The Satiety Per Calorie Scam: A Lesson in Unmasking Pseudoscience

Doctors want you sick. There's no profit in healthy people. They are lying to you. You hear these generalities all the time, and for the most part, I am not a fan. Most physicians I've met are genuine, thoughtful, caring people trying to do the best by their patients, trying to do the best and working tirelessly, albeit in a broken system, to do the best with the lives in their hands. So as a personal rule, I'm anti-doctor bashing and try to assume the best of intent, but I I do have a limit, and where there are clear cases of deception that appear harmful, especially when the perpetrators fail to take responsibility and fail to engage with integrity, then I have no problem calling them out. In fact, I think it's important to do so because it's important to differentiate the scams from the science. And when I say the science, I don't mean the science in a derogatory fashion, but authentic, genuine, the scientific process. So in this video, what I'm going to do is provide what I think is a useful and educational case study in a brilliant marketing strategy, the satiety per calorie model, and show you how what appears on the surface to be a reasonable non-dogmatic tool for people trying to manage obesity, well, it's actually virtue signaling pseudoscience that should be called out for what it is: a scam. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. More and more physicians around the world including this esteemed physician from the UK, are calling this for what it is: a scam lacking evidence. But, I promise, this won't just be a beatdown. At the end, I will provide the "scam artist," Dr. Ted Naiman and Dr. Andreas, with an opportunity for redemption. So hear me out, and let's see if we can progress. Let me first arm you with a bit of background on what satiety per calorie is if you haven't heard about it before. And what I've done here is written down a blurb really trying to steelman the satiety per calorie case, and I'm gonna read that to be as articulate, direct, and present as best a steel man as I possibly can for satiety per calorie. So, satiety per calorie is: if you focus on eating more of foods that keep you satiated, you'll eat less and lose weight. And if you have excess weight to lose, this could improve your overall health. Satiety per calorie is a model, or is supposed to be a model, that aims to be diet tribe agnostic by assigning composite scores to food based on variables thought to promote satiety. Including higher percent protein, more fiber, and being less hedonic, and then ratios this to the caloric content of food in the denominator. So ultimately, you aim to eat more of what keeps you satiated and get more satiety for your caloric buck. Now, at a high level, I hope you think that sounds reasonable. I certainly did. I certainly thought when I was approached to give feedback early on in the score's development that, you know, this could be a useful tool for some people. But then things went awry when the engineers of the approach, Dr. Andreas Enfeldt and Dr. Ted Naiman, clearly did not seem genuinely interested in either validating the approach or presenting it humbly for what it is: a guiding heuristic, a tool, a toy. But instead, what they wanted to do is present it as the future, the evidence-based solution, the convergent truth, as if Big G Diet God had just handed down the secret to obesity on stone tablets. With the best of the science backing it. And let me be clear, that's not what satiety per calorie is. That would be a lie and overreach. Not only that, but it's a harmful lie, a scam as far as scientific integrity and public health are concerned. Now let's unpack just a few of the reasons satiety per calorie is pseudoscientific. First of all, it contains completely arbitrary variables like hedonic factor. Even one of the score's creators, Ted Naiman, completely admits the hedonic factor is made up. The hedonic score, which is completely fabricated, and the combination of the scores, which is also weighted in a completely, you know, made-up artificial way. And in addition to that, the weighting of variables is completely arbitrary. How you weight percent protein versus fiber versus hedonic factor versus calorie in a real food is completely arbitrary and made up. You can toggle the weights at will to generate scores that you find preferable and then adjust those scores to pander to an audience. Also, satiety per calorie ignores metabolic adaptations that occur with dietary shifts, and these metabolic adaptations can be very, very important for food intake and weight management. We've actually shown this in a recent reanalysis of a popular metabolic ward trial, which the satiety per calorie creators actually rest some of their scoring and evidence on. And this— these data have been shown to be misleading, which means the scores built on them will be misleading. So you have an arbitrary variable, arbitrary weights, and poor data input. In addition to that, the satiety per calorie score completely ignores really important variables that are outside the scope of the score's components, including things like fatty acid profile. Olive oil, butter, corn oil, they're all the same to satiety per calorie. Also, chemical additives don't matter in satiety per calorie. All this just gets brushed under the rug of the satiety per calorie model, and what results is an inevitable stream of absurd claims like that Arctic Chocolate Peanut Butter diet ice cream or Halo Top ice cream is better for metabolic health. This was the claim by Dr. Enfeldt. Not just weight management, but that this diet chocolate peanut butter ice cream is better for metabolic health than avocados, olives, nuts, ground pork, dark chocolate, a lot of fruits. Better for you than cherries, watermelon. They're saying that this diet ice cream is better for your metabolic health than cherries, nuts, or avocados. That is the claim. Not only is that the claim, but that is the quantified claim. As they're assigning precise scores to these foods. Clearly this is absurd, and if you don't think it's absurd, then you probably should click off this video. But this is just one example among many that have arisen over the months, including the claims that pizza is better for weight loss than watermelon, a banana split is better than butter, regular Coke is better than olive oil, popcorn with nutritional yeast is better than fatty fish or meats, higher protein berry ice cream is better than fresh salmon, all for better weight loss and and by their extension, metabolic health. So they're claiming that their protein berry ice cream is better for metabolic health than salmon, that pizza is better for metabolic health than watermelon, etc., etc. These are the claims they are making with their scoring system. And the stream of absurdities goes on. But here's what they'd say: "It's a work in progress, and as we get feedback, we tweak and evolve the algorithm in an engineering approach." That's marketing speak for, "Ha! We can change scores anytime we want and change goalposts anytime we want based on criticisms because our scoring system is completely arbitrary." In fact, they're doing this. They literally admit they do this. They just change a score to placate the audience. Marketing-wise, this is smart, but the problem is the fundamentals are dysfunctional, so every tweak will just generate more dysfunction. Which is why, despite saying it's a work in progress, we're getting better and better, now over a year later, I can still say you're calling diet ice cream better for metabolic health than fruits, dark chocolate, nuts, and olive oil and avocado. That continues to be absurd, and the score will always generate absurd options, absurd comparisons, because it's fundamentally dysfunctional. Now let's unpack their marketing playbook a little bit more so you can be observant and see how the Satiety Per Calorie tool, just as a case in point, but really a lot of diet marketing groups are able to effectively market their product even though it's bupkis. So I've categorized their common advertisements and defenses into kind of 5 categories. One, and maybe most commonly for advertisement because it really works, is the anti-diet culture virtue signaling, saying things like, "We're diet agnostic, we're providing options for people," or as a flip side to that, throwing extreme diets under the bus, saying, "The keto zealots say XYZ." This is a great way to gain social media points, and it's completely separate from the science, but it works as a marketing tactic. Option 2 is talking for them about how their components are directionally correct, saying, "Oh, well, eating more protein seems to be good, eating more fiber seems to be good," and then what they do is they try to extend the logic to say, "Well, the sum of components must be useful." This is a logical fallacy, and you can see that based on the fact that their scoring system, even after over a year of engineering and tweaking, still produces bubkis results like chocolate peanut butter diet ice cream is better for metabolic health than cherries, avocado, nuts, olive oil, and dark chocolate. That's nonsense, and it's built upon these directionally correct components. A third approach is the vague appeal to high-level evidence. Every now and then they'll say something like, "We're basing it on the best human RCTs." Maybe they'll even throw a reference here or there, but they conspicuously avoid being transparent about the body of literature upon which they're presumably basing their scores—I don't believe they really are—or the system which they're using to extract data from the literature in order to build their score. I don't think they have a system whatsoever. If they did, they might provide some degree of transparency about it, but they don't even provide a reference list. Now let's talk about the fourth tactic. And if you're going to take one thing away from this video, I want it to be listening to this very carefully, because this is a tactic that is very common, very insidious, and very effective. And when you start looking for it, you'll see it everywhere, not just among the satiety per calorie folks. So it is shifting the burden of proof. It goes something like this: Person A makes a claim, Person B counters Person A's claim, Person A then says, "Well, prove me wrong," thereby shifting the burden of proof themselves, the person who made the claim, onto the person trying to counter it, often in a very unfair manner, asking Person B to present evidence they couldn't possibly have, or asking them to disprove a negative. So to take an extreme example, and then we'll use the satiety per calorie example, if I told you Let's say your name is Laura for the sake of this thought puzzle. Hey Laura, I think there's a pink platypus named Jeremiah Jinglebells Juju III who lives on an igloo on the backside of Neptune and only eats square bananas. And you said, Nick, what are you smoking? And I said, well Laura, prove me wrong. You, Laura, would have a hard time proving me wrong because you don't have evidence to actually disprove that. I'm asking you to disprove a negative that you actually can't. And this happens all the time. So example, for Satiety Per Calorie, they may claim 'Hey, our protein berry ice cream is better for weight loss than salmon,' and I say, 'I don't think that's a fair claim to make,' and then you say— they say to me— 'Well, Nick, our algorithm predicts it is, so how do you know that it's not?' Shifting the burden of proof into me in a very unfair fashion. But you can see how that plays very well on social media, especially for those who want to eat protein berry ice cream and don't like fish. This is a very common logic sleight of hand, and if you want to learn more about it, I encourage you to Google Russell's tea pot. You'll learn a little bit more if you don't think my explanation was articulate enough. But moving on, the fifth and maybe final major bucket is distraction humor, which when all else fails can be kind of useful. Ted Naiman uses that a lot, and you can look for that as well. So big picture, after reviewing these 5 tacks, why is this all a problem? Because letting deception slide is a slippery slope. This is similar to the playbook that's used by big food companies. That have not only permitted, but fueled and encouraged the metabolic health epidemic. And above all, all this is intellectually dishonest. It's not the Society Per Calorie concept that's problematic per se, but the execution and the marketing. Now, I'm all for what works for a given individual, be that low-carb, high-fat, high-carb, low-fat, carnivore, vegan, or focusing on upping protein and fiber and eating foods with lower caloric density. Whatever works for you, nobody has the right to tell you otherwise, but we need to distinguish between that and general scientific claims about obesity physiology. In other words, the strength of the claim should match the data supporting it, and this is where satiety per calorie fails miserably. My aim here, to be clear, is not to troll satiety per calorie, the model, the scoring system, for its own sake. So here's what I'd love to see from those promoting satiety per calorie. Here is their redemption opportunity. First, be open about the exact studies and the whole body of studies you are citing, and about the methods you used to extract data from those studies to make your score. Also be transparent about how you're weighting these different variables and why you change weights as you do over time. Be transparent about all that. Also, be humble about your claims. It's totally fine to say, "Here, let me make an argument about why I think you should up the percent protein." protein in your diet, maybe why you should focus on getting more fiber, or why you should be mindful about what foods are your personal Achilles heel that you tend to overeat. That is very, very different than saying, "Here's a score that proves diet ice cream is better for metabolic health than all nuts, dark chocolate, extra virgin olive oil, avocados, and lots of fruit. And it's based on RCT evidence. Oh, by the way, now pay a subscriber's fee to get access to our evidence-based proprietary algorithm that will literally let you have your cake and eat it too." And in addition to all that, maybe just try to validate the freaking tool. But with that, here's a closing thought that may be a little bit pessimistic but represents the truth. What is their incentive? Specifically, what is their financial incentive? Because if virtue signaling, hand waving are efficient for business purposes, why would you want to validate the tool? Why would you want to put it to rigorous scientific tests? Why would you want to invest money in potentially breaking your model and highlighting holes that do exist in your model and undercut, therefore, the bottom line, the business bottom line. Why would they, from a business perspective, actually want to put their tool to the scientific test when the scientific hand-waving and virtue signaling works so well? Consider that. And with that, I'll close the video. You can let me know your thoughts and if you thought I was fair in the comments.