walking around with a dog leg and he's having a bit of food and I thought no more about it. I thought, okay, they killed the poor dog and they ate it. This is what people do when they're starving. And then somebody on the radio a couple of days ago was giving out about cats and they said, you know what the big difference between cats and dogs is? That if you pass out dead in your kitchen, a dog will sit loyally beside you and won't eat you and starve to death, whereas cats will eat you. And I was thinking, that's a little bit unfair to the cat because if I was locked in a room with a cat and I was starving to death, there would be a certain amount of time where you start looking at the cat. With new frowns. Yeah. Now it might be because I've been watching horror. Every night for the last 7 nights. And it's— but anyway, I thought it was a bit unfair on cats, and I just thought, well, surely most animals would do it. Would dog not eat you if he was out to eat?

Well, I'd go the other way around because cats— I hate to bring this into a technical space, but cats want fresh prey. Yeah. And if you've been dead for 3 days, they're not going to be interested in that. But dogs do thrive on carrion. And there have been cases where dog has eaten owner. So without wanting to dwell on quite a macabre tone of phrase, I think the dog would eat you, give it a push, add a real push. They would sit loyally by for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 days, and they'd be like, hmm, and then they'd be in.

I'll just take a little— they won't even notice— a little nibble off his butt, and that'll be grand. Yeah, I think that's the big difference between like a pet owner and a pet guardian. It's It's just a necessity. That's what I've been thinking about today. Anyway, well, thank you.

Thank you.

There you go. That's what— what about you, Nick? Anything exciting on the radar this week?

You know what, I've been, I've been in the office for 2 weeks now. This is the new office. This is the new home office. Right behind me, Ellie sits, my wife sits. She's doing all the admin. It used to be Lynn who did a fantastic job, but she hasn't come with us. And so settling into the new place, and that's really, really great. And so there's a couple of things I wanted to say, kind of on the official side of things. One was thank you so much for everybody who contributes to Patreon. People are just putting a few quid in every month just to say thank you, and we really appreciate it. I've put several hours into this today, as I do most days, as Conor does, in order to just get some information so that we can sound like we vaguely know what we're talking about. And it's quite fun to do, and you learn through doing it. I was just thinking today, what else do we do? We eat, we learn, go to bed, repeat. That's it. We learn. We're learning every day. We're very, very lucky that we have got a job that involves learning every single day. So I think that's really exciting. So thank you to the Patreon guys. We really appreciate that. And also, the person last week— remember last week I disappeared, and it wasn't because I hit the ejector seat, it was because my phone, I think, gave up. And so I didn't answer this question. So if it's you, I'm not running away, I promise. I'm really happy to answer that question. It was about a poor digestion problem. They were— they called in or emailed in from Dubai, and so please email me, nickthompson@holisticvet.co.uk. You can find all my details on holisticvet.co.uk. And please let me know what the question is, and I'll answer it. I'll answer it directly. So if it's you, please contact me directly, and I promise I will do my best to answer that directly.

So thank you. It was a tricky one. It was a terrible time to get cut off because it was a really tricky question. I couldn't answer it anyway, and it needed a vet. And so, yeah, and so she stays for 55 That's for sure. I mean, that was cruel.

But anyway, so sorry. Anyway, listen, we're gonna do myths. Yeah, we're doing myths.

Absolutely.

Which is, uh, there's a lot of them about— I've just done the write-up, so on Facebook. So if you look on the Facebook, you'll see below it, it's like, I don't know of any other branch of science where so much misinformation, disinformation, so much industry leverage industry. They've got, they've got a lot of power. Industry. If Coca-Cola gives you $2 million, you're probably— and you've got a laboratory that you've got to run and mouths to feed and a staff of 2 dozen people— you're going to be fairly compelled to take that. And Marion Nestle, wonderful New York nutrition researcher, she says that wherever somebody's paying you, unless they're completely independent, you will likely unknowingly be influenced by that paycheck.

For sure.

Yeah, she's written a book. I can't— what's it? Have you read that one?

Um, she's done a pet food one as well.

She has.

Yeah, I can't remember the human one, uh, but, uh, not Packaged Facts, is it? No, that's another thing.

No, anyway, Marian Nestle. I could find it for you, but people complain when we give you too many books. If you want it, let me know and I'll dig it out for you. So there you go. That's us.

So she said a great thing, Nick. Marian Nestle said a great thing that really helped me, because behind most myths is usually a company trying to make money. Honest to God, behind most myths. I mean, I would say more than 50% of the stuff we're going to talk about tonight, bar some of the things— there's a big difference between misinformation and disinformation. And misinformation is where somebody got it wrong, they presented it as fact because they thought it was correct, I believe. And disinformation is somebody that knows what they're saying is wrong and presenting it as fact. It's deliberately misleading. So D for deliberately. I believe that's the difference. But it's certainly at the crux of it tonight, because science can be wrong on things. Science can do flip-flops all the time. But often, certainly with food, as you're alluding to there, Nick, the flip-flop is because usually some money has been behind it. That, or very stubborn scientists. But often, more often than not, certainly tonight, it could be about money. But Marion Nestle had a great thing to say about multinationals and their sullying of the scientific waters, and particularly Big Pharma producing more than 90% of the papers on medicines today, which is certainly more in keeping with Big Pharma than it is patient outcome. We know this, we know it's a massive problem. They sponsor 75% of American news. So really big problem, that is. And what she was saying is you're wasting your time hating multinationals and thinking that they are the problem. Multinationals are just a group of people trying to make money, and they in turn are owned essentially by their shareholders, like this company Blackstone and all these other companies we hear. And we think, so we hate them, oh, they're the evil overlords. And people take the, take the mickey saying, isn't there like, no, oh, you think it's lizard men? It's like, it's not. This is all just what, this what happens with capital capitalism, when you allow companies that are designed to make money in charge of any decisions, because every decision will be to make money. And she said what they are is predators. They don't love you, they don't hate you. All they care about is consuming and eating dinner, and their dinner is cash. As simple as that. Lions don't hate you, hyenas don't hate you, dogs don't hate you. One of the nastiest little carnivores out there, he can eat you while you're still alive. So, um, to, to, to hate multinationals is a waste of time. Hating these big companies, you can pick 2 or 3 that are are particularly rotten, it seems. But these guys are just playing the system, and they're playing to win, and that is money for their shareholders. And that actually did me a lot of favors. It's like, I'm wasting my time. This is just a group of people. The people making the drugs don't think it's a problem. The people doing the bogus science who are actually conducting the study don't think it's a problem. The people that fudge the results ever so slightly— nobody thinks it's a major problem because it isn't what their one particular role. And it's not just— it's not a beast out there with somebody going, you know, for the large part. Anyway, I hope that helps people. Marion Nestle came up with that and that really helped me.

Yeah, she does stress that most, where there is influence on genuine scientists, obviously if you clock in at Coca-Cola every morning and go to their laboratory, you're gonna, your paycheck is gonna be very influenced by them. But if you happen to get a grant from Coca-Cola and you've been doing, studying, I don't know, sugar or the exercise and losing weight and keeping healthy, for 20 years, they say there is influence, but it's usually very deep psychological influence. That if there is, some people can get away with it, but often there is something like 8 times more likely to favor a study in favor of the people who pay the bills and pay for the study.

Yeah.

Okay. So Let's start with one or two, maybe simple ones. What would be your first? I've got a real cracker to start with, but what would be your favorite simple myth that you'd like to dispel right now?

Oh, I think, I think one of the biggest ones, one of the earliest ones that was, was fat and, and the dangers of fat and saturated fat, which began in the '40s and '50s, '50s and '60s. And it led on to the sugar issue that I know you're going to love talking about, Nick. So with the saturated fat, this guy called Ancel Keys— I always think his second name is Keen— but Ancel Keys in the 1940s came up with a way to preserve pet food for the— or human food for the American military. That was called Ration K, or Special K, or not Special K, Ration K, something else. But mind you, that's what the Germans were marching on, something similar. Anyway, so this guy came out of the war as a bit of a nutritional hero, that he came up with this way, this cool way of preserving food, tasted disgusting apparently. And eventually then one of the presidents was, who in 1955 had a heart attack, wasn't it Eisenhower or something like that? He had a heart attack and he took it very personally, as you would, as a heart attack would do to you. And he looked at the fact that heart attacks were killing half the American deaths at the time, this is where what's going on with heart attacks. And Ancel Keys, to cut a long story short, mistakenly jumped to the role of saturated fat and he really had a bee in his bonnet about saturated fat. And at the, at the time, he wasn't financially motivated to make this mistaken conclusion, but that's what he did. And saturated fat was his issue. He went off and collected data, but in hindsight, we now know he excluded some important data. So he looked at high-fat countries and found that they were more prone to heart attacks. But then excluded France and Germany, which had really high-fat diets, and they didn't have anything like the heart attacks. He would pick certain Greek islands, but he would ignore Corfu, beside which had a higher fat diet and less heart attacks. And so that, in hindsight, they found out. But he was so influential by partnering up with the right people. And, and each time he got a leap up the ladder, people would say, who is Ancel Keys? Where did he come from? He's just a chemist. He's not a— and up and up and up until eventually the whole world bought in on it, particularly the American Nutritional Association and the Heart Association. American Heart Association.

Yeah, I'm going to jump in there for a second and just say he looked at the stats from, I think, 22 countries, and he found the 7 that fitted his hypothesis, and he published those 7. He said, look, I'm right because all 7 countries— and you think that's a really stinking thing to do, but actually it's a very common thing to do, unfortunately. Okay, he was a very He was very magnetic and he was very— yeah, he could talk anybody into anything.

He was a perfect TV personality versus a real food chemist who you would find extremely boring. So the good chemists, the good food scientists, the good climatologists, they aren't the guys you see on TV. The guys who make it to TV and the top CEOs and presidents, they've got character and a bit of flair because that's who you want to listen to on TV. Doesn't mean they're right all the time. The boring guys are usually more right. So despite the fact all the really important fatologists that study fat were saying this guy is completely off his rocker, that's not true at all. There's no link. In 1974, Time magazine had him on the front saying this guy is going to reduce heart attacks. You need to slash your fat intake now. And in comes sugar in a big way. It turns out, although this is where Nick's going to come in because this enters sugar in a big way. And when you take out saturated fat, it means you take out meat. You take out dairy, you take out butter, eggs, you take out all the ingredients, natural homemade ingredients that come from farmers that are shipped to your place in pretty simple terms. There's nobody in the middle, a bit of distribution. And suddenly if you drop fat, you need products, refined carb, higher carbohydrate products that need to be processed and manufactured. And in comes manufacturing and a whole lot of different products and sugar and manufacturers then got in the game and started making money and they weren't gonna let go of that too easy. But it took Time Magazine from 1974 to 2014 to issue the retraction and say, eat butter. Eat butter was the caption in 2014. And it took the guy, the main fatologist, what's the word, lipidologist, it took him from 1974 to 1996 to get his paper published, a review of all the evidence they had for saturated fat. It's called a meta-analysis. He had to sit on that for 20 years. No journal would publish it, even though what Ansel Williams was selling was based on nothing, utter nonsense, no serious science of any value. The main meta-analysis criticism of that, they didn't publish it for 20 years. No journal would touch it. So if that doesn't tell you anything about science, I don't know what does. It's like people are afraid, even like, listen, I have to bring up this example today of cloth face masks trying to stop something that's a third of the size. You know, it's— we know that— we now know utter nonsense. These cloth masks have virtually zero effect. 136 studies now, but one or two showing any sort of benefit at all. You have to move to an N95 electromagnetic one, which nobody uses. They are ridiculous. It's like trying to stop the smell of perfume. Doesn't work. There was no evidence for it, but it looks good and it's a little bit scary and it kind of gets people to act. And so if they went on that basis, then that might be true. But who would publish the results of these studies that show, no, hang on guys, these cloth— simple cloth masks don't work? They don't work. But nobody will publish that information. So you think science just constantly comes down on, well, the good science is here and the bad science is here. And that is not the way. There's a whole lot of power and politics and everything behind getting a paper out, believe me.

Yeah, it's, it's— we were taught to use evidence-based medicine where you, where you look at all the evidence and you, you go with the evidence that, that, that, that everybody can, can get behind and they can test and, and go with. Yeah, it's called evidence-based medicine. But what actually happens in science very often, and Ancel Keys is a prime example, and, you know, there are many examples following that, is that somebody has a great idea and you get a bit of groundswell, and then nobody dares to, to go against that. Yeah, there's— and they call it eminence-based medicine, which I think is really cool. Emanence-based medicine. And that's what happens these days. Somebody has a great idea, mentioning no names, about no viruses or anything like that, and we all go chasing it like a pack of mad dogs, um, off into the distance, when in fact the truth is, you know, somewhere where we are. So it's It's, it's, it's really worrying, but we are only human. But the thing is, we should learn from our mistakes with Ancel Keys.

Yeah.

Say, say, say, listen, guys, we need to discuss this stuff. We need to have journals where we can discuss these ideas. But we did it again. You know, in the last 2 years, we've all gone charging over a cliff like lemmings following the same ideas, only to find that, oh no, masks don't really help. And there are lots of other things. But I don't want to bore you with—

Yeah, we'll get cut off.

Yeah, exactly.

And the sugar. So saturated fat was incriminated for a long time.

As was cholesterol. Cholesterol as well. Yeah, he was the one who didn't— Yeah.

Give us a bit on cholesterol there. Or sugar.

Well, cholesterol. Everybody says that cholesterol is really bad for you. And so since about 1977, I think, in the States, they started saying we've got to have low-fat, low-cholesterol food. And the manufacturers of ultra-processed food thought, this is fantastic. We can say we can, we can make food and we can sell it to the American public. They did the same in Europe, but we tend to follow the, the trends that happen in America. And so from 1977, everybody went for— well, everybody, many people were persuaded to use low-fat foods. And you would think that if Ancel Keys was right, that the obesity rates, the heart attack rates, the diabetes rates would gradually trail off as the rates of eating saturated fat, beef fat and pork fat and chicken fat and all these things, saturated fat, animal fats essentially, they would trail off. But what actually happened, from 1977, and it's almost to the day, you see obesity going like this, you see diabetes going like this, you see heart attacks going like this. So actually somebody made a boo-boo. And as Conor was rightly saying, it took them 20 years to realize that they had got it wrong. And why did that happen? And the answer was when you take fat out of food, because fat tastes great in food, okay? Whether you like fat or not, it gives a certain mouthfeel and your primed to eat it because throughout evolution it was very rare and you were primed to really crave it. Salt, fat, and sugar are the things that we really go for. So when you reduce fat in food, you've got to put something else in in order to maintain your sales. And what do you use? Answer: sugar. You also use salt, but that's another question. But you put plenty of sugar in because then it's attractive. It has a certain mouthfeel. And they designed these things so that they have impact in your mouth. That first bite of burger is where all the taste is. That first spoonful of trifle is where all the taste is, Conor. And they killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of millions of people by giving them sugar because sugar boosts the insulin and will cause loads and loads of negative effects. Things like gout, things like Alzheimer's disease. They associate it with cancer, they associate it with diabetes, they associate it with obesity.

Yeah.

So yeah, that'd be great. Let's have a chat about sugar and maybe calories, because when I was at college, I was taught that a calorie is a calorie. If you eat a calorie, you keep a calorie. Yeah. Unless you burn it off. When did you come across this whole thing that a calorie is not a calorie? And what are your—

where do you go with it? You put me onto this first, actually. Well, I was always into this whole food kind of business and I had always suspected this, that this low-fat kind of sugar business, I didn't actually investigate that sugar hook until you put me onto Taubes and a couple of the big kings. Because what insulin does is what sugar does is that it hits the blood and sugar is a poison, and insulin is released. Okay, so insulin's job is to pack that sugar into the fat stores. You eat it in summertime, early August, when fruit is ripe and there's lots of sugar around to build your fat stores for winter. Perfect harmony of nature. But we now eat sugar all the time, so this hormone comes out. It's an anabolic hormone, a growth hormone, and it packs the, it packs the sugar into the fat stores. That's its job. You eat sugar and you are going to put on some weight, a caloric calorific measure of weight. But insulin has a second little role, and that is it blocks leptin. So, and leptin is what tells you, you've enough, Conor, stop eating. So if you eat something sugary, you actually don't get satiated by it. You actually feel hungry 15, 20 minutes later. So we get hungry. So this low-fat proposal, not only were manufacturers involved in this, they thought, take fat out and you'll lose those calories that fat was, but we are going to replace those calories. So what do you do? Well, if there's only low-fat food around, we're just going to eat more of it. So you're eating more sugar and you're on this nasty wagon along with the American Heart Association and the Dietetics Association totally on board with this and refusing to acknowledge any of the studies until 1996. And even then they had to be dragged to the table. So the sugar bit was a problem. So the calorie in, calorie out stuff was a very— people still go on about it, but that was really dead in the water 20 years ago. And the easiest example is this. If you eat 3,000 calories from chicken and spinach for 3 months, or you eat 3,000 calories from cake for 3 months, you know, what do you think you're going to look like at the end of that? And quite obviously, you're going to guess that the cake person is probably going to look a little bit softer around the middle. And you'd be right, because that's a higher sugar diet and sugar is going to drag those calories out and pack them into the fat stores. But if you're only on a restricted 3,000 calorie diet, what happens? You get sluggish, your metabolism slows down because you are losing calories to your fat stores. So you become this sluggish mess of a tubby man after 3 months. Whereas the guy or person or man or woman, well, have to be careful, on chicken or spinach is eating a low insulin spike. So insulin's not a matter, still is, protein can do it, but just not the same way at all. And so they'll be a completely different shape. If it was calories in, calories out, those 2 things wouldn't be the same. We know probiotics play a role. You can be born to an obese mother and be more inclined to obesity. Stress will bring it out. Bloody everything can suddenly affect the mad chemicals they have in the food, sweeteners, stuff that we promised. Oh, there's no calories in this sweetener. We now know all these things are triggering problems and it's all together. But above all is what you eat and sugar is the number one thing. So that, that myth stayed around for a very long time. It still causes problems. You mentioned cholesterol there. We now know that most of the cholesterol is produced by our own bodies. It's a fire extinguisher and it's to keep your arteries soft because you're so inflamed and sick. And so people were looking at the arteries going, oh my God, it's full of cholesterol. Stop eating cholesterol. That was only 20% of the problem. 80% of that cholesterol was coming from your own body. And so this was the incrimination of eggs. They said eggs, they need to get rid of all the natural foods, particularly the cereal, breakfast cereal companies pushed the egg thing, if you can believe it, on the back of one study on dried eggs, which was a nonsensical conclusion they made. They incriminated eggs to feed more breakfast cereal to kids, and they said eggs contain cholesterol, and cholesterol is now bad, but it contains two types of cholesterol. And it turns out when you eat LDL cholesterol and HDL cholesterol— LDL being the bad one, don't need to get into the reeds, but HDL being the good one that can help you out and do different things. It's in your cell membranes, you need it for vitamin D, all sorts of stuff. When you've got the two of them together, they work in symbiosis to be good, to be good for you. But more to the point, the LDL, the bad cholesterol in eggs is a light fluffy one, which is fine for the body. The really bad cholesterol is in small particles. So now they know it's only a certain type of cholesterol that's not in normal foods. So the cholesterol thing, but that hung around and lipidologists were saying these are the studies, but the American Health Association and the Dietetics Association wouldn't jump on board. I highlighted why that might be the case. Listen to the sponsors, Nick. The AND is the American Nutritional and Dietetics Association. They represent 7,000 US dietitians. Their journal describes itself like this. It is the premier source for the practice and science of food nutrition and dietetics for USA. The monthly peer-reviewed journal presents original articles prepared by scholars, practitioners, and is the most widely read professional publication in the field. That's taken off the website. They are sponsored by Abbott Nutrition, Bush Brothers. For anybody that knows these companies, these are the top sugar companies in the world. Cadbury's, Campbell's Soup Company, the Coca-Cola Company, Congra Foods, the Danone Company, General Mills, GlaxoSmithKline, McDonald's, Mars Inc., Kraft Foods. I'm picking these out now. Metagenetics, Monsanto, they're great. Nestlé, National Dairy Council, on and on. Sugar Association, Tate Lyle. And we're European and we're laughing at that and we know those companies. So guess why they didn't jump on board? I mean, it's quite obvious, but that was the That's my sugar. You love a bit of sugar.

I love a bit of sugar. And the thing, because I, like you, was taught that a calorie is a calorie, and in 2005 it kind of suddenly struck me. And then in 2008, a wonderful study came out. And what they did, it was an Israeli study, and they took 500 guys. It was done at work, so it was actually gentlemen. So they took 500 guys and they put them onto 2,000-calorie low— no, it was a 2,000-calorie low-fat diet. They then took 2,000-calorie Mediterranean diet. Was the other 500. And then the fourth group, they put on a regular high-fat, eat as much food as you like, low-carb, low-carb, high-fat. Okay. So you've got a fixed calorie, regular, low-fat diet. Yeah. The kind of things you get at Weight Watchers that you're recommended. Yeah. Yeah. You've got a You've got the Mediterranean diet, but 2,000 calories, which is slightly low for guys. And then you've got all-you-can-eat, high-fat, low-carb diet. Which of those 3 groups do you think lost their weight most consistently, most rapidly, and kept it off? The answer, of course, is the 3rd group who ate as much, as many calories as they like. They just went gently on the carbs. They ate lots of fat, they ate lots of meat, they ate lots of salad, they ate lots of everything, but they just went easy on the pasta and the bread and the—

interesting—

trifle.

Yeah, trifle. Yeah, I have got baby belly at the moment. I'm not looking good, Nick. I'm afraid to be meeting you in the next— I'm not too bad, but I'm soft. And that's because my sugar intake is increasing. It's so, so addictive.

When you're stressed, your sugar intake increases. Yeah, you know, if I start smoking, you know, it gives you a hit. It gives you a hit and it's addictive. Gary Taubes went through his entire book, The Truth About Sugar— no, The Case Against Sugar— and he said there is no definite evidence. But nowadays, really, people consider sugar to be as addictive as cocaine. It is as bad as that. So that, for me, proved. And I hope that's kind of shown you that it's, it's not how many calories you eat that will change your— how much fat or whether you put on or take off weight. It's the quality of the food. And carbohydrates are very influential. They're not the only thing, but they're very influential in those things because carbs spike insulin. And insulin, as Conor says, is all about getting ready for winter. Let's put on the fat in order to get us through the winter. So that's hopefully explained why.

Yeah, there's a brilliant video. We've said this, I've mentioned this video before. Lustig is the— Professor Lustig in California, in San Francisco, is the boss of this, of insulin, of the role of sugar and insulin. And his videos are called The Skinny on Obesity, Part 1 to 5. Check out Part 3. and it is utterly fascinating how a guy at the top of his game can just break it down for you in 10 minutes of just glory. And anybody that wants to know about the role of putting sugar, high sugar diets in their kids, I make them watch that thing. I pass it around my family all the time. They never watch it. Listen, okay, we've just spent an awful long time on one, and I've got 7 more to go here, Nick. So now we're going to have to rush them.

In my write-up, Conor, I've said we could probably do 20 or 30 of these and still not touch the sides. So I'm thinking, take your time. Yeah.

Okay.

Just let's just pick the juicy ones. We've got another 12 or so minutes, so let's just pick the juicy ones and really enjoy the journey. I would suggest your turn. So I can give you a lot more on sugar calories.

And while I love sugar, I will, I will.

I love the calorie thing. So I've got another one that I've got another 3 or 4.

This is just interesting in relation to terrible food advice in 1992. The USDA was pushing 11 servings of refined carbohydrates, 11 servings of carbohydrates per 2 to 3 servings of collectively meat, eggs, nuts, beans, and fish because of the fat content. So they said essentially 4 parts carbohydrates to 1 part meat, eggs, nuts, beans, and fish was the diet recommended for America in 1992. Now, believe me, it didn't get a hell of a lot better. I mean, I was in school in the '90s, and the pyramid was, you know, bread and wheat and pasta and stuff on the bottom. That's slowly changing. But, you know, it's— the studies never supported that, is my point. And I think that's like when people want to understand how these things persist, and the public are so confused. The people that really understood, the lipidologists and the— and anybody else that you could name like that, they weren't confused. They knew that wasn't the case, but their voices weren't being heard. And that's the problem. We don't give air to them. To the end. I, Nick, I wanted to bring up something quite alarming that I found out myself as I went to fight the case for pork.

Okay, let me just, let me, let me just jump in just for a second. Yeah, because I just want to say, you know, you talked about carbs, protein, and the fat.

Yeah.

And when, when did we stop talking about food and when did we start talking about carbs, protein, and fat? Because if you go to the supermarket you will not find a pack of carbs. You will not find a pack of protein. You will not find a pack of fat. Even if you get a really, really lean steak, that is not protein. It's mainly, mainly water apart from anything else. But there's going to be fat in there. There's even going to be some carbohydrate in there, glycogen that you find in there. So I think, and I've read it somewhere and I can't remember where I read it, basically what they were trying to do is they were trying to sciencify food, to kind of take control of food, saying, yeah, Adam, you've been feeding your family for 20 years, but you actually know nothing about food. We know about food because we know about carbohydrate, protein, and fat, and we think you must balance it in this way. You must eat lots of carbohydrate because it's very good for you. It's a very good source of fiber, and it's a very good source of energy, and fat going to give you a heart attack. So if you have this balance of these macronutrients, you're going to be healthy because we, the doctors, the nutritionists, whoever it was, we know best. And I think we have been going downhill since then until this moment, Conor, when we are going to reintroduce the concept of we want to talk about food. Not about nutrients.

It's like they were selling you a science diet. I mean, what next? They're going to put it under prescription? Oh, they'd never do that. Well, yeah, talk about myths. My God, they're back in court over the prescription claim, by the way, because there's no medicinal qualities whatsoever and can be sold by newsagents. So, but anyway, are you done with your— is there anything else you wanted to say? You're never going to let calories go. Was there anything else you want to say? What are your— have you got another point on calories?

We'll save it. We'll save it till when Brendan's back. We'll do it in a couple of months. We'll do some more myths and we'll do calories again. It's so big.

It's so big.

And if you want references, let me know. I've got references. It's just a wonderful bit. And why is it wonderful? It's wonderful because we've been so wrong for so long.

So wrong.

So wrong.

How many people sick? 1 in 3 Americans have diabetes or prediabetes. They expect 1 in 2. Like, this is no laughing matter. This is like some seriously ill people. Their lives are going to be shortened. Inflammatory diseases. Like, it's disastrous. And how wrong can we be? And the science was never supporting us. It's crazy.

The last, the last figure I heard, and I think it was maybe Lustig who told me this, as it were, something like 94% of Americans and Europeans are probably just as bad. 94%. Have got some degree of prediabetes or worse. 94%. That's including the children.

Well, that's not good.

Which is unbelievable. And sugar is a lot to do with that. There's also preservatives and, you know, a lot of factors. Yeah, but it's terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

I love the study that Tobbs came out with where you can take gut flora from a fat mouse and put it in a skinny mouse and the skinny mouse gets fat. I mean, mind-blowing. What is going on there? Because you obey your gut. Get sugar, get sugar. Oh, I have a terrible sweet tooth. Well, you've been eating a lot of sugar because you're probably stressed and now you've got a gut floor screaming for sugar. It's not a sweet tooth. You weren't born with it. You just unfortunately have been eating a poor diet and now it's screaming for it. And what do you do? You feed it. And when you feed it, you get a little chemical hit and they grow in numbers. And the next time they call for it, it's going to be a bit louder. Get sugar, get sugar, get sugar. As I say, until you're chasing the kid down the road to grab the ice cream from his hand. You know, that's, that's it. You are chemically driven to, to, to fulfill those needs. But like I said, sugar plays a large role, probably not the only role, but crap food is ultra-processed food.

I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to come in with a reference here. Jason Fung has written The Obesity Code, and I think it's one of the neatest—

Yeah, it is.

It runs through what it's all about. And in a nutshell, the The punchline at the end of the book is that obesity is not a calorie disease. Obesity is a hormonal disease like diabetes, like Addison's, like Cushing's. It's, it's not necessarily your fault. It is a hormonal disease. And that's where he goes. So it's wonderful. The Obesity Code. Now, should we do a final furlong on a bit of pork?

Yeah, let me get this pork bit out, Nick. This, um, I need, I need to read these out because believe me, guys, this was new to me. So there's, uh, we've only got a few minutes, but here we go. I, I dived into pork, uh, briefly. This is about 4 o'clock and I'd pick my wife up at 5 o'clock, so I had an hour. I thought, okay, I'm a quick look at pork because I want to straighten out my head on trichinosis. Trichinosis was a little worm in pork, largely American pork, Asian pork. It wasn't really a European thing, but it was a big scary thing in the '80s. And everybody would have known to cook pork very well in the '80s. Even if you're in Europe, we were very much contaminated with this scary message from the US that was laying people out. It was a nasty bug, one of the first little intensively reared animal problems that this little worm was. They've since kind of gotten on top of it, certainly in the US, and we have very much gotten on top of it in Europe. It's not something you would consider anymore. It can pop up its head now and again, but it's not a big deal. Trichinosis, okay, I kind of knew that, so I was going to say that's the myth on pork put to bed. And then I read an absolutely very worrying article for us raw feeders, because I don't mind feeding a bit of raw pork, but I just need to read out some stats. 3 big things going on with pork at the moment, intensively reared pork I have to highlight, but they're finding it in wild pork too. First one, hepatitis E. Does that alarm you just when I say that at all, Nick? Hepatitis E. Here are the stats.

Never come across E, no.

Me neither, brand new to me. In developed nations, pork liver is the top food-based transmitter of hepatitis E. We feed pork liver as raw feeders. A virus that infects 20 million people each year and can lead to acute illness. I straight away thinking, yeah, in stranger countries, not in Europe. And fever, fatigue, jaundice, vomiting, joint pain, stomach pain, those symptoms. Enlarged liver and sometimes liver failure and death can occur. Okay, there's me thinking that was just a, you know, a hot, humid country somewhere. Here's the stats in America. In America, about 1 out of every 10 store-bought pig livers tests positive for hepatitis E, which is slightly higher than the 1 in 15 rate in Netherlands and 1 in 20 rate in Czech Republic. That's 1 in 15 in Netherlands where most of our pork comes from test positive for hepatitis E. With livers off the shelf, one study in Germany found that 1 in 5 pork sausages were contaminated with it.

Yeah, but what happens when dogs eat this stuff? Because I don't— I have no idea. Eating it raw is one thing. And dogs eating it raw might be something quite different. I wager that dogs have been eating wild boar liver for a million years.

And I would back that because it turns out the wild boar thing is— yes, it might be tempting to blame the hepatitis E epidemic on commercial farming practices, but in the case of the pig, wilder doesn't mean safer. Hunted boars too are frequent hepatitis E carriers capable of passing on the virus to game-eating humans. References, 3 of them. So yes, my question would be, will dogs suffer the same issues? I mean, talk about pig eaters, they will happily eat pigs if they could catch them. Can't see many dogs taking down wild pigs, they are tough, tough animals, but they would eat them as carrion. So I don't know is the answer, Nick, but I'm just highlighting this, okay? So I don't want to scare the pants out of people, believe me when I say I am going to be looking into hepatitis E in dogs, and I will then write a more complete article on it and put it up on the website.

So as regards trichinosis, it's a big deal in Finland. They've— and what they've done is they've, they just cull anything that's got the slightest hint of trichinosis, and they've eliminated it.

Yes.

So the other thing, the other thing though is that if you freeze all your meat then that can virtually eliminate virtually all but the most exotic of parasites. And therefore, I think that you might get away with just eliminating all parasites simply by putting all pork products in the freezer before you put them in the dog raw. Yeah, now viruses will not be affected by freezing.

No, they won't.

But will the virus affect the dog? It might affect humans, you know.

I think that'll kill trichinosis because it's a little worm, so that would— yeah, yeah. So I'd imagine— but there's two more here, Nick. Multiple sclerosis— do dogs suffer MS?

They do suffer similar diseases.

Similar diseases. I Googled, I Googled and got the same answer, and I didn't look anymore. Like I said, guys, I am— this is more from a humorous perspective. Perspective, but it's things we've never considered that were all pork before. And I am never going to shy away from warning people if something pops up. Listen to the stats on MS and pork consumption. When all countries were considered, pork intake and MS showed a whopping correlation of 0.87. That's a p-value of 0.001. Highly relevant, highly, highly significant. For perspective, a similar study of diabetes and per capita sugar intake found a correlation of just 0.6. Pork and MS was 0.87. When analyzing 165 countries. So highly relevant kind of correlation there, doesn't mean causation, but you know, it's the smoke alarm's going off. Earlier, a study of inhabitants of the Orkney and Shetland Islands of Scotland, a region teeming with unusual delicacies including seabird eggs, raw milk, and undercooked meat, found only one dietary association with MS: consumption of potted head, a dish made from boiled pig's brain. The potential for pig brain to trigger nerve-related autoimmunity isn't just an observational hunch either. Between 2007-2009, a cluster of 24 pork plant workers mysteriously fell ill with progressive inflammatory neuropathy, which is characterized by MS-like symptoms such as fatigue, numbness, tingling, and pain. The source of the outbreak? So-called pig brain mist— tiny particles of pig brain blast into the air during the carcass processing. When they tracked the workers and they found that that was definitely the cause of it. So that's the MS thing. So I thought that was interesting. There's a bit more on that, but I'm skipping watching the— yeah, brand new to me, this link. Uh, another very, very scary thing about it. So, okay, look, they have no idea where MS comes from. Uh, speak— we, we had an MS diagnosis there when we— when my wife had Lyme disease, we were told it was MS essentially. And we're sitting in front of the third, um, brain person, and he was the MS guy of Ireland, and he's kind of telling us, well, this is what happens. And it's like, well, it could be something else. He was like, no. Uh, anyway, so they really don't know where MS is coming from, and they do suspect it it's some sort of dodgy little virus type thing, and that was a good leading cause. But I don't want to talk anymore about that because I know a little about it. And trichinosis, Nick, here is the stuff on trichinosis. As you said, freezing them should help, and it's pretty much gone from Europe. But there is another little issue that I'm not sure you've heard of. Have you heard of Yersinia?

Yersinia, yes, yes, yes, yes. Again, in Finland, they are very hot Yersinia, and they've eliminated it from the national herd.

That sounds good.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

I have a map to show you where Finland is colored very, very dark. Let me just— can you let me share my screen?

Oh, I think you do it. You go to screen on the, on the left-hand side there.

Okay, screen on Oh yeah, screen. Cool.

Try that. There you go. And I'll show this in here like that. Screen share. Right. Let's get rid of us to a certain extent.

You can see me.

There you go. Let's try and make that a bit bigger. How's that? No, that's no good.

They'll get an idea. They'll get an idea.

I'll tell you what. Why don't we just— We go like this.

So I'm just going to not share my screen anymore. My question would be, how do I stop? Oh, hang on. Here we go. Am I back?

Yeah, here we go.

Ah, okay, here we go. We're back. That was some sort of magic that has— anyway, that image, I'll share it on Facebook later, guys.

You can—

I'll just turn off that share then.

Now, Nick, okay, okay, yeah, okay, guys.

That graph was showing the amount of Yersinia infections in Europe in 2019, and Finland was over 10,000 Yersinia infections per 100,000, as were a couple of your Eastern European companies, Czech Republic, uh, Germany was very high, uh, and Ireland and UK pretty low. So Conor, what's Yersinia? Well, brand new to me, guys. Listen to this. Um, pork's relaxed heat rules may have opened the doors for another type of infection, Yersiniosis, which is caused by Yersinia bacteria. In the US alone, Yersinia causes 35 human deaths and almost 117,000 cases of food poisoning each year. Its chief entry route for humans: undercooked pork. The majority of pork products, 69% of tested samples according to a US Consumer Reports analysis, processes are contaminated with Yersinia bacteria. Yersinia found in 69% of 198 pork samples tested. Low levels of drug work have been also found. Yersiniosis acute symptoms are rare enough— fever, pain, blood, diarrhea— but its long-term consequences are what's really ringing alarm bells. Victims of Yersinia poisoning face a 47 times higher risk of reactive arthritis and other chronic joint issues, a typical inflammatory joint disease triggered by the infection. In 2019, yersiniosis was the 4th most commonly reported foodborne zoonotic disease in the EU. And that is the 3rd thing. Then we could talk about nitrosamines and stuff in processed pork, but nobody's feeding processed pork. So isn't that interesting? I mean, most of the time you're thinking trichinosis and you're thinking, okay, that's a bit worrying, but the MS stuff, the hepatitis E, which I need to find out in dogs, yersiniosis—

and yersiniosis, I you don't hear it when you're talking to people who are doing like meat inspection and things in this country. You just don't hear yersiniosis. The only time I've ever heard it was in Finland where they're very hot on it. So I think, I think let's, let's have a look. My impression of pork in the UK is it's pretty safe, but I think let's, let's, let's dive into that to find out exactly what's going to happen.

Yeah. It just seems like a whole lot of smoke that I never heard about. I always recommend pork, but I feed outdoor pork. So I adore pigs. I find the way they're reared deplorable. I sometimes don't know. I mean, whatever about chickens being reared that way, which is clearly totally unacceptable as well. The way pigs are reared is completely unacceptable. And so outdoor reared pork, I would always feed and I would always use the organ meats and stuff. I'm not saying I'm going to stop now, but I need to find out what the link is here with, with doggies. Look, it was just something I just— it was just interesting that I went to dispel pork and say pork's fine, but I want everyone to know that if we do find something ever, if we ever found something where a vegetarian diet was good for dogs or some kibble actually helped dogs live longer or, you know, some ridiculous product churned out by some fast food clown actually did good for a dog, I'm never going to shy away from telling people this actually is legit, this is working. But you know, I'm never going to choose raw all the time if I thought there was some danger from this disgusting way we rear these animals and it might harm our dog. Well, then I would say, guys, all the more reason not to feed that disgusting meat. And so, but so I was just highlighting that because I had an hour to get those few notes out and I thought, oh my God, I need to really look at this and see, like, if you were a vet, Nick, and you saw chronic arthritis, how would you even think to look at an infection and say, is this caused by Yersiniosis infection?

How do you— it would not be anywhere near the top of the differential list, that's for sure. They would, within fairly smart order, if there was massive degeneration of the joints, they'd get in there with a needle too and look at what they're going to grow. They would definitely do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Especially if it was, you know, just, you know, multi-joints, say, you know, a young dog, their joints suddenly disintegrating, then they would be saying, aye, aye, what's maybe an infectious cause. So we'd have to look at the incidence of yersiniosis in dogs and joint taps and what have you. So yeah, I think that's something really to—

that's interesting that, yeah, a single joint you would think was an injury or injury-related or something about gait. But if it's multiple joints, see how easy it is for you, Nick, and multiple joints, that's how you would know. But it just rolls off your head because you're so used to thinking that way, you know. But yeah, that that gives me solace that people would notice these things. But I just need to find out, is there any cases of yersiniosis? Guys, I'm sure people are Googling there. Try to find a bit of yersiniosis infections in dogs. That would be interesting. But anyway, there you go. So we only got 2 myths. We did cholesterol, we did saturated fat, sugar, low-fat diets, bit of calorie stuff. Yeah, the calorie and carbohydrate. Pork, a bit of pork. That's not bad actually. We got about halfway through the list. That's pretty good for me. We'll do it again when Brent's here. Brent, we'll give Brent a shot at this. This is the sort of stuff Brent likes as well, no doubt.

He does like this. I was just thinking, I'm missing him a bit. I think that, I think we do great stuff and I think people like it, but it's great when he's here. So Brent, if you're seeing this, I'm not just blowing smoke. It's good. You do, you add a lovely little frisson and Absolutely. Your smiling face is much wanted, but we hope you're having a great time in Canada. Okay, any thoughts on what we're going to do next time? I always land this on you.

I love to tell people that I am doing— I'm doing at quarter past 8, I'm doing a raw feeding masterclass for an animal charity in the States at quarter past 8. I'm going to be doing that for about 2 hours. It's about $10 a ticket. And if you are brand new to raw, which absolutely nobody on this show is, then do come along. If you are already raw feeding and you have the gist down, don't bother. It'll be, it won't be, it'll be the stuff that you have definitely heard half the time. So, but for any newbies or you know somebody that's looking to kind of get on the ladder and hear some of the studies that support it and why dogs need meat and then we're talking about raw feeding, that's on at quarter past 8. I'll just advertise on my Facebook page there about 2 hours ago. So if you think anybody might need that, that'll go to charity, that's a good thing. But for what we're doing next week, Nick, I haven't a clue. We'll just look at Patreon and see what people are talking about and steal their ideas and pass them on.

Okay, good. Yeah, okay, Patreon, it's up to you. Um, have a, have a little think and, um, shout, and, uh, whoever, whoever the greatest, um, consensus, that's where we're going to go. Okay, fantastic. Conor, it's great to see you. Take care of yourselves. Thanks, Nick.

That was great.

Um, that was really fun. We'll see you soon. Good night, everybody. Thank you, thank you, and we'll see you in 7 short days. Bye-bye.