The War on Fat: The Seven Countries Study

It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be. And we cannot wait for you to get your hands on it. Yes, we can't. Um, and you don't have to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but you don't have to wait to order. You can go preorder the book right now everywhere you get books, and you will eventually get a special gift for preordering, which we're working on right now. That's right, So check it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,

a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's here somewhere, and this makes it stuff you should know, the Heart Healthy Edition. Yeah, I've been wanting to do for a very long time, Chuck. Yeah, and this was one that was put together by our buddy Dave Ruse. But back in February, and I lost it and thankfully you said, hey, by the way, you know, we got that seven countries

thing just sitting there gathering dust. Ye, I said, Chuck, don't lose it here. I lost it and then I found it. I was lost, but now I'm found. And fat is good for your body the end, I know. But that's a that's such like a revolutionary statement these days, radical even basically to say fat is good for your body the end, especially our we I'll not even our age, but anyone in America and the eighties and nineties, somebody in our court. You mean, yeah, I do too. So um.

The reason why it's kind of radical to say that fat is good for you is because, yeah, everybody, our age, Chuck, knows that fat is horrible for you. And even if you kind of know that fat's not as bad as we used to think, you probably still don't realize how much better it is for you than it actually is. There still some part of you that demonizes it. And during the eighties and the nineties you couldn't get fat if you shook it out of a pig, like it

was nowhere to be found. In the United States, we had low fat everything. Remember we had uh like potato chips where they took out the fat and replaced it with a like a diarrhea creating agent. Right, what were those called the did this? But I think they were like like um las ola. Weren't they called ola chips? They should have been called oiv as. So yeah, like

we're doing all sorts of things. And one of the worst things we did too, even worse than adding olean or replacing fat with olean, was a takeout fat and replace it with high fruit toast corn syrup. Because one of the things that fat does is give food flavor, and we take fat out of food, you still wanted to have flavor, and if you're a food processor, one cheap, easy way to put flavor back into it is to

put high fruit toast corn syrup into it. And so they think that like all of this war on fat that took place in the eighties and nineties is actually at least partially, if not fully responsible for the outbreak of chronic diseases that we're seeing now, including obesity and um diabetes that is just epidemic right now in the

United States. Yeah, it was so ingrained in us that even after doing this podcast episode and knowing what we now know, it's still like you say things like, you know, boy, that steak you just feel like like clogging up your arteries as you know that fat just gets wedged in there. You just get these mental images of fat just like

breaking off of food and sticking to your blood vessels. Right, Yeah, like this is really unhealthier, this is super indulgent or something like that, And that just may not necessarily be the case, but yeah, we had a number done on us, basically,

and we're still crawling out from under it. And what's the most magnificently amazing thing is that basically all of this, the war on fat, the low fat trend, the possibly the diabetes, and the obesity that resulted from taking out faster and placing it with sugar, all of this stuff came from one study that was conducted back starting back in the fifties that some people are like, the study isn't even legitimate methodologically, yeah, so that is the seven

country study. And uh. The creator of the seven country study was someone named Dr Ansel keys Um who was married and published and this is I'm not gonna We'll just let this speak for itself. They published a number of high volume selling books about the Mediterranean diet. That these cookbooks and um sometimes like the very first one was only what like two years after they started doing this study. So they have been accused of cherry picking

their data and promoting correlation as causation and uh. As a result of all this, the United States very famously came out with the food Pyramid that we was drilled into our heads in school and said fat is cholesterol and that is heart disease and eating fatty things will kill you. Yes, like ipso fact. Though, the problem is is that it was all based those recommendations. That food pyramid was all based on the study and not any

kind of like clinical data. It was just basically a study that was set up and designed to support a hypothesis, not really test a hypothesis so much as support this hypothesis by Dr Antel keys that saturated fats uh rose cholesterol levels in your blood and that increased cholesterol levels in your blood would kill you through heart disease. And so doctor keys Is been very much demonized over the years as people have figured out like, no, fats aren't

bad for you and actually you need them. But there's also been like an effort to reform him too. And in his defense, he wasn't just some some psycho narcissist doctor. From what I could tell, he is. Um. He invented k rations. K rations are called that after him keys Um. Yeah, that that like kept a law of g I S alive.

And World War two, Um, he was a major part of the Minnesota's starvation experiment where volunteers conscious just objectors and World War two volunteered to be starved um so that the scientists could figure out how to refeed people without killing them, which became very useful when we liberated the pow cants in Germany and some of the occupied areas. So he was like a good I don't okay, I don't know enough about him to say he was a good person, but I don't think he was like an

evil person by any stretch of the imagination. And also the reason that he started conducting the study in the first place was because there was an epidemic of middle aged men, in particular in America who were just dying left and right of heart disease, and he wanted to figure out what the problem was. He also started the K pop phenomenon, so catchy and great. I don't know any K pop I know the kids love it, though they do, they're not for it. That one B twos

band or something like that. I can't I can't remember their name, no idea, but if they're called the B fifty twos, then they should be sued because that's been taken. So Dr Ansel Keys as an American from Minnesota, a physiologist and in the forties when you know, uh, the Don Drapers, although that was a little later, but the Don Drapers of the world were falling over dead from smoking cigarettes all the time and eating steak for lunch

and martinis for lunch. He said, you know what, I'm gonna figure this out and see what's going on, and I'm gonna identify some risk factors why men in this country are developing heart disease and men around the world. Is what it ended up being. But it started in Minnesota where he did a little pilot study. And while he was doing that, he got a message from a colleague in Italy who said, in southern Italy we got

to no heart to disease. Everybody's a healthy And he said, really, and and he also said, southern Italy is really nice. You should come visit. And so he went there in the nineteen fifties and a bet, I mean, Southern Italy is still great, but a bet in the early nineteen

fifties it was just idyllic. And he went down there and he started these informal studies comparing business business executives with the working class men of southern Italy, measuring serum cholesterol levels, talking about what you're eating, getting the data on heart disease and heart attacks there from the hospitals, and he started to form this hypothesis that you know what, dudes, middle aged dudes that have higher serum cholesterol levels are more likely to die or at least suffer from a

heart attack. Yes, yes, And that was like the beginning. That was yeah, And that was his hypothesis. And it's pretty sound hypothesis, especially based on some of the data that he'd seen, because he around this time after his he was intrigued by his friend in southern Italy and his trip to southern Italy um, which, by the way, he fell in love with Southern Italy so much he shot shop there and I believe lived out his life till age one oh one. Yeah. Um, And that proves it.

It basically does, because I believe he did adhere pretty strictly to the Mediterranean diet he espoused. He was no hypocrite, but um he uh. He started poking around and getting his hands on whatever data he could four things like fat intake in the diet and incidences of heart disease and heart attacks wherever he could get it in the world. And he compiled um data from twenty two different countries and he said, wow, this is really kind of all

over the place. I'll just select six of these countries that really proved my point. And he created what's known as the six country graph, which a lot of people confused with the seven country Study, but it pre pre dated the seven country study. But it was this thing that was kind of like the transition period between first

forming this hypothesis and begin the seven country study. The six country graph was kind of like the connective tissue between the two and it also told him where to look to really find the biggest disparities that might support or um undermine his hypothesis. And so we got to work looking around and contacting people around the world and said, hey,

I have zero funding to offer you. I know that World War two just ended and everybody is basically trying to rebuild their economy and their nation in Europe is kind of war torn and shattered, and um, Japan has had bombs dropped on it. But do you want to start studying whether eating steak is bad for you and going to kill you? And actually, astoundingly some country said yes, yeah. So the countries ended up being Italy, Spain, South Africa, Japan, Finland,

the US. And I guess was that Greece was the last one. Did that count Okay, Greece increase counts? Well, I mean I knew, yeah, I know, grease increases the word. So, um, it was time in the in the mid nineteen fifties. He had the interested countries and the interested parties, so in he developed these select populations and you kind of teased it earlier calling us cohorts. These populations of men they referred to as cohorts in the study so when you hear say cohort, it's not like one guy, it's

a population of guys. Right. So the seven countries they would monitor for twenty five years and ideally lead to what risk factors would lead to heart disease. And that was his goal was, I'm going to find out what these risk factors are, provide some evidence, and then say here's what you should be eating. Basically, Yes, so that

I mean, that's that's exactly what he did. Like you said, within two years of starting this um study, which was supposed to last and actually did twenty five and some of the people who were the original participants were studied for more than forty forty years. But um, within two years he uh, he turned around and published that cookbook. That's how certain he was of his hypothesis being correct. Yeah, and I don't you know, we don't want to poop

of the Mediterranean diet. I think the idea, I'm sure the Mediterranean diet is it can be quite healthy. The idea, though, is is he shouldn't just be like, I'm gonna eat low fat, because that's what happened in America. Everyone didn't say, hey, we'll just eat Mediterranean. They said, we'll just eat junk food full of sugar and hyproc dose corn syrup but doesn't have fat. And and that was the other thing too, is he is very frequently unfairly accused of demonizing fat.

He didn't do that. He said, you need to be eating olive oil by the gallonful, just injected daily. Basically he didn't say that. It's kind of paraphrasing, but he um. He didn't leave out things like, um, you know, fats from fish or from all of well, it was saturated fat and particularly that he was convinced was the culprit for heart disease and deaths from heart disease. Right, and uh, eat a lot of grains, eat a lot of pasta, eat a lot of fruit, eat a lot of bread,

a lot of vegetables. Sure vegetables are good for you. Yeah, that's true, right. Yeah. And also I think one of the other things that was so radical about the Mediterranean diet, like even now you're like, oh, that sounds kind of exotic. This is the fifties that this guy first introduced the

Mediterranean diet. But one of the other things that was radical about it, and I should say, um, I didn't I didn't give credit to his wife, Margaret, who co wrote the first book with him, at least the first one, if not more. Um, they wrote it together. But the the the thing that was radical about it was that he said, Hey, those fruits and vegetables and all that make those the main like make the meat your side dish, like,

flip it over. You're gonna like live a lot longer than you are just by eating a big steak and some cream spinach on the side. Hey, I got no problem with the man. There is definitely a case to be made about eating what you like and living shorter. It's tough to argue with in some cases. Hey, what do we do when we occasionally on the road, We'll go to a steakhouse together? We split a cream spinach every time. Sure, I mean, how can you go to

a steakhouse and not eat cream spinach? It's the best It makes you strong, right, Yeah, my forearm is just a freakishly bulging. Should we take a break, Yes, all right, go work out those four arms and we'll talk about the cohorts right after this. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just chuck. Okay, So we're gonna say it again cohorts cohorts. It's a study population that bears some sort of similarity to one another, sort of.

There were sixteen in the seven countries study, and all sixteen cohorts total twelve thousand, seven hundred and sixty three participants. So it's a pretty good study. Sixteen different groups of people more than twelve thousand total in seven different countries. It's fairly impressive and ambitious study for the time. For sure, it was. And I think there were at least two in every country except for the U S which had one cohort. And he never said we have to be fair.

He never said, you know what, this represents all men in these countries and sort of all men around the world. They never pretended like that was the case. But they had to start somewhere and um, and we're not pooping the whole study. Like the it was very robust. Uh. And if you carry out a study in seven countries with all of these men over twenty five years, it's

you know, they weren't slouches or anything like that. No, but the very fact that he went around and said, oh, these people eat a Mediterranean diet, I'm gonna include them. These people eat what I consider the opposite of Mediterranean diet. Include them, yea, rather than saying like, we'll just pick these countries at random and and start studying them and see if the their cholesterol intake is low and then if so, if that correlates with the lower heart disease.

He didn't do that, and that is definitely worth criticizing for sure. So let's I guess talk about some of these cohorts and what they who they were, uh, former Yugoslavia. He studied a couple of small towns um one that had the Western European diet and one that was on

the Mediterranean diet largely. Finland was really interesting, I think out of all these, because he compared two villages in eastern and western Finland, because East Finlanders were recording a lot more heart attacks, in fact, supposedly like the highest record on planet Earth at the time. Yes, and for good reason too, you would think, because they would eat things like so great, this makes me hungry, Yeah, it kind of does. Actually, they would eat a fish soup

that was just loaded with butter for breakfast. They would he was called the Loggers launch, which was described by one of the researchers as um, are you ready large hunks of meat, suspended and congealed fat, enveloped in a dark bread loaf, fully permeated by fat. I'm so sorry to our being of vegetarian listeners because you're probably turning it off right about now. Yeah, we should have spoiled our trigger warning this one yeah too late, which, by the way, I have to say, I have been really

doing my best to eat far less meat. Um, not for health purposes, for ethical reasons, really sure, but I gotta say that does sound kind of good to me. Is like, if you put this in front of me and say, here's your chance to eat a uh Eastern Finland loggers lunch, I would I would take you up on it. I think, Yeah, I'm cut down on meat too. Yeah, yeah, I eat so. I don't mean a lot of red meat. Don't eat a ton of pork anymore, can especially especially pork from me. I I don't always eat meat, but

when I do, I try not to. Uh So. Then so you've got your high fat diets in Finland. And then he said, all right, I need to, like you kind of mentioned earlier, I need to choose some some opposite in my view, opposite countries of what they eat. So where do you go. You go to Japan, of course, where they eat a lot of fish, and he went to a even a tiny little fishing village where they all ate almost all fish. And then again in Greece and the Greek islands, uh and in southern Italy also

where they were obviously eating the Mediterranean diet. Right, So he takes all these different cohorts, takes all of their different diets and starts just kind of looking at um, all sorts of factors. That was one of the other reasons you said it was a very robust study. One of the other reasons that it was robust is because they looked at all sorts of stuff. It wasn't just their diet. They looked at things like, um, what they drank, and what they smoked, and how much they smoked and

all this kind of stuff. It was a big, long study.

And again they followed these guys for at least twenty five years, and some of the stuff that they found we're basically this and this is this is the two points that the Seven Countries study told the world, and they just so happened to be the two points that ansel Keys fully expected the seven countries to tell the studies to tell the world, and it was that if you have a high serum cholesterol, like a high concentration of cholesterol in your blood, then there you're there's a

greater chance that you were going to die from cardiovass killer disease. Right and Eastern Finland where those loggers were eaten fat breads. That's a great name for a restaurant, fat bread Sure. Oh yeah, I think wow, if restaurants are still around in a few months, then we should

open one called fat breads. Um. So, those fat bread eating loggers, they had average serum cholesterol levels of more than two sixty and there were more than four heart attacks, uh four heart attack deaths for every one middle aged men five years after the study started. Right, okay, so Chuck, I looked it up. They had an average of two sixty. The window of normal or acceptable or your your um you don't have like viscous blood is two d These guys were averaging to sixty. That's a lot. It is

a lot. So the opposite of that was the former Yugoslavian place uh Dalmatia, where they had the Mediterranean diet and there men had an average serium cholesterol level and had one death per one men over that same period. And Dalmatia is where the Dalmatian dog they think is from. I kind of assumed that, but you never know, did you? It was worth saying anyway, Sure, this is a show about facts in trivia. That's right. Um. Did you have you ever been to Croatia? No? It is spectacular, man.

It's on the Adriatic and it is incredibly gorgeous. You mean and I went on a cruise once that went through there, and it is I've just wanted to go back ever since. Was it one of those river cruises? No, it was again, it was on the Adriaca. It was a cruise all the way around Italy, from one side to the down past the boot and then up the other.

It was love. Yeah, we're not like cruise people or anything like that, but we went with Um Shandon the Champagne Acre had a cruise that we're like, well, okay, this is the one we're gonna take, and uh it turned out to be really great because we're not like Italy fans. You we have nothing against Italy, but we were never like we got to go to Italy never,

We're never cruise fans. And then after we got off of those were like, I want to go on another cruise and I want to go back to Italy and would a kill you to give me some more shand on did you just drink tons of champagne? Yes, that's wonderful. So the other thing that uh It said was the other conclusion was diets higher and saturated fats will correlate to more heart attacks. And the data did show a big correlation between saturated fat in the regular traditional diet

and the heart attacks. And I think crete where saturated fats equal between eight and nine percent of daily calories, the average number of heart attack desper one hundred was basically zero over that five years. And in the US, where we only had the one cohort, I don't think we said they were railroad workers, right, Yeah, in Minnesota, Minnesota railroad workers, they had se saturated fats and their diet and they had more than three deaths per one

during that five year period. Right, So all this stuff just totally backs up what what um ansel Keys was saying, right, and later studies that basically took the seven countries study cohorts and drilled down into them a little more. UM. There were two particular ones, the zoot Fins study from

the Netherlands and the Hail Project. UM. Both of them looked at um just continued following people beyond the twenty five years, so like the Hail study was dedicated to looking at healthy aging, that kind of thing, and they turned up some other stuff that you UM now basically take his gospel as well, Like if you follow a Mediterranean diet, your risk of heart attack drops precipitously, I think thirt lower risk. UM, if you eat fish, it

lowers your risk of dying from a heart attack. Like even just eating fish once or twice a week can drop your risk of a fatal heart attack by Like these were things that that came along, not not from the seven country study, but from that thing being continued on by supplementary studies. Yeah. And two of the big ones that people like myself and my wife like to spout is that you drink the two glasses of wine a day, you're actually healthier than not drinking at all.

And if you eat that one square of dark chocolate a day, you're actually healthier as well. Uh, if you eat more than that and drink more than that, then it goes the opposite way. But that two glasses of wine and one square of chocolate is uh. People really like to tout that one who like to drink wine

and eat chocolate. That's what they call a sweet spot. Yeah, so like seriously think about it, though, if you drink less than two wine two glasses of wine a date, you're you're likelier to die of heart disease than if

you drink too. I mean that's what they're saying in the study at least, right, And I mean, like, I haven't seen anything that says Nope, that's not true, that's b s. But the everybody makes that case that you said to her, that makes that point that like, once you go beyond too, not only does it have the opposite effect, it gets really bad, really really fast. Yeah.

And what you can't do also is be like, well, I haven't had any drinks for three nights, so I'll have five glasses of wine tonight and that averages out to super healthy. Yeah. Yeah, they say been shrinking is way worse for you, but then they also say that been shrinking is way better for you. We have no handle on what drinking does to you. I just know that drinking makes me feel like a S S the

next day. Uh yeah, I mean older you get, you definitely have to pick and choose, dude, Like two beers can. I don't want to say wreck me the next day, but I am not love in life the next day necessarily two beers dude. Yeah, My whole deal is sleep Like I haven't had anything to drink for four nights, and that was after a pretty big couple of nights in a row for various reasons. And uh, I just I sleep so much better. I wake up feeling so

much better. I mean it's irrefutable, you know. Um what I do try to do now though in my old ages is really drink a ton of water while I'm drinking. And uh I use now take these. Uh I don't know if I should buzz market the brand, but I take a little supplement that is that is you know, it's basically like a super vitamin that supposedly will help curb a hangover, and like, have you noticed that it

actually has an effect? And if it does have an effective, do you think it's just power suggestion or does it really work? No? I think so, But it's not gobbled e cook. I mean it's BE twelve and like things that we know can probably help with a hangover. Yeah, yeah, Have you ever gotten a BE twelve shot? I haven't, Oh man. A lot of times they miss or it doesn't work, or it's watered down or something like that. It's really hard to get a good BE twelve shot.

When it works, brother, you can tell a difference and you feel like a million bucks. You're not high, but you're like high on life kind of. You're not not high, I guess. Actually it's a really fair way to put it, to tell you how long does that last? Like basically all day you just feel great, You want to talk to strangers. You you're like totally large and in charge. You're getting stuff done. You never feel overwhelmed, like you're

like having you have a sense of humor. It's just it just takes like all the best parts of your personality and like bulks them up. Not in any kind of speedy, manic way, but just you just feel like you're running on all cylinders and you just wish to God that like you were always like that, but and that's what you got hat too, So that's why you're not that's why you that's what you get one of those hangover next day places, right, like an ivy and

a BEAT twelve shot. Yeah. Yeah, you could go to like a medical clinic or you know, a med spa or something like that, and they usually have it. Some chiropractors have them. Um have to do that. Yeah, I think you have to have some sort of medical degree to inject it or whatever. But I've always kind of been on the hunt to have B twelve prescribed to me so I can inject it myself. So I guess that there's any doctor listeners something you should know out there,

Hit me up because I need a prescription to BE twelve. Please. Oh man, where were we? I think we're about to take a break. Yeah, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about the criticisms right after this. If you want to know, you're in luck. Just to exact fusion. Okay. So, I think we've kind of made it clear that there are some people out there, uh communists, Pinko's who hate the Seven Countries study, can't stand it, and they have a lot of very valid points. Yeah.

I think one of the biggest criticisms is that it was a very correlative relationship and not a causal relationship. Yes, I mean that's kind of the biggest one. That and the fact that it's a study. It's a it's called an ecological study, which is uh, it's a study that at the time it was you know who was this, Dr Henry Blackburn, He was one of the original officers, said it was state of the art for the time. But he's like an ecologic study, and and correlation is

pretty weak. Uh. If you're talking about trying to find a causal uh, I guess a causal inference. Yeah, Because the thing is is you're taking all of these people from all around the world and you're examining them to see you're trying to find out what's the underlying cause of their common affliction heart attacks, or what accounts for

the absence of that affliction again heart attacks. But the problem is there's so many differences between somebody who is on a Mediterranean diet and lives in Crete and somebody who eats the loggers lunch in Finland. Besides just what they eat, there's so many other factors, so many different things involved that even if you can find a correlation like you like, like ansel Keys did between saturated fats and heart attacks. It doesn't mean that there's actually not

something else at play. And that's the biggest, the biggest criticism of the study that most people widely level against it. Yeah, and it's also an epidemiological study which follows a pop elation, uh to something you know not so good for you

over a length of time. But if you want to do that right, you can't, like you said, just they have to be the same age, the same sex, they have to do the same job, they have to be the same ethnicity, they have to be in the same place, and the only difference can be what they're eating, basically, right, And like, and I get what he was doing. He was trying to, you know, compare this type of diet to that type of diet in different places around the world.

But it was just that's that's flawed, that's a flawed that's an adventure. That's not a study, right exactly, that's that's a that's a travel eating show basically. But it was almost like he was trying to cram a dozen studies into one rather than break it out and appropriately into each different study, Like I'm going to study these people and use this as the control. His study lacked

a control group or control um variable. Yeah, right, and that's that's another big thing that's leveled against it as as a big flaw and makes you wonder, you know, Okay, is that correlation between saturated fat and heart disease even real? Yeah? I mean even when they tried to kind of drill down to an apples to apples, like in Finland, that was one place where they had. All. Right, at least we're all in the same country, so that's a good

place to start. Uh, let's see here the two finished cohorts. I still love saying that, Um, they consumed relatively similar, similar levels of saturated fat. So in the West they had and the not a huge difference. That's so much though. What three? Yeah, the railroad workers in nineteen fifties Minnesota, we're eating of their diet was saturated fat. Yeah, close

to a quarter of your diet was saturated fat. But the average number of heart attack deaths in the E was twice as high versus I think four death per one men versus two in the West. Yeah, so like that there's something else going on, Yeah, exactly, because their fat intake was similar but that you know that shouldn't there's what would account for a double the increase? So who knows? And they just the answer is they don't know.

We don't know. We don't know what would account for that. UM. And there's there's a lot of other people who've looked at this and said, Okay, there's still like a lot to be said of this data. There's a lot you can extract from it. UM. And some people have come along the way and said, hey, you know, like you

can you can run this stuff through statistical analysis. Apparently they did another that and they did when they originally looked at the data back in the fifties or sixties or seventies, and UM, they did it again for the twenty fifth anniversary of this study. UM. And one of the things that turned up was that sugar actually seemed to orally more strongly. Sugar intake in the diet seemed to correlate more strongly with heart disease, and even saturated

fats did it was almost roughly the same. But the thing is that sugar bump. When you factored in saturated fats, the sugar bump disappeared. And so they said, oh, well, it's just an anomaly. It's really the saturated fats. From what I could tell, if you had a saturated fat bump and you factored in sugar, that would disappear as well. So some people have come to think, like, if it's not sugar, maybe it's a combination of sugar and saturated fats.

That's actually the real problem. Not saturated fats on its own, but that it's not even necessarily sugar on its own, but this combination of the two. And that's led a lot of people, including one big critic of the Seven Countries study, to say, um, like it's processed food. That's what kills people. As processed food, this combination of bad fats and in sugar, that is really proving to be deadly. Yeah, and I think that's I think that's just so clear now that real food is far in a way better

for you than processed food. Like, you can't, you just can't refute that, No, you you can't. I mean even if you just base it, and you know, we always make fun of anecdotal data, but if you just base it on how your body feels after you eat certain kinds of food and then after you eat processed food, the problem is is we don't know how to feed um seven billion people on this planet without processing food. You know, where's Norman Borlog, Yeah, I don't know. He's dead,

dead in the cold ground. God doesn't care about anything now. So it hasn't been refuted, not necessarily, it hasn't been completely refuted to where they say, just throw this thing in the trash. Um. But I think the and hopefully we've gotten this point across is the damage that it did in the United States was we went all in on it and they said fat is is the killer and if you just avoid fat and eat these processed

low fat foods, you're gonna be just fine. Yes, So like that, and you can't really lay that at ansel Key's feet. That was the Department of Health and Human Services. They just took these findings and ran with them. They were like, well, we don't have any clinical data yet. They're like, I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I'm already at the printers getting these posters of the

food Pyramid Guide printed up UM. And that was definitely a huge problem that UM that created this larger problem because it led to this demization of all fats that food pyramid that showed the little bit at the top was like fats and sweets and stuff like that. Like it didn't say, you know, just this kind of fat or keep away from that kind of fact, it was fats. You Americans are too fat and dumb to understand that there's different kinds of fats, So just stay away from

fats all together. And that that's really what led to this, because there are plenty of fats that are actually good for your heart, like things like fats found in fish, fats found in olive oil, and then even even potentially yeah, avocados are about as good as it gets and then potentially chuck. They're like the kinds of saturated fat that people tend to associate, like with a steak, as being

bad for you. That's not necessarily true either. And again it seems to be like we talked about in that the peanut butter episode, those chemically processed or um industrially processed fats that change things that make peanut butter shelf stable and way more delicious, Like, those are the fats

that are actually really bad for you. Those are the ones that you should avoid or eat in moderation, and that that kind of nuances needed to actually have a healthy diet, because we learned from this experiment that you can't just cut fats out all together. We need a

lot of those fats to survive and be healthy. Yeah, and the evans as far as um because you would think, you know, this started in the nineteen eighties in America, so surely we all got a lot healthier, right because of the food pyramid and all the low fat food. We cut fat anyway you can slice it. We cut fat over two decades plus. People still, you know, think fat as the demon in a lot of circles, and

America is as sick as we've ever been. Type two diabetes has increased, Oh man, this is crazy, a hundred and sixty six percent from nineteen eighty to twelve. I don't know about twenty twelve till now. Um, I would guess more of this. Yeah, I doubt if it reverse course. Uh. We have beaten down heart disease some, but we've also stopped smoking a lot more, and we've got better emergency room care and better drugs like statins and stuff like that.

But it's still, you know, cardiovascular disease still kills people more than anything else in the US. Yeah, despite those advances in medical treatment, Um, it's still killing people more than anything else. And like even exercising hasn't helped. Like we exercise basically more than ever, but still a third of the country is obese. The third of the United States is obese, and all of this, Like, think about this, All of those things are happened while we cut fat

essentially out of our diets. So that just goes to show you, like that that didn't work. That's not going to help that we have to rethink this whole thing for sure. Yeah, and again we're not poopooing the Mediterranean diet. There's also the flip side of this stuff with keto um, the Atkins diet and paleo stuff like that. You know, I think we've tried to you know, we're not gonna tell anyone how to eat, and we're not dietitians, but we've tried to preach over the past couple of years.

You know, eat real foods, eat balanced diets, try and moderation, moderation and you know, calorie reasonable, calorie restriction and exercise. Yeah, and and I mean portion control. Two is it sucks when you first do it. It sucks to get used to, but once you get used to it, it's it's um, it's easy to maintain it. It's also easy to go back on when you're like, I'm gonna eat this whole box of Hamburger Helper tonight. I know, but how does

that make you feel? It makes you feel like garbage? Yeah, ultimately emotionally and even if it's hitting a reward center. And trust me, there so many reasons that people don't eat the right things and eat too much of the wrong things, emotional reasons and psychological reasons, and we're not all that stuff is valid. But um, even if it's hitting that reward center, it will probably also make you

feel awful emotionally and physically. It's true and like and also just to say like, we're definitely on our high horses right now, but we're no better than anybody else. Like we know, I'm still sixty pound. I mean, we had you mean and I split a whole roll of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls last Yeah, I know, tough to turn those down. Um, I can't even get this stuff. But it's just the it's the well, no chucking, you're right having it in your house is problem one. Not having

it in your house actually is helpful. It's crazy, it's weird, but it actually works, especially during a quarantine when you can't just pop up or you don't feel like you should pop up to the store and get that. Ben and Jerry's right exactly, like, yeah, yeah for sure, because then you're you just your past around your kitchenutil this time you go to bed, but you didn't need anything get that. You know what I tried the other night? What that that peanut butter and whipped cream? Oh? What

do you think? It's delicious? I'm sorry, I still haven't eating a peanut butter and mayo sandwich yet. No, it's really good. Emily made. She makes a good homemade whip cream. And it was Oh yeah, it was delish. Yeah, it's it's uh, it's hard to turn down. Now I want some, but you know, have a little bit of that one night, then I won't have any for a little while. Yeah.

And even I think what I was gonna say earlier is walking around with this information is good and helpful, and like you're never going to always adhere to it probably wouldn't be that fun of a life to always adhere to it, but they're just knowing it and kind of using it as like a general compass or guide that will make you healthier and we'll make you feel better. And maybe at some point along the line, if you already have this info, you're gonna get a kick in

the pants by something. Um, you're gonna hit like a period of growth, and that might be part of it. You might like loosen weight, you might get over a chronic disease, you might all sorts of things might happen because you know what to eat or how to start thinking about your food. It's just good to keep in your back pocket. At least it is. And uh, in the end it what doesn't matter anyway, because it all has to do with the health of your grandfather, right yeah.

Um hey. One other thing I want to say is

that critic Zoe dr Zoe Harcomb. She pointed out that actually the strongest correlation that the seven countries study turned up was um, the where the latitude of where the person lived sunshine, right yeah, And which is really strange until she points out and I'm not sure how much she was pointing this out to basically undermine the seven country studies, but it does make sense in a way too, is she's saying, well, um, we synthesize vitamin D uh in our skin from cholesterol in the skin when it's

exposed to sunshine. Um, and vitamin D has a lot of protective qualities for the immune system, so maybe that has to do with it. Yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out. Yeah, well that's it for nutrition. We'll probably never talk about it again. That's not true at all. And since I said that, it's time for listener maiw all right, I'm gonna call this, uh, Jackhammers. Why did you do that? I don't know why not people asked me, asked on Twitter, They're like, why why I thought you

guys hated this? And I said, yeah, I think Chuck's got some weird self loathing going on trolling and I just got caught up unfairly. Yeah. So we we have often and long made fun of our Jackhammers episode, and I re released it as a stuff you should have select just to be cheeky, and this is about that because Chris from Massachusetts really appreciated it. Hey, guys, just finished listening to stuff you should have select on Jackhammers, and I know you call it the most most boring,

worst one, but I actually enjoyed it. I'm a mechanical engineer. In college, took a class on vibrations, which led to conducting research on noise. On the noise that a jackhammer makes. This is we did that show for this guy. Uh. The noise or the ring that you hear when a jackhammer strikes is the resonant frequency of the jackhammer Moyl point after being struck by the inner pile driver. I

don't think we said any of that stuff. I was working with my professor on developing an inner damper to reduce that noise produced for the same reasons that you named in your podcast. Some of the concepts he developed we're quite amazing. You could take one of the moils he designed and drop it on a concrete floor and instead of alloud ringing you expect to hear, it would land with a soft thud. Unfortunately, the concepts never quite

panned out, but we call them moils right exactly. Uh, but your podcast reminded me of the many nights spent in the lab collecting piles of data and the painful ringing that you mentioned in the show. Thanks for the countless amazing episodes. My girlfriend and I have gotten many hours of entertainment from your show and truly appreciate all the great content and laughs. Chris from Massachusetts. Chris, thank you for getting in touch and thank you for your

attempted contribution to the world. Had it paid off, that really would have been something. But thank you for even trying. Um And if you want to be like Chris and let us know that you're an unsung hero, we want to hear about that. Uh. And if you know an unsung hero, let us know about that person too. You can send it in an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H