LOW FAT vs LOW CARB DIET: Who Are the Best & Worst Diabetes Doctors?
– A few years ago, two extraordinary speakers took the stage at different TEDx
conferences, Neal Barnard and Sarah Hallberg. Both of them doctors who cared
deeply about their patients. And they went viral with
completely opposite dietary advice about obesity and diabetes. Dr. Barnard is low-fat all whole plants. And Dr. Hallberg is high fat
with lots of animal foods. How could well-educated
experienced doctors believe such different things
and both be so confident that they're right? – Because at its root, diabetes is a state of
carbohydrate toxicity. – Fat inside your muscle cells. And that is what interferes
with insulin's ability to work like a key to
signal glucose coming in. – Is it possible that both diets work or are they both a little extreme and the truth lies
somewhere in the middle? Or is it possible that one
of them is simply wrong? If you're an ordinary person, what do you make of these dueling doctors? One thing's for sure, if you
read through the comments, both of them have fanatical fans who believe in them completely and can't understand why
everyone doesn't agree.
I am fascinated by how we
come to believe what we do. And this is personal because
my 91 year old father-in-law, hears two completely different things from two different doctors. – Mr. Johnson, I've had a look at your blood work, your blood pressure, your
weight, they're all excellent. Now, I want you to stay hydrated with plenty of Gatorade every day. Mr. Johnson, you need to stay hydrated. Green tea or water is perfect. Avoid Gatorade. It's artificially colored,
artificially flavored. It's just sugar water with added salts. You need to eat lots of green veggies. – The one medication I want you on is the blood thinner Warfarin.
I put all my patients on
it when they reach 65, no matter how healthy they are. Now, I don't want you eating
green leafy vegetables or drinking green tea because
they contain vitamin K, which interferes with Warfarin. – With your great blood work, I don't see that you need a
blood thinner like Warfarin. When it comes to hospital admissions for drug prescription problems, it turns out that Warfarin
is one of the main offenders. – So, in this episode, I'll take you on my crazy
journey of discovery and end with what I think
is a very simple answer. And no worries, I don't think the answer comes
from the insanely complicated biochemical debates that
rage on the internet. The cornerstone of Dr. Hallberg's talk is this simple powerful chart. When we eat carbs our blood
sugar shoots up much more than when we eat fat or protein. Diabetes is all about blood
sugar getting too high and cutting carbs solves the problem. Makes sense. Dr. Barnard believes high
blood sugar is a symptom and the cause is that the
cells get gummed up with fat and lose the ability to absorb sugar.
Hmm, that makes some sense too. High body fat exposes us to greater risks for almost everything. COVID, cancer, diabetes, heart disease. The menus for the doctors
couldn't be more different. Steak and eggs with tomatoes for breakfast with Dr. Hallberg. Cinnamon apple oatmeal with Dr. Barnard. Based on human behavior at the many breakfast
buffets I've observed, Dr. Hallberg has the easier menu to sell, especially to men. Despite the dramatically different foods, both doctors can show tremendous success with their patients within weeks. So many questions. For Dr. Hallberg what are those carbs that are
creating such steep spikes? Why are huge populations around the world eating so many carbs and
not getting diabetes? For Dr. Barnard, why are
Mediterranean populations so healthy eating all that olive oil and eating some dairy, meat, and fish? I know, TED Talks are
like long movie trailers. To really get it, you
have to read the book.
Dr. Hallberg doesn't have a book, but in the comments on her TEDx Talk, many of her fans raved
about Dr. Jason Fung, who has similar low carb beliefs. And when I checked Amazon, his diabetes book was number
one in the diabetes category with three times the number of ratings of Dr. Barnard's diabetes book, which was the second most popular. I settled on giving a deep
read to four respected books that seem to represent the
spectrum of diabetes care. Dr. Fung's bestseller, Dr. Barnard's, and two bigger more ambitious reads. "Mastering Diabetes"
whose authors are actual Type 1 diabetics, with one having a PhD in
nutritional biochemistry, and a classic by Dr. Bernstein who is currently healthy at 87 despite being diagnosed with
Type 1 diabetes at age 12.
That is really impressive. So, two low carb books and
two that recommended a diet of whole plants. I'll take Dr. Bernstein's book first because his story is amazing and he illustrates
something really important. He was diagnosed way back in '46, became an engineer and figured out how to get a big clunky early
blood glucose meter in '69 that was used in hospital emergency rooms to determine if unconscious
patients were diabetic or drunk. – Here it is. It weighs three pounds. – He discovered that his own blood glucose readings range from zero, which got him into
several traffic accidents he was lucky to avoid, to a thousand, which wreaked
havoc on his internal organs. Over the years, he carefully observed which foods drove his
blood glucose readings up and became a great champion
for patient controlled blood glucose meters. And as an engineer, he
helped develop them.
Over the years, he became
so impassioned by the cause he went to medical school at age 45 and has dedicated the rest of his life to diabetes patient care. He championed the idea
of frequent blood glucose measurements by sticking the
back of the fingers often, and keeping your blood
sugar between 80 and 100 by adjusting insulin injections according to the latest readings. He observed that fruit caused
his blood glucose to rise, so he hasn't had a piece in 40 years and tells his patients to avoid it. He invented the 6-6-12 rule. Six grams of carbohydrates
for breakfast and lunch in the form of vegetables,
and 12 for dinner. He does say vegetables have
essential phytonutrients. Dr. Bernstein has a sweet tooth, however, so he has a section on sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame, and stevia.
With recommendations
for foods you can eat, like most diet sodas, sugar free jello, and DaVinci brand syrups. I think his big contributions were showing that by frequent blood glucose monitoring and insulin injections, and eating foods that didn't spike your glucose, you could flatline your
blood glucose levels into a very safe range. Now, that blood glucose
monitors are going mainstream like he always dreamed of,
some people who try them are getting surprises. For example, Professor
Michael Snyder of Stanford found out he was a Type 2 diabetic despite being slender and
some foods he didn't expect spiked his blood sugar. – Different foods can spike
you very much out of control. So, for example, if I eat pulled pork, believe it or not, that'll
send my glucose over 350. It goes totally out of control. So, you do want to know what foods do that to you. It turns out that is different
for different people. So, different foods
spike different people. – [Chris] For Dr.
Bernstein's 83rd birthday his patients made a very moving
tribute video on YouTube, which is 33 minutes long.
– And I was crying near my
endocrinology appointment with Sierra because the
doctor was so proud of us. – So, reading his book makes it sound like he settled the science
in a very convincing way. Eating carbs raises your blood sugar, which creates havoc in the body, simple. And he published papers about it. And that's what makes the
next book so fascinating. It's big like Dr. Bernstein's. The authors have Type 1
diabetes like Dr. Bernstein. One of them got a PhD
in nutritional biochem to try to unravel the
secrets of Type 1 diabetes. And together they run a large
diabetes coaching program. Instead of making blood sugar
control the selling point, they made it insulin resistance. They love fruit and eat tons of it. So wait, how did Dr. Bernstein
see a rise in blood glucose in himself and his
patients from eating fruit, when Robby and Cyrus
don't see it in themselves or the diabetics that go
through their coaching program? They say the body
becoming insulin resistant is a central part of the disease. And that's why the cells won't
take glucose from the blood.
In order to become less insulin resistant, eat low-fat, whole,
plant foods like fruit. If you truly reverse the disease, you can have a bowl of
blueberries or a banana without spiking your glucose. Whereas if you live a carb-free
life you probably can't, unless the mechanism for
improving your insulin sensitivity was losing weight. Robby and Cyrus share the
belief that insulin resistance comes from gumming up the
cells with fat, makes sense, but dueling doctors, again. I have known Neal Barnard's
book for a very long time. As our friends have joined the tidal wave of new diabetics over the last 15 years, I would sometimes recommend
Dr. Barnard's book because it's easy to read, it has recipes, and being an obsessive reference checker. I read his publications of
randomized clinical trials on humans he conducted
and they checked out.
National Institutes of Health funding instead of food companies
or special interest in respected journals, well conducted. He focuses on food more than
getting lost in biochem debates and not just how important
food is for diabetes, but he also gave a TEDx Talk
on Alzheimer's a few years ago, that currently has something
like 8 million views and rave comments.
So, I was eager to check out the currently most popular diabetes
book from Dr. Jason Fung. He also has a fanatical following and have a lot of respect
for what Dr. Bernstein was able to do with the similar approach. This book starts with a bang and it isn't anything
like the other three. The other three start with
advancements in diabetes in their own backstories, but this one starts with a quote that every great story needs a villain.
And the intro makes it clear
that this story's villains are the doctors and the
scientists of the last few decades who lied to us. The last several decades of low-fat, high-carbohydrate nutrition advice has almost certainly
fueled the very obesity and diabetes epidemics it
was intended to prevent. This is a devastating
conclusion to half a century of public health efforts, but if we are to have any hope
of reversing these epidemics, we must accept this possibility,
and begin to explore the alternative science
contained in this book. Okay, we're gonna get
alternative science in this book. Never a dull moment. That ties closely to the tone of the title of Sarah Hallberg's TEDx Talk. Brace yourselves. Jason says the cause
of the obesity epidemic was the dietary guidelines
developed in the late '70s that led to the infamous food pyramid. And he shows this chart. Are we sure about that? Different areas of the
world are experiencing their own obesity epidemics,
and most of them started later.
I mean, it's possible that
authorities in places like Africa and China whose obesity
crises started later, decided to copy our food guide from 1980. And when they did, their
waistlines blew up too. We've slid to number 46 in
life expectancy worldwide so I checked the guidelines
of the 45 countries ahead of us. Qatar's is a clamshell. – The official pronunciation
of my country is Qatar. – Japan has a spinning top. Costa Rica has a plate. Germany's is a disk. All of them are proportionally
very similar with whole
grains, vegetables, fruit, and legumes dominating the guidelines. The differences are mainly they reflect their traditional foods like
rice instead of wheat in Asia and potatoes in Okinawa. Jason blames Dr. Ancel
Keys and his low-fat dogma for America's food policy.
Someone's getting their
information off Facebook instead of going directly to the source. Dr. Keys popularized
the Mediterranean diet. And if you read anything he wrote, he wasn't worried about olive oil or moderate amounts of fish and cheese. It's right on the cover of his
cookbook and in his recipes. Later in his book,
Jason speaks very highly of the Mediterranean diet. Never mentioning that
Key's popularized it, but he refers to it as high fat. I mean, it's famous for pasta
and tons of fresh produce. You'd have to pour a
lot of olive oil on it to make it high fat and without calories from produce being so central, would it still be the Mediterranean diet? We should probably hear
from the man himself.
– And when we speak about the diet, as I mentioned at that time, anyway. The local diet and what
we thought was a good diet was largely vegetarian: fruits
and vegetables and fish, not many fish, actually. – I was eager to get to
Jason's treatment of diabetes with things like intermittent fasting, which to his credit he's known for. But he kept going on about food history. He says Banting's letter on corpulence is often considered the first diet book. And that his surgeon told
him to avoid bread, milk, beer, sweets, and potatoes. It's hard to imagine
claims that would be easier to make accurately than those. This is Banting's letter. And the part that he actually wrote, is just a thin little piece in the middle. His ear doctor also
advised eliminating butter, something Jason omitted in the telling. And Banting had dry toast on the menu for breakfast and lunch, but no butter. Banting used the word sugar,
which is clear and specific, but Jason told it as the
less clear word sweets. That seems important
when you consider sugar is actually added to foods like sausage, which spikes some people's blood sugar.
As for it being one of
the first diet books, you've probably heard me
quote from landmark diet books from previous centuries,
like this one from the 1500s, which you can still buy at Walmart today. But I'll let an actual
professor of history have a word about historical diet books. Here's Dr. Ken Albala's book, "Eating Right in the Renaissance". It would probably come
as a surprise, though, to learn that 500 years ago, literate Europeans were equally
obsessed with eating right. Then, as now, a veritable
history of experts churned out diet books for an eager
and concerned public. From the 1470s to 1650 there
was an immense outpouring of dietary literature from
printing presses in Italy, then issuing from
France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and as
far a field as Transylvania. Nutrition guides were
consistent best sellers. About a hundred titles and
dozens of additions, revisions, and translations plainly attest
to the topic's popularity. And that was just Renaissance Europe, a small fraction of time and
a small sliver of the world.
He's got another book that
goes back through food history over the whole world
for thousands of years. It's fascinating. So, Banting's book is a small speck in a vast sea of historical diet books. I thought there would be
a lot of common ground between the dueling
doctors on simple things like refined foods. In the first half of the book, Jason lumps potatoes in with refined foods to avoid because they raise insulin, and insulin in his telling
is what makes us fat. But in the second half, he
points out that potatoes are unrefined in some
populations like the Okinawans, get the majority of their
calories from potatoes where diabetes is almost non-existent. So, I don't know, dueling
Jason's between pages 79 and 214. And yet, sausage, which is
widely regarded as a refined food that usually contains some sugar. And that WHO considers
a class one carcinogen is on Jason's weekly menu.
More dueling doctors. Jason is known for intermittent
fasting and his version. And I say this with a lot of respect, is an amazing commitment. 30 or 36 hour fasts, three times per week. If you can do that, you get
double high-fives from me. Well, that was ironic. You know that shirt you were seeing me in previous clips? This is what it looks like when
the paramedics come for you and clip it off your chest with scissors while you vomit your guts
out and they freak out over your mid 30s heart rate, which is where my heart rate always is. So, they swept me away in an
ambulance with sirens blaring. Two hours later, when I walked
out of the emergency room feeling great, I thought, okay, where were we in this episode? Oh yeah, we were talking about foods that make you feel good. I got excited when Jason referenced Walter Willett from Harvard
in a favorable light, because he is a respected scientist. Contrary to the low-fat diet recommended by all the medical
associations around the world, Dr.
Willett's healthy diet was high in dietary fat and protein. His diet was about reducing
sugar and refined carbohydrates, not reducing dietary fat. But that is quite a misrepresentation of where Walter Willett stands. I think we should let
him speak for himself. – And as I mentioned, the type of fat is very important in the diet. This is looking at intakes
of different types of fat compared to the same number
of calories from carbohydrate. The blue line at the top is trans fat.
The red line is saturated fat, not very different than
the typical carbohydrate in Western diets, which is
mostly refined starch and sugar. – What Dr. Willet is
saying is saturated fat is somewhat worse than
sugar and refined flour. What Dr. Fung is saying is
saturated fat is healthy. I hate hearing these
words come out of my mouth because doctors are my heroes, but this book is just terrible. Hardly anything survives
basic fact checking. But it did tackle a fascinating question, which is what is causing
the obesity epidemic? Well, there is a number that
towers above everything else. In 1970, fast food restaurant sales totalled 5 billion
dollars led by McDonald's. Now, it's over $700 billion. And that set off arms races
with companies who sell food like Doritos in supermarkets. I went searching for people
who fully understands what this means and only found a few. One is David Kessler, who was the FDA commissioner
under George H. W. Bush, and went on to become the
Dean of Yale's medical school. He's the man who dragged
the tobacco giants to court, which resulted in America
having one of the lowest smoking rates in the world.
I invited Dr. Kessler for
an interview last November after he wrote "Fast Carbs, Slow Carbs", he responded but a few days later, Joe Biden asked him to head
the coronavirus task force. Okay, fine. Meanwhile, I read Pulitzer Prize winner, Michael Moss's new book "Hooked". And Marion Nestle's books on how the food companies distort and confuse food science and
get us to buy the foods most profitable for them to sell. Spoiler, big money in
beef, not much in produce. Their books restored my sanity because they're so well-researched, their stories have great villains too, but their villains are food companies, not the doctors and scientists
who are Jason's villains. Here's one reason they resonated with me. I was an Earth scientist for 17 years back in the '70s and '80s, when it became obvious to
almost every Earth scientist what we were doing to the Earth.
We got great support from
politicians in the day like George H. W. Bush, who
passed the Clean Air Act and we thought all would
be right with the world. Never did we imagine the
coal and oil companies would come for us and use
their billions to vilify us and successfully shake the faith of so many Americans in science. They had dozens of ways
to run circles around us because we were just scientists
who didn't understand lobbying, and lawsuits,
and marketing, and PR. And we didn't have their money. I'd been watching the same movie, play out over the last
few decades with food, but I thought, hmm, can we just be good if we ignore processed food? Is there something else
besides salt, sugar, and fat? And that is when I discovered
the book "The Dorito Effect".
So, fascinating. Hey mark, how are you? – I'm good, you can hear me okay? – Thanks for joining. – My pleasure. – I know you're a busy
guy and I can't wait to see your new book. – Great. – So, let's start with
that bland tortilla chip that wasn't selling very well. How'd that ever become
a blockbuster sensation? – So, what most people
don't know about Doritos is that they almost bombed. They almost never happened. And that's because the first ever Doritos were just salted tortilla chips, the same kind of tortilla
chips we, you know, put into bean dip or dip into salsa. The package said toasted corn taste.
And it just didn't work. People didn't buy them. The complaint was, this
snack sounds Mexican, but it doesn't taste Mexican. So, Frito-Lay had a
problem on their hands. Here was this new snack, they
were trying to get sales, people weren't buying it. So, what they did was, they
made Doritos tastes like taco. Now, this was even
controversial within Frito-Lay, because some of the executives said, you don't know the difference
between a thing and a flavor. But what they knew was that
flavor technology had changed such that we could make
anything we wanted taste like whatever we wanted. So, Frito-Lay followed up
the toasted corn Doritos with taco flavor Doritos. Now, they didn't taste exactly like taco.
People didn't put in
their mouth and think, oh, I'm eating a taco. But it had that zesty
zing that meaty quality. And here's the important part, it turned a snack that
nobody wanted to eat into a snack that people
literally could not stop eating. – As long as he's fed, he's happy. – WOO! WOO! DORITOS! – Now, think about that for a second, because all we ever talk about is protein, carbs, and fat, and salt, and we think these are these things that have this hold on us. But what was it that turned
the Dorito into this wild unbelievable success? It was flavor technology, just a tiny dusting of flavor chemicals that lit up people's brains and made them reach back into that bag to have another, and another, and another.
– So, what do you mean
by "The Dorito Effect"? You use it throughout your book. – So, "The Dorito Effect" refers broadly to how food has changed. And the change I'm
talking about is flavor. Now, broadly speaking, all
the food we grow, the plants, but also the animals, the
stuff we raise on farms is getting blander. We notice every time we bite
into a tomato or a strawberry, we're just kind of underwhelmed. We're expecting this kind of flavor punch that we just don't get. It's unsatisfying. You have to add sugar or something, but this is true of everything. Chicken is blander, beef is
blander, carrots are blander.
It's also losing nutrition
at the same time. Scientists called this
the dilution effect. And then on the other
side of the equation, there's flavor technology. So, starting in the
1950s with the invention of the gas chromatograph, we have unlocked the
Pandora's box of flavors and they're literally flavor chemicals that are found in nature. And now we add them to whatever we want. We can make potato chips
tastes like barbecue chicken. We make soft drinks taste
like whatever we want, even though fundamentally they're
just sugar and soda water. So, the wholesome stuff
we grow is getting bland. Nobody wants to eat it. And the stuff we shouldn't
eat, the ultra processed foods are getting ever more flavorful.
Now, we are drawn to flavor. We want our food to taste good. And when you look at this
way, good stuff getting bland, processed stuff getting more flavorful. It's not really such a surprise why so many people are making
unhealthy eating choices. – Can you elaborate a little more on why foods are getting blander? – You know, it seems odd. Why would food get blander over time? What has changed about, you know, a carrot or an onion, or a piece of chicken. And what's changed is quantity. We've had a, just an incredible leap in terms of the amount of food we can grow on an acre of land. For things like tomatoes, it can be, we're growing
as more than 10 times, what we used to, say 80 or 100 years ago. Now, on some level, this is good because we have less farmland. You know, we've got
sprawling cities and suburbs, and everybody wants a big garden. There's less farmland
than we used to have.
And we have many more mouths to feed. So, we're producing a lot more food, but we've created a lot more quantity and we've paid for it in quality. So, as we produce more food, that food is getting less
dense in often in nutrition, but also in flavor. And for a very simple reason is that we're just not growing food for flavor. All we want is poundage,
is just more food. And that's what we're producing. – So, how large is the flavor industry companies like Givaudan? – So, the flavor industry is kind of a, you could almost think of as a shadow industry, nobody's really aware
of, except for people who work in the food business.
And yet these are
multi-billion dollar companies. – Sugar, fat, and salt, and convenience. They don't seem to
explain the whole thing. And you say you found the
missing piece of the puzzle that kind of completes
the circle, flavoring. What role do you think they
play in like the obesity crisis? – I think when we look at the change in eating and the change,
literally in our bodies, it's been taking place for about 50 years, right around the mid-70s, when obese really starts to take off.
So, we have to ask, what changed? People talk a lot about
salt, sugar, and fat. I'm not saying they
play no role, but to me, that's not a very convincing theory because think of soft drinks,
this may be the best example. Think of all the sufferings on the shelf. Dr Pepper, Pepsi, Coke, Root beer, Fanta these are all fundamentally
just soda water, and sugar. We talk about them as being sugary drinks. It's the sugar that's getting us. But think about it, if I poured
you a glass of soda water, and added as much sugar as you get in one of these soft drinks,
would you drink that? Would you take a sip of it
and go, oh, that's delicious. No, you wouldn't. Every time you sit down to eat a meal or take a sip of a beverage, you're hoping that it will be delicious. And we have engineered deliciousness. And we haven't asked at what cost. – Some foods, you read these horror
stories about orange juice, for example, where they
let it sit in the vat for a nitrogen atmosphere vat for a year and it goes gray.
So, it loses both its
color and its flavor. And then they add back their own trademark colors and flavors to make it
taste the same in every store, you know, unique to Minute
Maid or something like that. Is that going on beyond orange juice? How is that work? – Well, you know, the truth
is it's difficult to know exactly what's going on because often the way
these products are made, it's quite secretive,
companies aren't always open. But you can tell an awful lot
just by looking at packaging. A lot of us are worried
when we see the term artificial flavor, because we think there's something almost sinister, the word artificial frightens us, it makes us think that it's,
you know, gonna cause cancer or affect our brain or something. We see the word natural
flavoring and everyone thinks, oh, it's fine, it's natural, you know, it comes from
a plant or something. And very often it does, but here's the important
thing to consider.
There's very often no chemical difference between a natural flavoring
and an artificial flavoring. These are the same chemicals
that have the same effect on us that makes us want to eat more. It's just the way they make them. A natural flavoring will be made using distillation or heating,
or maybe like a centrifuge. Whereas artificial flavors
are more chemically complex. The point is the chemicals you're left with are exactly the same. So, many of us are duped into thinking that a product that has natural
flavor, it must be healthy. And there's really very little
that's natural about it. – Mark's upcoming book
is "The End of Craving" and I'm gonna bet the key
is ditching processed food. That seems to be the grand
key to obesity and diabetes.
Whether you go low carb
or whole, plant foods, the weight drops, and
so does the blood sugar. You may be thinking, whoa, good thing I avoid processed food. Unfortunately, we may only think we do. If you watch my episode on wheat
from a couple of months ago or Morgan Spurlock's
Documentary Super Size Me 2, you know the whole wheat
bread or the chickens are not what we thought they were. And their nutritional profile is nothing like it was 50 years ago. The chickens have grown in size and health problems of their
own right along with us. We thought processing was what happened to the food after it was grown, but now we're learning
it's in the growing too. So, how do doctors and scientists end up with such dueling views? Well, I think in the case
of diabetes and obesity, there are three main ways. One, if the premise of your belief system is that scientists lie to us, which it is for Jason and Nina Teicholz who wrote the intro to his book.
That's pretty much the gateway drug to every conspiracy theory. Scientists have a way of
ending up on the right side of history most of the time. Yes, they sometimes have
opposing points of view, but they usually don't
misrepresent opposing views like Nina and Jason do. Two, I know none of us want to
believe that we're influenced by the massive industrial complex that is big food, big
pharma, big agriculture, for-profit healthcare, but follow the money for just a minute. – [Stephan Guyunet] In the United States, the two most recognizable fictional characters to children are number one, Santa Claus, and number two, at 96% Ronald McDonald. And many of you may know
that old Saint Nick himself has been peddling
Coca-Cola since the 1930s. – In Finland, we are
not allowed to advertise like prescription…drugs that
are like prescription drugs. But it turns out in here you
have to go see a doctor like, hey doctor, I saw this
commercial! [Laughter] I was inspired by all the
side effects. [Laughter] I think I wanna try that.
[Laughter] – When it comes to whole foods, the money and influence
is in meat and dairy, not produce or commodities like beans. The meat industries are
notorious for lobbying, science denial, Ag-Gag laws,
lawsuits, sponsorships, and marketing. They have Nina Teicholz speak
at Cattleman's conferences and help sell her book. As a journalist with no
scientific background, she tells them confidently,
the science is on your side. And I think the third reason there so many dueling
doctors in diabetes care is they get immediate results and validation from their patients. Here's the thing, I don't think diabetes
is the worst disease, but cancer and Alzheimer's are tragic. You can eat your way out
of most cases of diabetes. As Chris Kresser, a
popular Paleo diet author mentioned on his blog, a new scientific study
comes out almost every year, confirming that low carbohydrate
diets have higher mortality and especially higher cases of cancer. I think patients should be told that before they're given menus with class one carcinogens on them.
45 years after I started
my career in Earth science, it looks like science is emerging on the right side of history
with regards to climate change. Not the coal and oil industries who are running a similar playbook to what our food
companies are running now. And just about every Earth scientist is pleading with us now
to eat plants not animals is the number one thing we can all do to keep the Earth from turning into Venus. – There's another transformation that is almost unbelievably simple, but it's key to staying within
our planet's boundaries. It can be adapted by you or me. In fact, by anyone with
the freedom to choose what food they eat. – Eating healthy food
might be the single most important way of contributing
to save the planet. – So, my pick is the best diabetes Doctor? Neal Barnard. He has a great cookbook
with Chef Dreena Burton too. And he's been involved in
battles with regulatory agencies, so he knows a lot about the
tricks of the food companies.
But "Mastering Diabetes" is an A plus book as is how not to die. Ugh, I've been chipping away at
this episode for maybe a year, reading the books and thinking about it. And just as I was wrapping up, I stumbled across a
recent podcast interview of Dr. Sarah Hallberg by Dr. Peter Attia, where she opens up about
her four-year battle with lung and brain cancer. Who knows why this disease
strikes seemingly healthy people at every age and on every diet. But what I do know is the
love and determination she exudes to see her youngest daughter graduate from high school
is so inspirational. That was a very hard note to end on..
