Episode 367: Andrea Love - From Alt-Diet To Cult Diet
Dr. Andrea Love is an Immunologist and co-host of Unbiased Science Podcast. She is also the Director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation (ALDF). For this episode, she joined the show to talk about how alternative dietary approaches often reach a point where they become ideological and "cult like" versus simply being an alternative approach.
LMNT: drinkLMNT.com/HPO
deltaG: deltagketones.com - IG: @deltag.ketones
HPO Sponsors: zachbitter.com/hposponsors
Support HPO: zachbitter.com/hpo
Studies & Information Mentioned By Andrea
Searchable By Key Word: www.uspodsources.com
(example: if interested in studies Andrea referenced specific to aspartame, type “asparatame” in the search bar. All her previous episodes will be listed, and the studies referencing that topic will be right below the episode link.
Find Andrea:
www.instagram.com/dr.andrealove
www.instagram.com/unbiasedscipod
Podcast episode on seed oils: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5NKIFZFy1Ca7l28gr7FQmu?si=Sqcodq64T0WvHmR7KtLz8Q
YouTube page:https://www.youtube.com/@unbiasedscipod
Podcast page on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JMSODgbC5auqScduzYVZn?si=c40be90dbf7844a1
Find Zach:
Zach’s Coaching: zachbitter.com/coaching
Zach’s Newsletter: substack.com/@zachbitter
Zach: zachbitter.com
IG: @zachbitter
Tw: @zbitter
Substack: zachbitter.substack.com
Strava: Zach Bitter
TikTok: @zachbitter
Threads: @zachbitter
Episode Transcript
Andrea, welcome to the show.
Andrea
0:13 Thanks for having me Zach. I'm super excited to chat with you about all sorts of biology.
Zach
0:21
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of them out there. It's, I think nutrition and dietary stuff is maybe one of the easiest things to Dunning-Kruger because you have this situation where there's so much information out there, it's almost impossible to I mean, that's probably everything nowadays with the Internet, but to some degree you can spend an afternoon exploring something that is piques your interest and feel like you kind of got a grasp of it. But unless you continue to look deeper and deeper and deeper, you find yourself in an interesting situation. A lot of times on what you think you know and what is actually available about it.
Andrea
1:00
Yeah. And I mean, you know, that's the Wild West of the Internet, right? You know, people can publish pretty much anything unchecked there. And a lot of claims might sound really credible and really legit. And if you aren't trained to kind of tease apart scientific data, you know, you might fall prey to it. And it's and it's intentional, right? It's done to mislead people and be very insidious and think with diet, nutrition and a lot of these lifestyle things. It's a really easy mark because it's something that people feel like they have some control over. Right? There are certain things in our world that we are exposed to that we just have to react to or exist with. But when it comes to your personal health or your personal well-being, there are things that people can change and see if it improves how they feel.
Zach
1:54
Yeah, The other interesting thing, maybe this is kind of a fun kick off topic, is just the measurement tools relative to nutrition science versus other areas of science. I find this one to be very interesting because you have science as a whole where you know, like if we're building a rocket, the precision required to launch that rocket and have it actually work is very, very precise. To the degree you can't have any wiggle room or the thing blows up. Whereas with nutrition, you could never get that level of precision just because of all the confounders and things that kind of would be the input. So you have to use these, these less precise tools. But when you actually look at kind of how that plays out with a lot of these things, you just don't need super precise tools the way you would to launch a rocket to get at least a good enough idea of where certain things are heading and begin to kind of make recommendations or at least have some idea of like. On average, this is probably going to happen if you do that or if you do these things, your risk factors increase and you can start to kind of collect that data and kind of get an idea of where you're where you're sort of putting yourself. But I think that kind of gets weaponized to a degree because people will take this idea of precision like rocket science and try to apply it to nutrition where that's just going to be a dead end. You could always argue this isn't good enough if you're basing it on that sort of a precise tool.
Andrea
3:26
Yeah. No, and it's a great point. And it really underscores, you know, biological research in general, but something as diverse as nutritional science when every single subject, every human is genetically distinct and have all sorts of different factors, their environment, their microbiome, which is a whole other topic that I am happy to chat about all the time. But there's so many different layers of complexity within an individual human and the methods that we would use to assess, um, you know, efficacy or benefit of a nutritional intervention often rely on self-reported feedback that it's really hard to tease out even something as you know, as well accepted as the placebo effect, right? If someone truly believes that something is going to improve how they feel or their quality of life or their energy level, you know, that sometimes comes to fruition. And that's why it's really important to have as many randomized controlled trials as possible, even in a research area that is harder to parse out compared to something like looking at vaccine efficacy. Really, it's a very discrete end point compared to something a little bit, you know, more nuanced like,
Zach
4:52
yeah, no, that makes sense. And I think one point within this I want to kind of talk about with that is food frequency questionnaires, because this is one where it definitely gets it's one of those things where like if I ask one person, what's the value of a food frequency questionnaire, I could get them to lay out a scenario in which they're trying to pull data out of this person of what they ate ten years ago. And then my intuition is like, Well, that's garbage. Like, no one's going to remember that versus when you actually look at how food frequency questionnaires are generally used. This would be an example, I would say, of like. It can be an imprecise, relatively speaking, imprecise measurement tool, But depending on what you're trying to actually measure with it, it can be relatively accurate. So yeah, fruit frequency questionnaires probably aren't going to help us figure out what someone ate ten years ago, but most research isn't using them for that sort of thing. So can you just tell us a little bit like how food frequency questionnaires are typically used and what is their value and kind of kicking things off when we're trying to learn about how a specific way of eating or specific food will actually impact someone's health?
Andrea
5:59
Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, maybe, maybe I'll do that in the end. But you're absolutely you know, something you just noted is how those questions are phrased really impacts how they are responded to. And, verbiage and grammar is actually really important in some of those and those modalities because it can subliminally message or unconsciously message to individuals. But typically a food frequency questionnaire is looking at, you know, the portion sizes, the types of food, the beverages that are being consumed. And usually it's dictated over a specific period of time. Again, you're absolutely right. It's not going to be something in the distant past. You're looking typically within the last month, the last year. And a lot of this is to basically have them detail a finite list based on certain questions that are indicated. And this is going to look at kind of total diet composition, total diet proportions, portion sizes, as well as kind of how those relate to certain risk factors for certain disease states certain, you know, predominance to a certain disease condition or body condition or things like that. It's also going to look at, you know, are there linkages or correlations between multiple participants, certain foods, certain risk factors and things like that? Now the challenge is, of course, is the way you phrase it, who's participating. And also people have inherent recall bias as well as biases when they're trying to report things like portion control. So unless someone is physically supervising and that would kind of shift that from, you know, a questionnaire based study to a control trial sort of study, you know. People broadly underestimate the quantity of food that they're eating. So they think they've consumed one portion of, say, local ice cream because it'll say ice cream. You know, in reality, I'm eating 3 or 4 portions, right? So a lot of times it also allows researchers to understand why there might be disparity in outcomes versus inputs. Because, again, people are saying, well, I used one serving of salad dressing. Why am I seeing you know, I'm not seeing weight loss, you know, for simplicity's sake. And in reality, it's because they're not actually in a calorie deficit, because they 're all these secret kinds of calorie sources that they didn't fully understand. You know, there's, of course, a lot of limitations to these. Right? Because if someone says, you know, I ate chicken, well, how was it prepared? Was it fried? Did you have oil in it? What else did you add to it? Was there extra sodium? And so there's all these other things that can skew the data or even can change the data from person to person or even within the same person from day to day. Right. You know, sometimes maybe that was grilled white meat, chicken. Another day it might be, you know, on the bone, dark meat, chicken with skin, you know. And so unless you have a questionnaire formed in such a precise way that you can really dissect out all of those, there's always going to be a confounding variable.
Zach
9:32
Yeah. And a lot of times it doesn't stop there either. It sort of points you towards what is worth spending more time exploring. And that's where I think those are probably useful. I just find it interesting that they tend to be like many of these things, I think weaponized either as in a black and white manner, where it's something where it's like, Oh, well, this research study used a food frequency questionnaire, therefore we throw it out before even looking at anything else involved with it, right?
Andrea
9:58
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that's true with a lot of biomedical sciences is that, you know, I think there's just a lack of understanding that it's shades of gray, there's nuance. It's not black and white. You know, when you consume something on social media as information, you know, especially if you're just reading the headline, that's very. You know, it's very likely that that's not the full story or the scope of what's being discussed. And so it's really important for people to kind of, you know, look under the hood a little bit and maybe take things with a grain of salt. Hmm.
Zach
10:34
Yeah. The one topic that I want to get into with you is C Doyle's. And this one has been. And I've just gotten increasingly interested in seed oils in general over the last few months. And part of it is because I sort of was uninterested in seed oils to some degree where it was just like it was just kind of this thing. And then it started becoming more popular for all the wrong reasons. Like it became a target of This is how I'm going to establish some credibility perhaps, or momentum online. Because if I say something unnatural or this used to be engine lubricant, one could know, there's so many, it just goes on and on and on and it's just so easy to kind of position it as really, really bad. Before that, though, you know, I followed a relatively low carbohydrate diet. So like seed oils, in my opinion, were just something where this is a tool that could potentially be useful because it's literally 100% fat. So if I'm looking to increase my fat intake and minimize my carbohydrate intake to some degree, like that's a tool I may be interested in, especially if, like you mentioned before, if I'm having a salad and I did a 20 mile run that morning, I might want a bunch of that salad
Andrea
11:59
dressing. I need some flour.
Zach
12:01
Right? So like, but then obviously, like you start hearing about seed oils being bad and then said, what do I replace it with or do I need to replace it? Maybe they're better than no alternative that I'm going to replace it with. And you sort of end up in this situation where it's really hard to know what you're doing is good or bad, even when you're looking at it through just a macronutrient side of things like I had been.
Andrea
12:24
Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, if you went on social media and you watched some of these influencers and tiktokers and things like that, like everything was apparently every single thing that you're eating, right? And so, you know, the seed oil demonisation, I think really kind of gained traction with this carnivore diet phenomenon as well. They kind of evolved and emerged simultaneously. And so you've got the liver king saying, well, animal fat is the only fat you should be eating. And, you know, Carnivore, MD, whose real name is Paul Saladino. It's okay to call him out, but he's a psychiatrist. So he has no like he has an MD and he uses that as an appeal to authority. But he's trained in psychiatry. It's not remotely anything biologically related that he could be speaking on this. But anyways, he's a huge proponent of only eating animal products. And of course they demonize seed oils. So there's kind of like several buckets, right? The two overarching themes are, you know, seed oils are toxic and they're killing you. And because they're refined, they're also simultaneously killing you. So, you know, if you look online, you're going to see. Social media influencers, your holistic health people in your integrative this and your wellness gurus and they're going to say seed oils are causing inflammation, they're causing headaches, they're causing brain fog, they're causing type two diabetes, they're causing weight gain, they're causing heart problems or causing cancer. They're causing leaky gut and they're causing all these medical issues. And, you know, there's even hashtags, right? The Hateful Eight, which relates to the eight most common seed oils. You've got seed oil free. And and so those hateful eight are referring to canola oil, corn oil, sunflower, safflower, soy grapeseed rice, bran and cottonseed oil. And these are all toxic. They're all killing everybody. Apparently so. So maybe very quickly. So seed oils are a catchall name for vegetable oils that are derived from seeds. So basically, instead of olive oil, which is technically a vegetable oil, that's made from fruit because the olive is the fruit of the olive plant, not the pit of the olive, whereas something like a sunflower oil is actually taking the seed of the oil, crushing it and extracting the oil. So, you know, all of those seed oils apparently are all terrible for people. The tldr of all this is that there's no no evidence to support those claims. You know, of course we've gone through the era of the saturated versus the unsaturated fats. So all vegetable fats are liquid at room temperature. So those are all your oils. Your animal fats like butter and lard are solid at room temperature. And it relates to the different types of fatty acid chains that are present in those. 1s So I think that the biggest claim that relates to the seed oils is this. This nebulous term of inflammation, which as an immunologist is quite frustrating because inflammation is very tightly regulated and it's essential and it's balanced by anti inflammation, inflammation by our body. And typically we can't really flex it or loosen it or, you know, anyway, so, so oils, all oils have different ratios of fats, right? And so we talk a lot about a certain type of polyunsaturated fats, omega six fatty acids. These are essential. They're required for optimal human health, but humans can't make them. So we typically have to consume them. Otherwise we don't have omega sixes. Now, omega sixes are very important for brain function, for metabolism, for growth and development. And these are they also help with skin and hair growth, bone density, and they also participate in the reproductive system. So, you know, there's something that we need. So seed oils broadly have a higher ratio of omega six to other fatty acids like omega three seconds. And there's one omega six that is found in cereals that has gotten a lot of negative attention and that's linoleic acid. So people say essentially when you consume linoleic acid in the context of seed oils, essentially it undergoes a metabolic process and it's converted to another fatty acid called arachidonic acid. And. 1s According to these people who vilify seed oils, they say that this conversion of linoleic acid to arachidonic acid causes heart disease and causes chronic inflammation. They use some animal testing and or animal studies to kind of prove their point. And I think it's really important for people to understand that animals, non-human animals are not the same as humans, and you cannot extrapolate in vivo data to a person. That's why clinical studies are always really, really important. But the biggest part is that only a tiny, tiny proportion of linoleic acid is actually converted to arachidonic acid. It's like 0.2%. So you know, that whole pathway like it happens, but it's not happening to the degree that these people are suggesting. Um, and you know, basically within that pathway you have linoleic acid, which is then, um, it's initially converted before it goes to arachidonic acid to a secondary metabolite called Gamma Linoleic acid or GLA. And in contrast to people that suggest that it causes all this chronic inflammation, there's actually clinical evidence that GLA reduces inflammation. Um, so, so inflammation again, as I mentioned, is this kind of very complex process and it's always happening in our body and it's, and in reality, the most inflammatory thing you can do is eat and exercise because every time you're eating, you have to take larger molecules, those macromolecules, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and you have to break them down through a catabolic process so that you can actually extract the energy in the context of ATP. But on food labels, we use calories. And every time you do that, you're breaking these bonds apart. And this generates these markers of inflammation. Sometimes people say they react to oxygen species or cause oxidative stress. This is literally always happening and it's essential. If we weren't able to do this, we would not be alive. And so literally, everything you eat causes inflammation because you're creating these byproducts. Um. 1s The good news is that our body's really good at regulating all of this. So, you know, we don't have to worry too much about that when we eat something because our body is going to maintain this balance or this homeostasis and inflammation happens for a reason, right? It's our body's immune response to some sort of stimulus. So that could be an infection. It could be a pathogen, a microorganism that our body's trying to sound the alarm about and recruit cells of the immune system to help kill it. It could be a physical wound. So that could be an actual cut on your skin that your body has to stimulate wound healing to regenerate skin cells. But it could be like micro tears in your muscles after a hard workout and you have to get good rest so your immune system can initiate that wound healing process as well. But you also do it during digestion. And this is again tightly regulated and you don't want too much or too little of either side, anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory. So anyway, this linoleic acid topic is really kind of where this all started. So linoleic acid goes to this gamma linoleic acid, which again, there's evidence that it reduces inflammation, but then subsequently 0.2% of that is converted to this arachidonic acid. So. So we need linoleic acid for survival. It's considered an essential fatty acid. We can't make it and we need it for ourselves. Like it literally makes up a component of our cell membranes. And so if we weren't consuming it, we would have some issues with our physiology. So when you actually look at the scientific evidence about seed oils. So seed oils are a major source of this linoleic acid. You can also get it from eating actual nuts and seeds. It's also found in certain meats and in eggs. And there's a lot of clinical evidence that actually demonstrates it has an anti-inflammatory or protective effect. So if you look at, you know, several meta analyses over the last several years, they found that both linoleic acid and arachidonic acid, which was the byproduct, don't increase risk for any sort of cardiovascular disease. And when they looked at blood biomarkers, people with higher levels of linoleic acid in their blood compared to lower levels, were 7% less likely to develop cardiovascular disease. So, you know, when you look at the actual clinical evidence, there's actually no data, no credible data that seed oils or the fatty acids composed, you know, that seed oils are composed of or actually implicated in any sort of inflammatory or chronic disease processes. Um, and again, there's, there's many other studies. I won't kind of rehash them all. But, you know, even the American Heart Association concluded that, um, linoleic and arachidonic acids are actually associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and, um, and that linoleic acid is actually associated with better physical condition in older adults, particularly those over 70 years old. So, you know, kind of the big overview is that there's there's a lot of really unfounded demonization of seed oils when in reality we know that this kind of broad Mediterranean diet, which is unsaturated oils like your seed oils, lean proteins high in fiber and produce, is really kind of the the best catchall diet for the vast majority of individuals.
Zach
23:04
Yeah, I know. Like when I started actually exploring the other side of the topic eventually, like I found a lot of the stuff you mentioned, which is just a lot of the things that are used to incriminate seed oils are just mechanistic related stuff. 1s So for the listeners, can we talk a little about mechanistic stuff? Because I think it's like one thing it's interesting to see a mechanism, but I feel like if you. It's more interesting to find a mechanism after you've already found a pathway with something versus just speculating with a mechanism in which you may know the numbers. Like what are the odds of some like if some mechanism that we discover actually playing out in the human body the way that we think it will based on that mechanism? Oh, my
Andrea
23:52
gosh. I mean, less than 0.1%, I would say. And the reason for that is, our body is super complex. So so basically a mechanism, a mechanism is is looking at, you know, a biological pathway where you have different molecular partners and you're saying, okay, well, this chemical binds to this receptor which activates this protein, which then turns on this transcription factor, which then activates this gene, which makes this RNA, which makes this protein and so on and so forth. And so the mechanism is looking at the inner workings of a biological process in the context of, at the molecular level. Um, but I think it's really, I think a lot of people don't realize that these are all kind of happening simultaneously and a lot of these molecules that are signals or um, you know, um, 1s you know, participate in these signaling pathways, participate in multiple signaling pathways, and they can activate them, they can inhibit them, they can be, they, they can require a partner or a cofactor. They might be only turned on in certain cell types or tissue types or organ types or species. And so, you know, you can't simply look at a mechanistic study which are typically done in a petri dish with cells that are all identical to each other and or an animal model that's not a human and say, okay, well, we blasted them with arachidonic acid artificially. We took some, you know, in solution with none of the other molecular components and none of the physical food source. And we saw this impact because that's not how it happens in an organism and certainly not in a human, because digestion and metabolism and how all these different systems play with each other is so much more complex than that. And so, you know, we humans fall into the trap of. Exaggerating or mischaracterizing the findings of a mechanistic study or an in-vivo study or an in vitro study, and certainly not just with nutrition, with a lot of topics. But, you know, I think it's compounded by the fact that you have these bad, bad actors online who use their credentials and they legitimately weaponize their credentials. There's a pharm.d. James Dean, Nicola Antonio, I think he goes by something Nick did on social media. He's got millions of followers and he he you know he published a paper in you know, he published a review that basically was demonizing seed oils and he wrote about how harmful they are. And his Instagram posts are filled with, you know, avoiding seed oils is what you should be doing for good health because it causes obesity and diabetes and heart disease. And he says, you know, you shouldn't eat cereals, cereal grains, no seed oils. He obviously sells a lot of supplements. He owns a company called Cardio Tabs, which is a nutraceutical company. He wrote a book called The Salt Fix. And he has, you know, a whole bunch of conflicts of interest to kind of shift people away from consuming seed oils. But it gets really hard for the average person because he, again, is exaggerating the mechanistic finding of a singular study and is, you know, now demonizing this molecule. Yeah, I mean, if you give cells in a petri dish, a mega dose of anything, you're probably going to do something harmful to them, whether it's something we consider beneficial or not. I mean, the same is true for cancer in vitro. Like you can give cells in a petri dish like an 8000 fold dose of cinnamon and you would cause cancer, you know, in, in the mechanistic form. But that's not what happens in people. Mm hmm.
Zach
28:02
Yeah. And when you look at the seed oil research we have, you find that, like, the human outcome data suggests that they're benign or even protective in some cases. So then it's like one of those things where you go down that rabbit hole and you have this situation where you get a bunch of rat studies and mechanistic stuff thrown at you, but then you have your rebuttal. But what about the human outcome data? You know, the stuff we're actually concerned with. And then, you know, it's like there's probably some pushback in terms of like, again, like we were talking about before, oh, that was based on weak epidemiological studies and things like that, where it kind of takes us back to the original topic of like. What are we trying to measure and how accurate can these measurement tools be based on the context? And it seems like when you actually look at mechanistic studies in animal studies, the way that you described them, if you're going to argue that the human outcome data based on epidemiology is weak, you're probably going to also have to take the hit that your mechanistic speculation and your rat studies are also probably quite weak, if not much weaker. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Andrea
29:11
Yeah, no, I mean, it's a great point. So, you know, I mean, when you look at the hierarchy of evidence, you know, you're you're lowest on your pyramid is a case study. So that's a single entity or an expert opinion. So that's, you know, one person saying, well, I think this therefore is true. So that's your lowest of the low. Then you have in vitro and animal studies because again, they're not in humans. So, you know, there are limitations to what you can conclude about those findings. They're useful to make informed hypotheses to then expand upon or use for subsequent in vitro or in vivo studies and ultimately human research. But they rank below even things like observational studies or case control studies or cohort studies, which are all essentially different types of human epidemiological studies, even human survey data. Obviously the very, very top you're, you're kind of gold standard is your randomized controlled trials. And there are some in the context of nutrition sciences. But of course, those, you know, are very time consuming, sometimes prohibitive for people to participate in and things like that. So a lot of nutritional data is looking at these longitudinal studies based on epidemiological data. So they're looking at trends or patterns within populations over time, looking at health outcomes over time. You could look at things like life expectancy over time. But again, all of that data, even if you considered it weaker than a randomized controlled trial, is still more robust than an animal or an in-vitro study.
Zach
30:56
Hmm. Yeah, the other one is all here from time to time that I find sort of interesting when you actually dig into the details of the Minnesota coronary heart study. So that one gets cited as some sort of human data that would suggest that seed oils are problematic. But. If I'm not mistaken, and you probably know more about it than I do. But did that study just simply not really reach power and also have a situation where basically what they were looking to do with that study didn't actually happen, but there's some data floating around about it that it gets used sort of inappropriately.
Andrea
31:33
Yeah. So that, so, so let me just make sure I'm remembering. So that's the one that was done in like the 60s in the nursing home. Is that right?
Zach
31:42
Yeah. Yeah. It was supposed to be five years and I think
Andrea
31:48
They replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils that have little egg. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay so, so yeah. So basically and that actually has been reanalyzed over the years. And so they looked with, they collected samples from I'm actually just pulling it up really quickly. They looked at serum cholesterol levels over time for about 2000 individuals and they looked at the replacement of saturated fat with linoleic acid derived primarily from corn oil or corn corn oil, margarine. So margarine is essentially like whipped vegetable oil. So it's solid at room temperature, but it's vegetable fat, not butter. And the control diet was primarily animal fats and so on. And they looked at their main outcome as the cause of mortality. They looked at the relationship between serum cholesterol levels, death and they looked at atherosclerosis or cardiovascular disease, as well as heart attacks, myocardial infarction. And what they said was, um. 2s Basically the data weren't completely published and they suggest that we saw a. 1s Decrease in serum cholesterol. But they couldn't find a relationship between that and reduction of death all cause mortality. Now, of course, there's a lot of confounding variables here. We're looking at a very niche population. So you're looking at individuals who are hospitalized. So the majority of individuals were coming from mental institutions, inpatient mental institutions. You had nursing home patients. But there's a lot of essential flaws with how they were actually crunching the numbers, so to speak. And so they claim that in the trials, they saw a reduction in cholesterol levels with switching to vegetable oils, but they didn't see a reduction in mortality. Now, when you actually look at the data 50 years later, because we know a lot more about metabolism and so on, there's actual, you know, demonstrable limitations and actually, you know, gaps in what they could do. Not necessarily anything that they could have controlled at the time, but simply due to the nature of the subjects that they had to work with and their understanding of nutrition and metabolism at the time. So you actually look at, you know, the findings in more detail is that, you know, they're not looking at other pathways. They're not looking at other biomarkers, they're not looking at ratios of omega three, omega six. They're not looking at, you know, how relevant the diet they fed them was to the American diet or just died in general. So they basically created fake food to feed these people, which again, is not relevant. So you have to also look at not just the findings. So you could say, okay, this is a randomized controlled trial, but it's not a relevant randomized controlled trial. And so it's really important to look at the study design when you're looking at the findings of a study, because the study design, if it's done poorly, that's going to skew the data you collect from it. And that's really the first point where bias can be introduced into a study. In addition, this was a very, very short duration because essentially they were utilizing patients in these mental institutions and they actually kind of shut down several of them. So like they lost three quarters of the cohort that they were actually going to be looking at. And so, again, they were missing a lot of information at the end. So, you know, it's it's. 2s There have been a lot of studies since then, you know, that have demonstrated that the seed oils are not harmful, often are benign, and in many cases can be protective. And it's and it's unfortunate that people kind of cling to something that's 50 years old as evidence when it's essentially been deep with better quality study. Yeah. The one that
Zach
36:24
kind of goes parallel with that to some degree that I'll see is since we have the unfortunate situation of trans fats and, you know, like quote unquote fake butter, where that obviously went badly. So like. People will reference that as well. The idea gets into kind of the natural, unnatural side of things where it's like, we'll see what happened last time we tried. And it's like, you know, and at first glance it's like it can be compelling, but it can also be like, Well, how many unnatural things have we tried that have worked out in a very positive manner versus looking at this one? That didn't work? Because for all I know, like there's a thousand other unnatural things that we tried that ended up being a huge net positive. And you're hyper focusing on this one mistake that got made in trying to say that because unnatural therefore seed oils.
Andrea
37:17
I think. Yes, absolutely. And that is called the appeal to nature fallacy. And it is so prevalent everywhere. And that's essentially the insinuation that just because something is natural or derived from nature, it is somehow superior or not harmful compared to something synthetic. And we see that a lot with pretty much everything I deal with, you know, vaccines and pharmaceutical interventions. And, you know, even when you talk about organic versus conventional produce and organic versus conventional pesticides and all of that, So so maybe I can kind of quickly explain how seed oils are made because because I think that that that hits on a good point is that, you know, a lot of people say, well, it's not it's not the seed oils. It's it's we extract them and it makes them toxic. It gives them all these toxic byproducts. So, they basically say that the way we extract oils from the seeds is causing them to become toxic. So they are. 2s First of all, there's a couple of different ways to extract oils. And typically we use either a heat based or a solvent based extraction method. So the easiest or the most efficient way is using a process called solvent extraction. So a solvent is a substance that dissolves something in it. And if, you know, it dissolves like, right? So water soluble things, you could use water as a solvent. If it's a fat thing, you can't use water because fat and water do not get along. So we use a substance or we don't make giant seals. But 1s seed oil manufacturers use a solvent called hexane, which is a chemical that helps to pull oil out of seeds. It's a hydrocarbon. So it agrees with fats because fats are made out of hydrocarbon tails. Those are those fatty acid chains. And people get really hung up on the name of the chemical hexane. Right. Hexane at very high concentrations. Yeah. High exposures or if you inhale it directly can be harmful for sure. I mean everything can be the dose and thing that high. Yes. You can die from drinking too much water 100%. So it's really important to realize that. So they use this as a solvent, but then they purify it and they remove the hexane. So if you actually look at the seed oils in a finished product, there's a trace level maybe, and people broadly get most of our hexane exposure when we're at the gas station, pumping gas that's coming from gasoline fumes now. If you are someone that works in a manufacturing facility that's dealing with hexane, maybe not even related to seed oil, certainly that can pose a risk to you if you're inhaling large quantities of it. But ultimately, you know, that's not going to be a problem when you're creating or processing or consuming seed oils. So, you know, a lot of people say that, you know, these additives, they're unstable. They're they're turning those unsaturated fats into these trans fats. And again, there's no evidence of that. And so, you know, when you're looking at that, that's just an unfounded claim. It's again, it's using this key fob and this appeal to nature fallacy to kind of spread fear about that. Now, some people, you know, say, okay, well, it's not the processing or the creation of the fats, but it's when you're heating it for cooking, you're increasing the temperature really high. And that's going to lead to byproducts like hydroxides and aldehydes. And again, we're looking at mechanics, right? You're taking these names of chemicals that are really just classes of chemicals and saying, well, aldehydes create inflammation, hydroxides, create inflammation. But in reality, you know, there's certain oils that, you know, can handle higher heat before that smoke point, like safflower and avocado oil and sesame oil. But in a home kitchen, you're never heating them to a level that would be a concern. And ideally, you shouldn't be reusing them anyway. So you wouldn't be consuming any byproducts that may or may not have been generated. People that are super concerned about extraction can look for cold pressed oils. So these are oils that are extracted without heat or chemicals or expeller pressed oils. So you're literally just using mechanical crushing to extract. Those are options. They're much more expensive. And again, there's really no evidence to suggest that they're superior, you know, but they're out there. Um. Kind of from there. Then you get into a subcategory of oils and those are the refined oils. So basically you take these solvent extracted seed oils and you process them further, essentially where you're removing any additional particulates. And the reason that we do refining of oils is to remove impurities, and it extends the shelf life of the oil. Now, you don't want oils souring because that can, you know, not be great. It might not taste good, but there can also be, you know, it can lead to contamination. And so what ends up happening is that refined oil undergoes a secondary extraction process, typically using heat again. So you can heat things up and extract things because you increase the solubility of it. Or again, using a chemical extraction method. And this is giving you, again, 2s longer shelf life, fewer particles that are in the oils, that are residuals from the seeds themselves. And it actually reduces the smoke point. And so refined oils are often really good for, um, for, um, you know, deep frying if you need to do something at really high temperature. So again. People claim that this refining process is full of chemicals. And sure, that's true because everything is a chemical. Your body is a sack of chemicals, that's all. You are literally just a network of chemicals. And that they're contaminated with all this toxic debris from the refining process and they're generating inflammation and free radicals. And again, they're getting kind of hung up on those the names of the solvents and the fact that the dose makes the poison. And, of course, there's no scientific evidence. And they also claim that the refining process makes the oils rancid. And again, there's just really not a lot of evidence to that. And technically, anything can be refined oil, right? You can make, you know, a fruit, vegetable, oil, refined oil. It's really solely about how the oil is processed or extracted initially. And so, you know, in reality, there's just not a lot of weight to those claims. But it certainly sounds scary if you come across
Zach
44:23
it. Yeah, you sort of touched on this at the end there. And I was going to ask more specifically just about something like a deep fryer where you have these seed oils essentially just getting heated over and over again. You know, I actually worked at a McDonald's when I was in high school, and 1s so
Andrea
44:41
Obviously that was my first high school job I worked in well, I actually worked in the grocer. So, you know, I mostly spent my day eating chicken nuggets and.
Zach
44:53
Yeah. And the funny thing was that I got curious about that because people were talking about the deep fryers and they're just like, those oils are just sitting there for months getting heated over and over again. I was like, Well, I mean, they are in there for a while, but I remember changing those vats. It wasn't months. We would change those things fairly frequently. But generally speaking, outside of the negative consequences you may have from just eating a diet rich in fast food, mostly likely due to just the surplus in calories you're going to get from doing that. Should someone be concerned with a deep fryer in coils versus just what they're going to get on a cold pressed salad dressing?
Andrea
45:32
I mean, in the broad context of things. No, I mean, certainly, you know. You could, in theory, you know, overheat seed oils. You know, if you had several months old reheated seed oil like that could theoretically not be as good for you as a cold pressed seed oil on your salad, but in the real context of what people are actually consuming, that's not going to happen. You know, um, you know, generally speaking, you know, fast food in moderation is kind of my mantra, you know. So if you're indulging in some French fries every now and then, you know. Yes, I know that there's a lot of hate on fast food chains and all of that. And there's all these secret videos and they're showing the truth and all that. But in reality, like, you know, they're inspected and, you know, they do a pretty good job of food handling and all that. And so they are pre cognizant of making sure, you know, the fryers are clean and the oils are changed and filtered and all of that, you know, so so I wouldn't be terribly concerned, you know, for me it's more about looking at the overall quality of your diet and ensuring that you have lots of fiber and you have good protein sources and you're getting all of your micronutrients and, you know, ideally getting those from your diet and not from supplements, because we know that there's not a lot of evidence to support supplements. And, you know, but I think that there's a lot of evidence that suggests that, you know, if you are consuming fats, you know, these seed oils, which are, you know, in the the bucket of your vegetable oils generally are associated with better health outcomes than eating the majority of your fats coming from animal fats, even if liver king and carnivore want to argue with you about that.
Zach
47:20
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think really like after kind of exploring this topic more, the only, the only reasonable explanation I heard to avoid seed oils in any meaningful way was just the due to their connection with ultra processed foods where it's like I guess if someone's going to use that as a heuristic where I'm going to avoid seed oils because they're bad for whatever reason, they're likely going to avoid a bunch of ultra processed foods because most of those are going to be refined sugars and seed oils or some sort of thing like that. And then but then you just get to the point of like, why don't you just say I'm going to avoid ultra processed foods or limit them to a degree where I'm like meeting my dietary needs but not exceeding them. And then. Look at it through that lens. But I mean, I guess people like to gamify stuff. So if they can do it
Andrea
48:14
well, you are 1s you're you're so right. And actually, you know, I love that topic. We actually did a couple of posts on ultra processed food over on bioscience recently because there's not there's no formal definition of what an ultra processed food is versus a processed food. And technically, everything we consume is processed to some degree, even producing frozen vegetables. Processing is not inherently bad. Um, but colloquially, when we think of ultra processed food, we're thinking of things that have added fats and added sugars and added salts and things like that. And yeah, if you look at the proportions like if you're looking at potato chips, like, you know, yes, they're fried in oil, right? You know, most often because it's cheaper than animal fats and it makes it more accessible and, you know, but it's not the oil itself. Right? It's the proportion of your diet that is being, you know, made up of. Foods that have low nutrient density, right? So they might be high in calories, but they don't have a lot of vitamins and minerals or they're high in fat, but they don't have good proteins or carbohydrates. And so it's not about the single ingredient, right? So why are we vilifying a single ingredient when instead we should be focusing again on these healthy patterns? And it's like they don't, they're not mutually exclusive. Right? You can have a really healthy, balanced, diverse diet and you can go have ice cream or have a bag of chips or have some goodies like, you know, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. But again, it becomes this all or nothing phenomenon where it's like, well, we're going to take our pitchforks out and go after linoleic acid when in reality it has nothing to do
Zach
49:53
with. Yeah, I just like I find sanity by just looking at all these things as tools where it's like, you know, like, am I going to sit down and eat a bag of potato chips on a regular basis? Probably not. But like, if I'm going if I need something that is going to be high calorie, low volume, that's a reasonable tool in my example. So it's like if I go through an aid station, an ultramarathon, it's like, Yeah, I want the potato chip, I don't want to dip the potato in the oil and then the salt. I just want the potato chip. So like that's like, that's obviously an extreme example, but I mean, it just goes to show you like. The other thing, too, of just like food combinations in general, because I mean, people are to some degree probably need to be mindful of the level of ultra processing that they're including. If they have a if they have a low output lifestyle to the degree where the way I look at is like even if I took a baked potato and sliced it and dipped it in oil and then dipped in salt, ate that, I would tap out with that that scenario way before I did the bag of potato chips. And that's likely something to do with the fiber contents or or maybe the water moisture.
Andrea
51:03
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and that's, you know, it all goes into that nutrient density, right? So if you know, you're consuming, you know, a thousand calories and it only weighs six ounces versus a thousand calories in a way, several pounds like you're going to be consuming less food, less calories. Right. And, you know, and that's why, you know, things that have a lot of fiber have a lot of moisture in them. You know, they give you that sensation of fullness, which is a whole other beef I have with the carnivore diet, because it's devoid of fiber and fiber is super important for all these appetite regulations. Cuz on top of ensuring that you don't develop all sorts of digestive issues. But yeah, it's about, it's about the density and the quality of, of the food itself, less about the individual substances or chemicals or ingredients within them.
Zach
52:02
Yeah. Another, another topic if we want to kind of transition loosely, I guess because seed oil is likely quote unquote, cause this is a leaky gut.
Andrea
52:14
Oh, goodness, yes. Leaky gut is one of these diagnoses du jour that I'm just going to you know, it'll be controversial, but it's not a medical condition. Now, leaky gut in the context of. Physiology is a term that colloquially is used for intestinal cell permeability. Now, what happens with a lot of these pseudoscience diagnoses? Leaky gut, adrenal fatigue, a lot of these other ones is, you know, people who want to promote it take a term that does have some sort of scientifically related definition, and then they kind of manipulate it and co-opt it. So a leaky gut basically suggests that your gastrointestinal tract is leaky. Literally holes are forming and bacteria and toxins, toxins are always involved in all of these things. You know, the seed oils are toxic and the toxins are leaking in and the brain talks anyway. So these things leak through your intestinal wall and get into your bloodstream. It's very popular among your natural paths and your alternative practitioners. And they say that it causes all sorts of symptoms from bloating and gas and constipation and diarrhea to food sensitivities, which are not a thing either. I would love to talk about that, too. I have many times. But it also suppresses your immune system. It causes brain fog and memory loss and fatigue and skin issues and ADHD and depression and anxiety and autoimmune disorders and sugar cravings and also and also autism I saw recently. So, um. So yeah, so this is not a thing, but basically when you digest food, when it gets into your GI tract, you've got 4000ft² of surface area in your different systems. First, food enters the stomach, your stomach acid and various enzymes start to break it down. It moves into the small intestine, and then you have more enzymes. The walls of the small intestine are absorbing water and nutrients through. Channels, proteins, things like that, that transport those nutrients into the bloodstream. And then you have the transport of those that that partially digested food about eight hours later go into the large intestine, your colon. Right. And it's going to hang out there for like a day, day and a half, sometimes two days. And it's turning the food waste of the indigestible stuff into stool, absorbing lots more water and all of that simultaneously. You have your gut, microbiome, trillions and trillions of microorganisms that are actually helping us digest the food and extract nutrients, and it's also feeding them so they can survive. And those microorganisms are really important for a lot of things. They're also used as a kind of a weapon where people make fake claims about the microbiome when we don't fully understand the scope of it. But that's a whole other topic. But basically you've got these layers of your intestine, you've got the mucosal layer, you've got the submucosa, you've got the muscular layer and you've got the avintia. And so the mucosa is kind of the interface between your intestine and the food. And it and these are epithelial cells, skin cells that secrete mucus, which protects, protects the cells, and the mucosa is absorbing nutrients and it helps transport nutrients and it also protects the barriers from being broken and those microorganisms from getting in and causing infection. But it's not, it's convoluted, right? It's got these finger-like projections and it's got all this surface area. It's kind of like a roller coaster. And you have a whole bunch of stuff going on in there and you have all these cells that are touching each other. But they're dynamic, right? They're moving around and they're opening little ports to transport nutrients in. So. So technically, yeah, your gut is leaky because you have to move things in and out. You got to move molecules of water in, you got to move nutrients out, you got to move cells around. You know, everything's kind of dynamic. So they take this concept of the fact that your intestine is dynamic because it's, it's really complex. And then they say that those junctions between the cells are just they're loose and there's gaps and there's cracks and there's holes. And then all these undigested food particles are just sleeping in there. Um, yeah, that wouldn't happen because if that happened, you would develop a blood infection and would lead to sepsis and, and, and you would be at risk of dying. So again, you know, this is not a medical condition. There are gastrointestinal disorders that have issues with perturbing the cells or leading to inflammatory processes like celiac disease and Crohn's disease. Um, but. The general population is not experiencing leaky gut syndrome and causing all of these very generic, non-specific symptoms. And the problem is, there's all these fraudulent tests that people use to diagnose leaky gut like the mannitol or lactose urine test. And these are not reliable. But unfortunately, you know, they've been popularized and and and they're used as kind of credibility for this, you know, this diagnosis. And so, of course, the treatments usually involve very restrictive and fad diets because you have to cure the leaks in your gut. There's a lot of supplements that are recommended. And I just want to reiterate that there's no medical or scientific basis for them. And supplements are again, are not regulated and many could actually be harmful for you. But yeah, so it's kind of the same old story where a legitimate scientific phenomenon in the in the context of how cells are dynamic and function has kind of been manipulated to suggest that you have these like huge crevices in your intestinal tract that's leaking things out into your bloodstream and causing all of these really nonspecific symptoms.
Zach
58:48
Yeah. Yeah. The one thing you mentioned that I want to follow up on is just like a food sensitivity or lack thereof, perhaps. What is going on when people minus someone with actual celiac disease or Crohn's disease, where you actually know what's happening with that particular individual. Like you said, that's not a population level problem. That's an individual problem. If I go or I think most people I talked to, myself included, there are certain foods where if I eat them, I get a stomachache from them. Is that just something that's for sure. Just everyone is going to have some foods that just don't jive well for them for whatever reason. We don't really know. Is that potentially I know the microbiome thing is very early still and we don't really have definitive answers with that either. Could it be something where you need to introduce that food in gradual amounts and try to build up a tolerance to it or what's kind of going on in those situations, in your opinion?
Andrea
59:49
Yeah, that's a great question. So so when it comes to like food isn't agreeing with people, there's there's really two main buckets. There's food allergies and there's food intolerances. So food allergies are and an immune system mediated process where essentially a substance in that food is recognized by our immune system as a foreign invader And our immune system, specifically the mast cell arm, launches this really, really rapid inflammatory process mediated by the secretion of particular types of antibodies called Ige and histamine. And it creates this and it can lead to this anaphylaxis reaction. So food allergies, I think a lot of people think of in the context of peanut allergies. Um, celiac is actually a wheat allergy. So it's an allergic reaction against a protein found in wheat. Um. 2s And then and so those are very specific, um. Um. 1s Um. 2s Sorry reactions against specific molecules that's mediated by your immune system. And so gluten is often vilified in the context of celiac disease. And a lot of people like to live with gluten sensitivity, and that's become very popular, right? So if you don't have celiac, which is the the illness for the allergy against the protein found in wheat and barley and rye, which is gluten, you know, there's no evidence that there's some kind of nebulous gluten sensitivity. So if you don't have celiac or a wheat allergy, you don't need to avoid gluten. Um, the other side of the arm would be intolerances. And so intolerances are not related to the immune system but are rather related to digestion. And so I like to use lactose intolerance as an example. So lactose intolerance is essentially your body not making the enzyme required to digest that particular sugar. So lactose is a sugar that's found in dairy products and we produce an enzyme called lactase. So if it ends up as an enzyme, it breaks things down. So people who don't make that enzyme or don't make enough of that enzyme might struggle to digest the sugars found in dairy products that contain lactose or products that contain lactose broadly. And as a result, they might have gastrointestinal symptoms. So bloating and cramping and diarrhea and things like that. So two different kinds of biological processes, but related to reactions to things you do. It's possible that people may have intolerances for things that they eat and that's why they get a stomach upset or things like that. It's also possible that they're getting stomach upset because you're feeding a certain population of microorganisms and they're creating a lot of gas as a result because when they metabolize, they're producing gas and that gas is going into your digestive tract and either going up or it's going down. And so that could be something too. But what happens again, and there's a lot of other things that can cause stomach issues, right? There's a ton of nerves that innervate your GI tract. We know anxiety and stress and all sorts of other things can play a role in that too. So it's really hard to tease it out. So what has happened is that there's these companies, one in particular called Everly Well, which is kind of the biggest perpetrator of this. They sell these sensitivity tests where basically they treat you like a skin prick and you give a blood sample and they look for all these things that you're in, food that you're supposedly sensitive to. What they're testing for is an antibody called IgG and IgG. Antibodies are produced anytime you encounter anything. So your body, your immune system produces IgG against pretty much everything in your life. It does not indicate you're sensitive to anything. It's actually an antibody that's produced as tolerance, meaning, Hey, I saw it, it's not foreign, I just have those antibodies. So I know that next time I encounter it, I don't need to sound the alarm and the levels quite often can correlate with how recently you were exposed to it. So if you test positive for eggs on a food sensitivity test, it does not mean that you were sensitive to eggs. It means you ate eggs recently. Probably. Um, but the problem is, is that that then leads to misinformation, disordered eating, restrictive diets because these people it's this card, right? And it gives you like 20 different things that you're sensitive to. And all these people are like, oh my gosh, I need to eliminate all of these things from my diet. And it becomes psychological and it becomes, you know, part of this identity. And it also runs the risk of malnourishment because now you're avoiding these entire food groups when there's actually no science behind it. So, you know, generally speaking, if you eat something and it makes your stomach upset. Don't eat it right. If you're legitimately concerned that you may have a true digestive issue like an intolerance, see a gastroenterologist, or if you're concerned that you might have an allergy, see an immunologist, but don't do an at home consumer test for food sensitivity because that's not found in. Yeah no those yeah. I remember like when those first started getting popular, I heard some people talking about it and they're just like, Well, I took the test and I got these results and it was like, There's a bunch of foods on here that I eat all the time and feel great with and a bunch that I they said I should be eating. When I do eat them, they give me a stomachache. Yeah. So
Zach
65:37
It's kind of like a coin flip or some other thing reasonable or not. Yeah.
Andrea
65:41
And you know, aside from the fact that IgG is not an indication of whether or not, you know, you, your sensitivity is not a medical term to begin with. But, anyway, IgG antibodies don't indicate anything. Um, these are consumer tests right there. There are commercial companies, there's no lab validation, there's no standardization. Like who knows what they're actually reporting. Right? And again, it's predatory. And I think it just does harm to people's health. But also just like literacy, scientific literacy in general,
Zach
66:15
Is there anything of value in terms of putting yourself in a position where the foods you are eating can make it less likely you're going to have digestive issues? I'm thinking like fermented vegetables, fermented dairy for that matter. Are those things where like, for example, if I'm eating fermented dairy or just yogurts, perhaps kefir, is that going to potentially put me in a position where I'd be better able to also use just commercial dairy along the side of it?
Andrea
66:45
So there's not an answer to that. You know, I mean, we know a lot of those foods are healthy. They're rich in nutrients. You know, I love yogurt. I love cottage cheese. I love kimchi. I'll eat anything, pickles, any video of the week. Um, you know, and we know that there is not a lot of evidence that probiotics supplements are beneficial to people for a lot of reasons, because they typically don't contain the diverse species that live in your gut. They're often not the right species. They're tiny little dosage compared to the millions and trillions and trillions of bacteria that are in there, you know, but getting some of these live microorganisms for your food, it's it's we don't know enough to say that for a certain cohort of people it's going to be beneficial or it's going to there's no evidence to suggest it's harmful. There's no evidence to suggest that it's going to prevent an illness or prevent digestive issues or things like that. So, you know, again, if they're nutritious and you enjoy them, eat them. Right. You know, but the microbiome is too complex and difficult to study in a comprehensive way for us to say that. Okay, well, if you eat some kefir along with unfermented dairy, you're less likely to have issues with digesting lactose. It's just not there yet and it's going to vary per sure.
Zach
68:17
So yeah, you're, it's, yeah, you're just throwing darts in the dark at that point and maybe you get, if there's something there, maybe you get lucky. But it's not going to be something transferable from you to your friend if they're having similar situations.
Andrea
68:30
Exactly. But that's you know and that's and that's you know, the at home microbiome tests are getting really popular, too. And I know I've covered like 800 different topics, but those are like the Wild West, right? Because again, you're not sampling the whole microbiome. You're only sampling what actually comes out in stool. And that's not necessarily representative of everything that's living there. And the tests use different technologies, use different methods. They're only detecting certain species. And so even with those, like if you're curious, that's cool, but you can't use it to make any sort of determination or use it to inform changes in your behavior and your diet. Because I think people also forget that those things, those bacteria, they're dynamic, they're alive, right? So they're going to respond and react to whatever you put in there and some species might. Digest certain things better. And so you might see those numbers go up and other ones go down. And then if you eat something different, the reverse might be true. Doesn't mean one way is bad or good. It just means that they're dynamic and they're responding to the food you're giving them. Right. But people are trying to use that to hack their health and make inferences about, oh, well, you know, artificial sweeteners are bad because, you know, this study showed that if people drink sodas with aspartame, you know, the microbiome population change and when they drink glucose, they change differently. And it's like, yeah, I mean, all you can say about that is then they change. You don't know. There's no there's no one's good, one's bad. It's just that is what they are. And again, we don't know enough about what those things mean to say one thing or the other. So it's, you know, it's, it's 1s people fall into the trap of like, you know, 1s having too much information at their disposal and using it to make conclusions that are just.
Zach
70:21
Yeah, yeah. The aspartame is another interesting one because that's another like dosage like anything, dosage makes the poison and the dosage for aspartame seems to be quite high relative to what you'd actually be able to consume.
Andrea
70:35
I've got my ginger ale here right now. I have at least one diet soda a day. But yeah, I mean, aspartame, when you eat it, it literally is broken down into two amino acids and you use those amino acids to make proteins in your body. And there's no there's not even mechanistic evidence of how it would be harmful, you know, and there's no human evidence that it would be harmful, especially at the levels that we would ever be exposed to. So, um, yeah, it's 1s unfortunately a lot of, a lot of, a lot of it is based, I think, on, you know, chemo phobia or fear of chemicals or words that people don't understand and, and clever marketing of anything. Yeah,
Zach
71:21
yeah. There's a market share and everyone wants to get a piece of it. So that means pushing someone out. And eventually diet sodas needed to get pushed out, I guess 1s at least part of them anyway. Yeah. I mean, this has been fun. Andrea just talking about some of these topics and kind of how to look at it, I think, yeah, generally speaking, I just think like if I had to give someone advice, I'd be like, Look at any of these, these inputs that you have available to yourself as tools and then ask yourself what what are you trying to do with this situation? So like, if it's someone like myself who has an incredibly high energy demand, you know there's going to be tools I'm going to use on a frequent basis that maybe I wouldn't if I were more sedentary. Uh, and it's just like looking at the context and whether the tool is going to be useful or not and kind of moving, moving and constructing things from there, from there it is a much better way to view these things than whether this is inherently good or inherently bad. And looking at things in a real black and white way.
Andrea
72:22
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I mean, something that I really try to emphasize to people is that, you know, health really broadly is multifactorial and there are some things you can control and there are some things you cannot control. But it's never going to be these like quick fixes or this all or nothing or one thing is toxic. And one thing is, you know, a panacea, you know? And if you see someone claiming something like that, that should give you pause because it's a lot more nuanced than that. And, you know, especially when it comes to nutrition and health and all that, it's much more kind of unique on a person by person basis. And there's a lot of factors at play, you know, and and, you know, just, you know, everything in moderation when it comes to different kinds of food sources. You know, there's again, nothing inherently bad, nothing inherently good. Nature is not inherently better. Synthetic is not inherently evil, you know, So those sorts of claims, if you see them online, should always just take a beat and just think,
Zach
73:27
yeah, ask what are they trying, what message are they trying to prevent?
Andrea
73:32
Exactly.
Zach
73:33
Andrea, before I let you go, I do want to let you kind of share where people can find you. I know you co cohost on bias science and you have the most clever titles to your episodes, by the way. It's worth billions, just long titles if nothing else. Even if you're not going to listen to the episodes. Oh my gosh. So
Andrea
73:51
They are that the heart is coming up with something clever. It's like weeks of brainstorming. But yeah. Zach, thanks so much. So yeah, you can find the podcast. It's an unbiased sci pod on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn threads. We also have a website. It's 1s unbiased sci pod. I'm also shamelessly plugging. I'm the executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, where my team is scientists and clinicians that try to dispel myths and misconceptions about tick borne illness.
Zach
74:25
I'm glad to have you back. Oh, Lyme disease. Now
Andrea
74:29
That's what I did. Okay. Interesting. So, yeah, yeah. So. Yeah. So. So we have a website. It's Altaf and I'm currently working on a big overhaul. We are on Instagram now. It's at the American Lyme Disease Foundation. It's in its infancy, but awesome. Well, I'll link all that stuff in the show notes and the listeners can go and check it out. But thanks a bunch for your time and all the information. Thanks for having
Zach
74:56
me. We'll have to do it again. That's awesome.