Mark Sisson Wants Me On Joe Rogan's Podcast

I was running in the woods on Sunday, and I got an email.

From an old colleague, who congratulated me on what Mark Sisson had said.

"Umm, what?"

Sunday with Sisson

Sisson's weekly "Sunday with Sisson" newsletter had gone out. I can't find an archive on his site, but here's a newsletter archive site (don't click on links there, they won't work correctly):

I've got an action item for you all.

If you happen to use Twitter, hop on and retweet my tweet asking Joe Rogan to have Tucker Goodrich on the podcast (or send him one of your own). Tucker has been banging the seed oil drum for many years now, and if we could get one of the strongest anti-seed oil voices onto the most popular and influential podcast in the world, the collective health of the podcast-listening community would skyrocket. Seed oils are one of those health topics that requires some time and detail. Sugar's easy to explain. Grains are too. You can hit those in a single elevator ride and get the point across. But seed oil? To really understand the predicament requires at least a 5- to 10-minute conversation.

Joe's podcasts last up to 3 or 4 hours. They are extremely long form. You can really get into the weeds, and the weeds is sometimes where you need to go.

Here's the tweet:

Get @TuckerGoodrich on to discuss soy and other seed oils, @joerogan. https://t.co/nzl56klE0x

— Mark_Sisson (@Mark_Sisson) January 17, 2020

WOW. Thanks, Mark!

The Joe Rogan Experience is the biggest podcast in the world.

This would be an amazing honor, and a fantastic way to get what I think is the most important health message out to the world. He's had lots of great diet topics and debates, including Stephan Guyenet, Chris Kresser, Gary Taubes, and of course Mark Sisson:

Response to Gary Taubes on Omega-6 Fats (Seed Oils) and Obesity

Recently the Human Performance Outliers podcast with Shawn Baker and Zach Bitter interviewed Gary Taubes. [1]

I was a guest on their sixth episode: [2]



Where we discussed omega-6 fats (n-6) from seed oils, and their impact on health and fitness.

Shawn posed a question to Taubes about processed vegetable oils (seed oils), as a follow-up of sorts to our discussion.

This is actually the second time that a question from me about one of my favorite topics made it into a podcast interview w/ Taubes, the first was in 2011, detailed in this post. [3]

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PS: They had me back on their podcast to discuss this post:

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"Taubes answers about the way I expected him to.  Thoughtfully, but wheat and linoleic acid have not been focuses of his research."

This post has moved to Substack.

"No Benefit in Sharply Restricting Salt, Panel Finds"

No kidding.

I covered this almost two years ago: "It's Time To End The War On Salt", when Scientific American had a cover article with that title. I noted that Gary Taubes had written an article to that effect in 1998.

Now the Institute of Medicine, at the behest of the Center for Disease Control, has come out with a similar finding (link above).

Chris Kresser has more:

"Last May (2012), I wrote an entire series on salt, including the history of salt in the human diet, the dangers of salt restriction, and my recommendations for a healthy salt intake. There’s no evidence that adding salt to taste to a whole foods, Paleo diet is unhealthy, and salt restriction to the level recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA) is not only completely unnecessary, it’s potentially harmful. There are far more effective ways to reduce blood pressure and the risk for heart disease and stroke than salt restriction, such as increasing dietary intake of potassium, magnesium, and calcium...."

As I editorialized two years ago, "This is not about health, it's about control over you and me."

Indeed. At least some "experts" are attempting to put a stop to it.

"So while we enjoy the new technologies and marvel at the deeper understanding of the world that science brings, we should keep in mind the fundamentally provisional nature of science, and we should always take the pronouncements of its practitioners with a grain of salt."

Maybe this will teach the medical profession a little caution. Probably not.

Carbs Bad, Fat Good: The New Conventional Wisdom?

"Diet Wars Turn Family Feud"; too funny:

"...More importantly, in the past decade, science and dietary culture in general have left low-fat ideology (and, increasingly, calorie counting) in the rear view mirror. The fatwa on dietary cholesterol has more or less evaporated. Saturated fat is still wrongly maligned as a risk factor for heart disease, and a debate still brews over the health of red meat, but few researchers in a position to know better will argue that butter, cream and beef fat have much to do with putting on the pounds, and the growing popularity of diets based on whole foods—Michael Pollan readily goes to bat for butter—are an implicit rebuke of the margarine mentality. The defenders of the low-fat message, the dietary authorities behind our nutritional guidelines, still talk smack about fat and sodium, but have increasingly shifted their ire towards unrefined carbohydrates, a concession to the effects of insulin. Public health interventions are taking aim at Big Gulps, not Ben & Jerry’s. The dietary arena has become a more uncertain place for low-fat missionaries like the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Michael Jacobson, and a less hostile place for people like Gary Taubes.

"Then there is The New York Times...."

Well, the Times is always the last place to figure things out.

But if this article is appearing in the Columbia Journalism Review, it's well on it's way to being the conventional wisdom.

Dr. Atkins, you've won.

And there's this:

"For fans of pique and bad manners, you could do worse than [Gina Kolata's] largely stenographic Q&A with Dr. Jules Hirsch, an emeritus professor and emeritus physician in chief at Rockefeller University. Hirsch waved off the JAMA paper’s findings as an artifact of water-loss in a low-carbohydrate diet. He referred to the paper’s premise as “hocus-pocus.” There was the title: “In Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science.” Hirsch invoked “the law of science,” and ”the inflexible law of physics,” but Ludwig knows a little bit about science too. As the Harvard endocrinologist pointed out in a letter published the following week, the study controlled for the effects of water weight in several different ways. Oops."

One suspects the author's not a big fan of Kolata.

What Science Is

"In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it." -- Richard Feynman

Gary Taubes has a short post up. Short compared to his books... ;)

Gary Taubes Posts his Cholesterol Levels

Read the whole thing.  Oddly, given the amout of saturated fat he consumes, he appears to have low risk of heart disease.  A paradox!

"Is Sugar Toxic?"

Gary Taubes in the New York Times Magazine.  He'll also be doing a Q&A. 

"But some researchers will make the case, as [Lewis Cantley, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School] and [Craig Thompson,  president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center] do, that if something other than just being fatter is causing insulin resistance to begin with, that’s quite likely the dietary cause of many cancers. If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, they say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers, at least — radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly. For just this reason, neither of these men will eat sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, if they can avoid it. "

My major issue is with this article is that it never mentions the role of linoleic acid in this process. 

Taubes spends a good part of the article discussing how fructose causes Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, which can lead to cirhossis, and then liver cancer; just like alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease does.  (Getting NAFLD means you're well on the road to insulin resistance and diabetes, if you don't have it already.)  It seems that the liver metabolizes alcohol and fructose in a similar manner.  What does this have to do with linoleic acid (an omega-6 fat)?

"Dietary linoleic acid is required for development of experimentally induced alcoholic liver injury."

The same appears to be true for fructose-induced NAFLD, although I can't find as clear a link as the above.  Stephen Guyenet has posted on this in the past.

But the point is: if fructose and saturated fat do not cause NAFLD, but fructose and linoleic acid do, as appears to be the case, then is fructose causing NAFLD or is it linoleic acid?

But it's an excellent article, as usual.

Use up one of you 20 free article views on this.  (The Times' site is now mostly subscription-only.)

P.S.  I had some related thoughts on this topic back when Jimmy Moore passed along a question of mine to Gary Taubes during an interview.

P.P.S. Instapundit takes note.

Gary Taubes Interviewed By Jimmy Moore

Jimmy was kind enough to pass along a question to Mr. Taubes.  In the second part of the interview, my question starts at 35:02 and (interspersed with the next two related questions) finishes at 40:45.

"What do you think about alternative explanations for the metabolic syndrome [linoleic acid and wheat]?"

Taubes answers about the way I expected him to.  Thoughtfully, but wheat and linoleic acid have not been focuses of his research. 

He notes, correctly, that historically it's tough to separate wheat and sugar ingestion as the cause of metabolic syndrome when introduced to traditional societies, as they typically were introduced at the same time.  He mentions that he's curious to read Dr. Davis' new book, supposedly to be titled Wheat Belly, and to hear the case that he makes.  His answer concerning linoleic acid is a bit less satisfying, but, since it's not been his focus, it's not surprising, or disappointing.

Sugar, wheat, and industrial vegetable oils (linoleic acid) are the three problem foods that seem to be involved in metabolic syndrome.  Taubes has focused his work on sugar, and that's great.  I don't think that anything I've learned about the other two invalidates anything that he writes about, or contradicts it.

He notes that "Insulin resistance is a fundamental problem."  I agree with that, and think that sugar, wheat, and linoleic acid are all independently working on increasing insulin resistance.  In my humble opinion, I think that any one of them is bad, and all three together are really bad.

To note my own experience, I stopped eating sugar in my late teens, and have avoided it ever since.  I've been reading labels and skipping deserts for the most part for a long time, and I've not been a huge fruit eater.  So I think that I consume far less sugar and fructose than the average American.  But I was eating a lot of wheat and linoleic acid, and was well on my way to metabolic syndrome nevertheless, according to my doctor.  I didn't drop the "middle-age middle" until I stopped eating wheat and linoleic acid, in addition to the sugar, and this corrected my blood sugar readings.

So in a nutshell, I think Taubes' work is great so far as it goes, and it goes a mighty long way.  But I don't think his answer is complete.  Stephen Guyenet's work, along with other sources, makes it clear to me that carbohydrates in toto are not the problem.

As Taubes notes, it takes only a tiny imbalance to throw our metabolic processes out-of-whack, resulting in obesity.  Glucose, and starches containing glucose, have been part of our diet for a very long time.  Logically, therefore, it has to be one of the other three factors that has thrown us off: fructose, wheat, or linoleic acid.  The quantities in which we eat these three are very far out of line to what we ate historically.  Linoleic acid alone is probably not the primary cause, as it was introduced too late to account for all the changes we've seen.  My money's on wheat being the lever that moves a normal glucose metabolism, but I don't have any hard evidence.

In the meanwhile, I'm still plowing through Good Calories, Bad Calories, and if Mr. Taubes ever reads this blog, I want to thank him for all of his hard work.  It's really a wonderful public service that he did in writing that book.

"Buy this book as fast as you can: Why We Get Fat"

I think John Durant likes it...  Why We Get Fat is the more-digestible version of Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I'm currently reading.

GCBC may go bad in a dramatic fashion, but at the point I'm at, I think one could do nothing better for health in American than for everyone to read this book, and then buy a copy of The Primal Blueprint to understand how to follow up on it.

So I'm not surprised that John likes WWGF.

"Fat Mice and the Laws of Thermodynamics"

Tom Naughton hits one out of the park:

"At the end of first experiment (four weeks), the calorie-restricted mice weighed a teeny bit less than their free-eating counterparts — the difference was not statistically significant, but it was there. However, the calorie-restricted mice also had 68.5% more fat mass, and 12.3% less lean mass.

"Being put on a diet made them fatter.

"At the end of the second experiment (three weeks), the average weight for both groups was virtually identical — it was also virtually identical to their baseline weights. But the calorie-restricted mice had 43.6% more fat mass and 6.4% less lean mass than the free-eating control mice. Once again, being put on a diet made them fatter."

(Emphasis mine)

Now, before you go saying that this only applies to mice, I'm in the middle of reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes' opus on human obesity and diet, and this behavior is perfectly consistent with behavior seen in humans.

Click image for the data.

This is also perfectly consistent with human economic behavior: it's perfectly rational. 

The savings rate in the United States had been declining for years.  But it recently turned drastically upwards.  What happened?  The US had a recession: peoples' incomes were put on a diet.  So what happened?  As you can see in the chart, they cut back on expenditures, and started saving vigorously.  They were storing up just like the mice were, and it's a perfectly rational reaction either way. 

Since neither us nor the mice can predict the future, the only rational thing to do is to react to changing conditions.

The mice (and us) interpret a diet as "lean times", and start saving.

Here's the study Naughton discusses.

P.S. I recalled that Stephan Guyenet had posted recently on this same topic.  In a correction to a post about sleep-deprivation and calorie restriction in humans, he notes that:

"The correct numbers are even more interesting than the ones I made up. Even in the high-sleep group, nearly half the body weight lost by simple calorie restriction was lean mass. That doesn't make calorie restriction look very good!

"In the sleep-deprived group, 80% of the weight lost by calorie restriction came out of lean mass. Ouch!

"That illustrates one of the reasons why I'm skeptical of simple calorie restriction as a means of fat loss. When the body "wants" to be fat, it will sacrifice lean mass to preserve fat tissue."

Review Of "Why We Get Fat"

This one's not so positive, although he agrees with the premise. 

Tom Naughton did an excellent interview with Mr. Taubes, in which he addresses some of the points raised in the above review.

And Jimmy Moore's interviewing Taubes again today.

"Why We Get Fat"

An excellent review of Gary Taubes' new book:

"What Taubes does, however, is to gather and synthesize the known science into a coherent whole. This does not mean his conclusions are not controversial, just that the science itself isn’t....

"Diet and nutrition is not a field that has received much scrutiny by the skeptical community, but Why We Get Fat fits squarely within the canon of skeptical analysis. We skeptics like to believe that we reach our conclusions based on reason and evidence, and we are supposed to be willing to change our opinions in the face of new evidence. Well, here it is: a book that turns upside-down almost everything we think we know about human nutrition.

"If Taubes is wrong, well, his error is a doozy! Following his advice will lead to increases in obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and all the other conditions Western civilization is heir to. Ironically, this is exactly what we are already experiencing. If bad science leads to bad results, then maybe it’s time for a paradigm shift. That is certainly what Taubes believes."

Dr. Davis Versus The New York Times

"Can You Be Addicted To Foods?" the NYT asks.  They then present a bunch of near-useless pseudo-scientific blather from a psychiatrist.  Gary Taubes could have answered this question, but Dr. Davis does an even better job:

"So what do morphine-blocking drugs have to do with weight loss?

"An odd series of clinical studies conducted over the past 40 years has demonstrated that foods can have opiate-like properties. Opiate blockers, like naloxone, can thereby block appetite. One such study demonstrated 28% reduction in caloric intake after naloxone administration. But opiate blocking drugs don't block desire for all foods, just some.

"What food is known to be broken down into opiate-like polypeptides?

"Wheat. On digestion in the gastrointestinal tract, wheat gluten is broken down into a collection of polypeptides that are released into the bloodstream. These gluten-derived polypeptides are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain. Their binding to brain cells can be blocked by naloxone or naltrexone administration. These polypeptides have been named exorphins, since they exert morphine-like activity on the brain. While you may not be 'high,' many people experience a subtle reward, a low-grade pleasure or euphoria.

"For the same reasons, 30% of people who stop consuming wheat experience withdrawal, i.e., sadness, mental fog, and fatigue...."

Dr. Davis has an older post on the topic as well.

And in poking around for this post I came across this:

"The effect of exogenous opioid peptides, gluten exorphins A5 and B5, which were isolated from the enzymatic digest of wheat gluten, on the postprandial insulin level were examined in rats. The oral administration of gluten exorphin A5 at a dose of 30 mg/kg w. potentiated the postprandial plasma insulin level and the effect was reversed by naloxone. The administration of gluten exorphin B5 showed a similar effect at a higher dose (300 mg/kg w). Furthermore, intravenous administration of gluten exorphin A5 at a dose of 30 mg/kg w. also stimulated the postprandial insulin release. The fact that orally and intravenously administered gluten exorphin A5 stimulates insulin release suggests that it modulates pancreatic endocrine function by the action after the absorption rather than within the the gastrointestinal tract."

So, in a nutshell, wheat gluten causes an insulin response, which naloxone blocks.  Gluten causing an insulin response, even if isolated from the carbohydrates in wheat, would certainly explain wheat's tendency to lead to obesity...  If insulin spikes, the body clears the blood of glucose, which leaves you with a state of low blood sugar, and that leaves you hungry for more carbs. 

Wonderful.

In my own experience wheat definitely acts on me like a drug, and a fast-acting one.  I can feel the rush from even inadvertent wheat ingestion in minutes, if not seconds.  If I have too much, I get light-headed and have to lie down for a while.