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Jan. 24, 2017 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:21:39

Joe Rogan Experience #904 - Gary Taubes

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gary taubes

01:52:15

joe rogan

27:00

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Speaker	Time	Text
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Three, two, one.
		Boom.
		And we're live.
		Hello, Gary.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for coming, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Appreciate it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		My pleasure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The case against sugar.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is, for me, this is a...
		I don't know how to put this any other way.
		I've...
		I've kind of consumed sugar most of my life until the last couple of years, and I slowly sort of tapered off, and about a year ago, maybe last February or so, I just pretty much cut it all out, except for the occasional dessert here or there.
		Infinitely better quality of life.
		I feel much better.
		I have more energy and then I started really getting into it and then I came across your work and What I want to know is first of all, how did you get involved in this and how much resistance have you faced?
		Okay, this being the sugar case this being the whole obesity diet nutrition We can get into all of it, but the Sugar one, to me, is absolutely fascinating when you go down.
		I mean, have you seen that Sugar movie?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, and I'm probably in it, I think.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think you are.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I think I'm one of the talking cereal boxes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay, right.
		I watched it with my kids.
		I made my kids watch it, and it's amazing when a six-year-old watches something like that, and then they go, why is Sugar in everything?
unidentified		Yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's funny, because my kids live with this all the time, right?
		We had just come back from spending the holidays with my grandmother, who pumps them up with sugar while we're there, and there's nothing I can do with it.
		And then we get back, and I'm making my boys dinner.
		They're 8 and 11, and my wife's out.
		And after the dinner, my 8-year-old says, are we getting dessert?
		And my 11-year-old goes, Nick, it's Dad, man.
		Are you crazy?
unidentified		Yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Wake up, son.
		Anyway, I got into this, you know, I Okay, I was a physics major in college.
		I was like hard science, and then I wasn't any good at it.
		I got a C- in quantum physics, and my advisor suggested I find another career.
		So I went into journalism, started doing science writing in the early 80s because it was the only work I could get.
		And then my first book, I went to live at CERN, the big particle accelerator lab outside of Geneva, and I was what we would call today embedded with the physicists.
		And I thought I was going to be following and making this great discovery, which is what the Nobel laureate who ran the experiment was predicting.
		And instead, I spent 10 months watching them figure out how they had screwed up, okay?
		And it was a learning experience in how to do science right, and I was obsessed with how hard it is to do good science.
		And I had a lot of the physicists in the world really didn't like this Nobel laureate, so they were happy to point out to me how he was screwing up, and how he had screwed up in the past, and how he had even screwed up the work that he won the Nobel Prize for.
		After I came back, I thought that was actually page six in the New York Post when my book came out.
		The headline was, Egghead Squabble Over Nobel Prize, and this Nobel laureate was quoted calling me an asshole in the newspaper, and I'm 29 years old, and I assume my career's over.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was he calling you an asshole over?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, because I ended up writing an expose about what a bad scientist he was and about the politics of science.
		You know, I thought I was...
		I went to Stockholm with this guy when he won the Nobel Prize.
		I mean, we got our tuxes fitted together.
		I was his guest at the Nobel dinner and the Nobel banquet and the party that follows, which is the most fun I've ever had in my life.
		Students of Stockholm throw a party for the laureates, and it's...
		Back then, it was crazy.
		Anyway, so he was...
		I'm justifiably pissed off that I just wrote what I saw instead of what a great man he thought he was.
		And I thought my career was going to be over, right?
		You're called an asshole in the papers when you're a 29-year-old journalist by a Nobel laureate.
		But instead, everybody I would interview in science would say, oh, you think that guy was bad?
		You should write about this guy.
		And I just started covering different aspects.
		And it turns out...
		You could get a long way in science if you're willing to sort of cut corners.
		It's not actually cheating.
		It's just you could discover a lot of stuff if you're not willing to do the rigorous, hard, critical, skeptical work to demonstrate that what you say you've discovered is wrong.
		Okay, so I wrote a book about something called Cold Fusion, which was a great scientific fiasco of the 20th century, except for the stuff I'm writing about now.
		And some of my friends in the physics community said, if you're interested in bad science, the book was called Bad Science, they said you should look at the stuff in public health because it's terrible.
		And so I moved into public health, beginning with this idea that electromagnetic fields from power lines will cause brain cancer or leukemia.
		And everything I had learned about how rigorous and meticulous and skeptical and thoughtful you had to do to get the right answer in physics, the public health people didn't think you had to do.
		They thought it was kind of a luxury because their science is harder.
		And it is kind of harder.
		You're dealing with, like, Chronic diseases that happen over decades, and people, and messy systems, and you can't measure anything.
		And everything I had learned was that if you don't do this stuff, you get the wrong answer.
		So by the late 90s, I had stumbled into nutrition research.
		And this is maybe a longer story than you wanted.
unidentified		No, go ahead.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I was living here in Venice, California.
		I was freelancing for the journal Science.
		I was what's called a contributing correspondent and I needed a paycheck to pay my rent.
		So I called my editor and I said, what do you got?
		What kind of story could I turn over quickly?
		And he said there was a diet study that was coming out in the New England Journal of Medicine in two weeks, and they wanted to do an article about it.
		And what I didn't know was that this diet study had been leaked to science in advance.
		And the person who had leaked it had given him a list of sources to talk to.
		And who leaks a diet study, right?
		And this was a DASH diet, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, which is the most...
		Today, U.S. News& World Report says it's the healthiest diet in the world, based on You know, like force studies that did not demonstrate anything.
		The way you do those stories as a journalist is you interview the principal investigator and you ask him who to talk to, and he gives you a couple names to talk to who can talk about the study even though it's published, and then you get three interviews, which is enough to justify a page in the magazine, and you get your paycheck.
		So I interviewed the PI, and then I interviewed one of the people on the list of documents that had been leaked to science.
		And that was a former president of the American Heart Association, and she told me she couldn't talk about the study or she'd lose her funding.
		And I said, come on, man, this isn't Lysenko-era Soviet Union.
		People don't lose their funding for talking to a journalist about a diet study.
		And she refused to talk to me.
		I said, let's go off the record, complete confidentiality.
		If I'm going to miss the story, That you're not telling me that's bad.
		Couldn't get her to talk.
		And then I call one of the people that the PI told me to talk to.
		And he sounded exactly like Walter Matthau on the other side of the telephone.
		It was very weird.
		And Walter starts yelling at me that there's no controversy over salt and high blood pressure.
		And I'm going, but Walter, I'm not calling about salt and high blood pressure.
		I'm calling about this DASH diet coming out.
		And he keeps going on.
		There's no controversy.
		There's no evidence that salt doesn't cause high blood pressure.
		So I get off the phone.
		I call up my editor.
		I say, I'm going to finish the story.
		But I had this former AHA president say she couldn't talk to me and she'd lose her funding.
		And then I had Walter Matthau yelling at me that there's no controversy over salt and high blood pressure.
		There must be a controversy over whether salt causes high blood pressure, right?
		So I'm going to turn this story in, pay my rent, and then I spent the next nine months doing an investigation for science.
		I interviewed, I think, 85 sources for one magazine article.
		Got paid for like six weeks.
		Pissed off my fiancee at the time because she thought if she's going to date someone, they should have a better sort of, you know, work efficiency ratio.
		The conclusion was that the only way you would believe that salt causes high blood pressure from the studies that had been done to that point was if God told you so personally.
		So you could ignore all the evidence and all the randomized controlled trials, even the observational evidence, But that's what everyone had done.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, how did this start?
		Because I had heard that before as well.
		Everybody's heard that before.
		And I had read a long time ago that that was bullshit.
		And that salt is actually an essential mineral, and it's important for your body, and it doesn't cause high blood pressure, and there's a host of other factors that should be considered.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So it was, yeah, that's the thing.
		It was kind of intuitively, it was an interesting idea.
		It made biological sense.
		When you consume salt, you also have to take in water.
		That's why they feed you pretzels and, you know, salty peanuts at bars because you want to take in liquids so that you can maintain the same sodium concentration in your blood because you're...
		The cells, like the chemical reactions that drive your cells, are dependent on the sodium ratio in the cells.
		So if you take in more salt, you're going to drink more fluid, and you're going to have more fluid in your circulation.
		That's going to increase your blood pressure.
		And it does happen in a very short term.
		But the question is, is this a chronic cause of high blood pressure and hypertension?
		And once the researchers decided it was, and these guys are terrible scientists.
		I mean, I hate to say this, but in my first book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, in the epilogue, I point out, I say, you know, I never use the word scientist to describe any of these people doing research, except for a few specific examples, because they don't really understand what science is and how to do it.
		And they weren't, to their defense, they just were never taught how to be scientists.
		They were like physicians and scientists.
		Nutritionists who, you know, had a sloppy scientific training and they thought it was easy and you get a hypothesis and you confirm the hypothesis.
		And when they didn't confirm it, they thought it must be true anyway.
		And then you find the data when people talk about cherry picking.
		That means you find the data that does sort of confirm and you ignore the rest.
		So, anyway, that was it.
		I wrote this article.
		It was called The Political Science of Salt.
		You know, won some awards.
		And while I was doing that, this Walter Matthau character took credit not just for getting Americans to eat less salt, putting us on this low-salt diet, he took credit for getting us on the low-fat diet that we were all eating in the 90s.
		And I got off the phone with them, called my editor of science, and I said, when I'm done writing about salt, I'm going to write about fat.
		I have no idea what the story is, but this guy's clearly one of the five worst scientists I've ever interviewed in my life.
		And everything I learned in my physics period was that bad scientists never get the right answer.
		So I spent a year doing an investigation for the journal Science on dietary fat.
		That paid for about two months.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Seems to be a trend here.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was bad.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, it's good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's good.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You've got to do that to get the right answer.
		And that's why so much journalism is so shallow, is because if you're going to put in the time you get paid for, all you can do is a shallow job.
		Nobody can afford to do that.
		I actually had corporate jobs that allowed me...
		You know, like writing speeches and press releases for IBM that, you know, I really hated doing, but that paid well.
		Like, that was my corporate work, so I could do the pro bono stuff I cared about.
		Anyway, that story was the same, unless God told you personally.
		So, I end up doing this cover story for the New York Times Magazine called What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie, which came out July 2002. It was probably...
		One of the top five most controversial articles they ever ran.
		And the idea was, I wanted to see what caused the obesity epidemic.
		That was what I pitched to the editor.
		But we had this idea that you get fat from eating dietary fat.
		That was actually the primary logic behind putting the country on low-fat diets.
		They thought it might help heart disease, but they hadn't been able to show it in trials.
		But they just assumed if we ate less fat, we'd lose weight, because fat's denser calories.
		And there was always this competing hypothesis that had been buried and swept aside and ignored and, you know, inhibited, which was that the problem is the carbohydrates, particularly sugar and refined grains.
		And so when I got this cover story, I got a big book advance.
		Finally, I could afford to do the book I wanted.
		It paid for four years of my life.
		The book took five.
		Again...
		Same financial issues, but...
		And I love it, because people accused me of, like, I was just going to write anything I could find for a paycheck, and I finally got a big paycheck, and so now...
		One of the ideas there that emerged out of my research...
		So even when I wrote the 2002 piece, I thought that we got fat because we ate too much.
		You know, there's a line in that article, obesity, of course, is caused by consuming too many calories, more calories than we consume.
unidentified		So...
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		By the time I was done with this book, I thought that was one of the most inane scientific ideas that had ever come along.
		I mean, it's almost incomprehensible to me.
		Even though I know exactly the history of the idea and where it came from and why we believed it, it's just crazy naive.
		So that's the one that I get the feedback on.
		Because I'm out there saying, so 99% of obesity researchers and nutritionists and all our public health policy is based fundamentally on this concept that we get fat because we eat too much or we're too sedentary.
		And what I was saying was not only is that naive and meaningless, it's a description, it's not an explanation, and we could go into that.
		Clearly obesity is a hormonal metabolic defect, and in fact the best scientists of the world prior to World War II, the best, far and away the best medical science was done in Germany and Austria, in Europe.
		Like the U.S. was a backwater of medical science until post-war.
		It was a backwater of virtually all science.
		And these guys had concluded that obesity had to be a metabolic hormonal defect.
		But the American doctors were saying, oh man, saying obesity is hormonal is an excuse for fat people to not eat in moderation and run marathons like a saline people do.
		And what I did is I brought that hypothesis sort of—it vanished with the war, literally evaporated with the war.
		The German-Austrian medical community evaporated.
		We wanted nothing to do with these researchers.
		The Ivy League universities had policies in place to keep from being overrun by Jewish academicians from Europe.
		So in physics, we embraced them because we had bombs to build and a Cold War to fight.
		But in medicine and public health, we wanted nothing to do with them.
		So this hypothesis evaporates.
		And post-war, you get this creation of basically obesity research created de novo by these young doctors who have no scientific training, who are lean, who hate the Germans.
		and so they're not going to quote the German literature, even if they read it.
		And nutritionists who do animal research and never even study obese people, and you get this idea that it's a calorie overconsumption problem.
		By the 1960s, the field is dominated by psychologists and psychiatrists who are studying ways to get obese people to just stop eating so damn much.
		They didn't try to make them exercise back then.
		That was a kind of torture they would push later.
		So this was the thing I get feedback on.
		This is where I'm saying, you know, the entire medical, nutritional, obesity, diabetes dogma is based on just a bad idea.
		You know, a failed paradigm.
		And, you know, who's going to accept that coming from a journalist?
		So the answer is either, you know, I'm an idiot or I'm self-interested and I'm only making this up to get a paycheck or, you know, I'm just wrong.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you see what's going on now where it's pretty much common knowledge that sugar is terrible for you and that added sugar is a huge factor in diabetes and hypertension and heart disease and obesity and it's pretty much across the board now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you feel vindicated?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Here's the thing.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Even though there are public health organizations that are now saying, you know, got to cut back on the sugar and putting limits on sugar consumption, the logic is still that it's just empty calories.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The logic by who, though?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		The public health authorities, the researchers...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why do they lag so far behind?
		Because this is fascinating to me because I understand that there must be a guy like you who does what's kind of ridiculous and spends nine months on six weeks worth of pay and does that kind of shit because otherwise once an idea is clearly established and gets repeated like salt causes hypertension I mean, goddammit, if you ask the average person on the street, hey, does salt cause high blood pressure?
		Oh, yeah.
		They just say it because it's like sort of this peripheral idea.
		They hear it in the distance.
		They don't research it.
		They don't really look into it very far other than maybe they read something somewhere at one point in time and then they just decide it's dogma.
unidentified		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they repeat it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's incredibly difficult once an idea like that gets established in our society to eradicate it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I mean, this is the thing.
		It's sort of when you live in a community, in an institution where everybody believes exactly what you do.
		And so the people you respect, I mean, think about it.
		The people you respect are the people who think like you do, who agree with you on the important points because you think, oh, they're smart.
		They get it just like I get it.
		So institutions sort of...
		Collect groupthink.
		It's just a natural emergent phenomenon from institutions.
		And now, if you look at the data, you're somebody like me and you come along and you say, I don't really buy this idea.
		It's just empty calories.
		So I'm going to look at the data and see what it says.
		And now you try to convince You're friends that they're wrong, and now you're the heretic, and you're the one who's saying, and you know, you're getting in arguments with people, and they make people uncomfortable because you're trying to get them to change their minds about something they all believe.
		And they've all been, you know, they're successful, they're promoted, they're leaders in their field because they believed this, and now you're telling them it's that.
		And people do it.
		But the this just keeps going and going and going, and even to the point...
		I mean, just when my sugar book came out, there's a book called The Secret Life of Fat, written by a PhD, and it's...
		It's as though everything I've done in the past 15 years just was never done.
		Like somehow she managed to do an entire book on dietary fat where if anyone said to her, talk to Taubes, even if he's wrong, his ideas are worth hearing because they're provocative and interesting.
		I'm not so sure he's wrong.
		She decided not to do it.
		So it's sort of...
		Do you have the...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		To what was her conclusion?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Effectively, it all comes back effectively to energy balance.
		You could talk about overconsumption.
		This is what dogmas do.
		They reproduce themselves.
		They continue to grow.
		They're like tumors for that fact.
		They basically fight off all challenges.
		They absorb around them.
		You know, so somebody starts saying it's something else.
		Eventually, ideally, everything changes.
		So we're definitely winning the sugar battle.
		So in sugar, even though the official word is it's empty calories, we just have to consume less because they have this dogma that obesity is caused by consuming too many calories.
		So the way that a food influences your body mass is through its caloric content or how much of those calories you digest and absorb because if it's got fiber, you'll excrete some.
		And that's the wisdom.
		If a calorie is a calorie, then the worst you could say about sugar is that it's empty calories.
		It's got no vitamins and minerals, micronutrients attached, and so we consume too much of it.
		People say it's the low-hanging fruit.
		So it's not that it's uniquely toxic, because if it's uniquely toxic, if it actually causes disease, and we could talk about clearly what I'm saying it causes, Then a calorie isn't a calorie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you started doing this research and you started writing this book, The Case Against Sugar, when this was all unfolding in front of you, were you shocked?
		I mean, is this something that you were saying, how am I, a guy who got a C plus and a C minus, sorry.
		I'm trying to pump you up.
unidentified		I'm trying to pump you up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, how am I the guy who's figuring this out?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How is this?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so I understood why, but it is weird, because again, you know, sometimes I was in Washington on my book tour, and I had dinner with the former chief science medical officer of the American Diabetes Association.
		It's a very, you know, influential, high-ranking, successful man.
		He's completely convinced that I'm wrong.
		And I said, but you believe this thing that obesity is caused by eating too much, and you have no idea why you believe it.
		So I can tell you exactly the history of that belief.
		Just like if we were talking about relativity, we could go back to Einstein, and you would know about Einstein.
		And even if we were talking quantum physics, we'd go back to Heisenberg and Schrodinger and, you know, Bohr, and you'd know about them.
		But this belief that you're fundamentally arguing is right, you don't understand where it comes from, and I can tell you that.
		And I'm going to give you the documents.
		I'm going to give you the papers where it out-competes the hormonal metabolic idea.
		And I'm going to give you the competing hypothesis that you didn't even know existed until you and I talked.
		You started reading my stuff.
		And it has zero influence on how this guy thinks.
		He's so convinced he's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's terrifying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's terrifying when someone has that kind of influence over the American people.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, and this is the thing.
		You want somebody to at least say...
		Jesus, you know, I never thought of that.
		Let me, at least have, let me read these and get back to you, is what you want him to do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The problem, of course, is that if he agrees to this, and then he agrees that you're correct, everything that he's been saying up until now has been bullshit, and he's been misleading people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He has to apologize, he has to...
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, then once you do that, you don't, you lose your credit.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Like, ideally, in science, you're, you know, the best scientists are the ones who say, you know, I was just wrong.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And then, but...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How rare are they?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Rare.
		Actually, when I was growing up, the estimate was 5% of the scientific community actually does good science, and the other 95% are sort of the chaff out of which you've got to get the wheat.
		Yeah, I mean, it's a problem.
		I used to joke, imagine the American Heart Association writing the press release to say, like, we were wrong about putting everybody on a low-fat diet, and it was a mistake, and we're sorry, and we apologize, and maybe we killed some of your relatives prematurely, maybe the reason you're fat and diabetic now is because of our advice, but...
		We got it right now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They won't do it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You can't do it.
		That's fucking crazy.
		Public health, it's just they can't do it.
		It's an untenable, I mean, I'll say the same thing.
		If I'm wrong in my book, I used to have this argument with my co-founder of this nutrition science initiative, this not-for-profit, and I'd say, you know what I'm saying?
		If I'm wrong in the major arguments in this book, I mean, clearly I'm going to be wrong in some of the minor ones and, you know, Chip away here and their bad scholarship that I should have triple checked.
		But if I'm wrong in the major arguments, I need a new line of work because I can't trust my judgment.
		And everything I do as an investigative journalist is dependent on me being able to trust my judgment.
		And if I'm wrong about this, like if I'm wrong about energy balance, I got to go sell shoes.
		You know, there's no way around it.
		But this is I lost track.
		What were we saying?
		What was the question?
		I talked too much.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was asking you, first of all, what is it like to have this understanding that all of what's being told to the American people is wrong, and then you having this conversation with this guy.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		How do I do it?
		How do I get in this?
		So, let me tell you why.
		I was able to do it.
		And again, I was the first person who ever did it.
		It's just that simple.
		No one had ever done before what I'd done.
		It was the timing.
		First of all, I'm an obsessive researcher.
		As you know, the 145 people I interviewed for the fat story for one magazine article, I just keep asking questions and probing and probing until every...
		I also don't like writing, so it's a great research.
		It's a procrastination tool.
		But when I started this in 2002 and I got the money to do the book, the internet had come along.
		And the internet made it possible to find every single primary source going back to the 19th century.
		Like now you can almost download them.
		But back then I had researchers, young students in Boston, New York, LA, whose only job was they'd get an email from me with 50 citations.
		And then they'd go to the library and have to find all 50 and Xerox them and then ship them back to me.
		Sometimes entire books from like You know, a 1917 diabetes textbook that I couldn't find or I couldn't buy.
		And used bookstores had put their catalogs online.
		So you could find all the books and, you know, some 1947 obesity conference.
		The library that has it doesn't see any purpose for that anymore, so they basically give it to the local bookstore and you can buy it for seven bucks.
		So I was able to recreate the history of obesity research from conference proceedings Where the only people doing research in the field would show up and they would present their findings and then they would do a proceedings of the findings and I could recreate all the thinking in the field and nobody had ever bothered to do it before.
		And it's kind of, if they were good scientists they would have.
		Because they would have been obsessed with where their beliefs came from, and they would have been questioning them, and one of the things they would have done is gone back to do all this to see if some assumption they believe is true is really based on fact.
		But again, they didn't really know what science was.
		They weren't all that curious, is one way to put it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so terrifying.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so terrifying when you think of what people, most people are busy.
		They work all day.
		They have families.
		They have jobs.
		They have obligations.
		They don't have the time to do the research that you did about diet and come to these shocking conclusions themselves.
		It's not going to happen.
		They rely on the people like this guy from the Diabetes Association that's supposed to be telling you the truth and looking at the truth.
		And he doesn't want to do it because it makes him look like an asshole.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, and you also rely on, I mean, so they read the review articles.
		And the reviewers, the editors of the journals want to get influential review articles.
		So they ask influential people in the field to do the review articles.
		And those people are very busy, but they're going to do it.
		And they're going to basically, they became influential by believing the conventional wisdom and propagating the conventional wisdom.
		When you have committees do investigations, so every five years you get the dietary, the USDA puts together a committee to reassess the dietary guidelines that they give out.
		So the way that committees are formed, the USDA picks a very influential person, the most influential they get to be the head of the committee, and that's somebody who's believed that conventional wisdom has propagated their whole life.
		That's how they became influential.
		And that person picks people they respect To be on the committee, and of course the people they respect are the people who believe what they believe, because they're the ones who seem smart.
		They're not the heretics, they're the believers.
		So you end up with a, you start out just with a natural quest.
		We want to know if the guidelines are correct.
		And through this completely natural human process, you end up staffing the guide, creating a committee that's going to recapitulate the Convention of Wisdom.
		Almost a hundred percent.
		And it's just the way things happen.
		You need people like me to come across every once in a while, assuming I'm right.
		It's better when the people like me are right than when they're wrong, but you're going to get both types.
		And we've got to come along.
		We have to have the persistence, you know, to basically just keep doing what we do.
		I was lucky that I also had this podium.
		The New York Times Magazine editors trusted me and liked my work.
		The science editors trusted me and thought I was really good so I could get in influential publications.
		I didn't have to You know, publish, do a blog, and try to win people over.
		But from their perspective, I mean, it's just, what do you do with someone like me?
		And I argue, look, I've done this research.
		You haven't.
		I mean, another way to think about it, I once said, look, you know, we've got these obesity and diabetes epidemics worldwide.
		I mean, it should be horrifying to people, okay?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And fairly recent, in terms of human history.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		In terms of human history.
		So, again, one of the things I did in the case against sugar is I went back To find the very beginnings of the epidemic in the United States.
		Because if you've got an epidemic, like if we had a Zika epidemic, Ebola, what do you do?
		You don't try to figure out what's causing Ebola by looking at the patients who are getting off the airplane in Houston or showing up in the hospital in New Jersey.
		You go back to Africa where it's densest and where it started and you could follow it to whatever animal got bit by whatever insect in whatever cave.
		And that's a natural process of understanding an epidemic.
		So you go back here, and you go back to the 19th century, and there are hospitals in the United States that, you know, date to pre-1850 or 1864 in the case of Philadelphia Hospital in Pennsylvania, and that their records, anyway.
		And you can ask the archivists to go back.
		They still have their case records from the 19th century.
		And you can have the archivist pull up the case records and they will tell you how many cases of diabetes were diagnosed in the hospitals.
		Any year for me.
		Like in Mass General Hospital in Boston, the records start in 1824. Today, one in 11 Americans are diabetic, okay?
		And there are some populations, like Native American populations, where one in two adults are diabetic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		In Boston, in Mass General Hospital, the leading hospital in the country, in Massachusetts in the 19th century, there were year after year after year where they had zero cases of diabetes.
		And this is a terrible disease without insulin.
		It's not a pleasure with it, but before insulin was discovered, I mean, you go blind, kidney failure, gangrene, amputation.
		It's not a difficult diagnosis.
		Now, there are other reasons to explain the absence.
		I mean, You know, the only people who showed up in hospitals back in the 19th century were poor people, and poor people ate a lot less sugar than rich people.
		And rich people got their own private doctors, so they might not have shown up in the medical records.
		So you've got to always be skeptical of what you think you're learning, because that's what science is.
		But, you know, the point I'm making is I went through the effort to do this one way or the other.
		And that gives me a certain advantage that they don't have.
		And if they're good scientists, regardless of what they believe, they'll say to themselves, geez, you know, I never thought of this.
		I never did that.
		I could think of Ray's Taubes as wrong, but maybe I should look into it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So where did it all start?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So in the U.S. it starts again in the second half of the 18th, 19th century.
		And it starts coincidental with an explosion in sugar consumption, not just in how much sugar we're consuming, but who's consuming it, which is what's fascinating and scary.
		Go back, say, 200 years, 1810, 1815, we were probably eating about five pounds of sugar per capita.
		In the United States.
		So that's about...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Five pounds over a period of...
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Of a year.
		Per person per year.
		So that's the equivalent of about the sugar, one Coca-Cola, 12-ounce Coke's worth of sugar every six days.
		And it was the head of the head.
		That's hilarious.
		It's frightening because it's expensive back then.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what would they add it to back then?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Um...
		You know, they would bake it.
		Dessert courses hadn't really been invented yet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No.
		I mean, again, the wealthy would have desserts.
		And the wealthy were the ones who would get diabetes and obesity and gout back then.
		So sugar has this curve where it goes from being very rare and just sort of the luxury of royalty.
		To, you know, the wealthy using it and then finally with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and late 18th century and then refining processes are improved and sugar starts to get cheaper and then during the Napoleonic Wars like 1812 when France is cut off from their sugar supply by the English blockades.
		Napoleon says, look, we've got to figure out how to create our own sugar.
		And this clever Frenchman figures out how to get sugar from sugar beets.
		And the beet sugar industry takes off around 1850. And then with the beet sugar industry, you can grow sugar in the northern hemisphere in the temperate climates.
		And you can also grow sugar cane only in tropical climates.
		So now sugar prices start to plummet.
		Meanwhile, you think about all the ways we consume sugar today, so candy, soft drinks, ice cream, chocolate, low-fat milk, low-fat yogurt, none of that existed until 1840. So 1840, you see the start of the candy industry, the start of the chocolate industry, the Lindt brothers in Switzerland figure out how to make chocolate bars.
		You can still buy Lindt chocolate today, and it's pretty good actually.
		Ice cream industry starts in the 1840s.
		Soft drinks start in the 1870s with Dr. Pepper, then Coca-Cola, then PepsiCo.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Pepper was first?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Dr. Pepper was first.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How weird.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's like an afterthought.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, I know.
		Well, I didn't have the marketing brilliance of the Coca-Cola people.
		So sugar starts becoming like women are targeted, because it's now cheap enough.
		So the men get their alcohol and their cigarettes, and the women get sugar, and the kids get sugar.
		So the first time in history suddenly we have all these industries created to basically target children as customers.
		If you think about it, nobody's drinking cold drinks at home.
		No refrigeration.
		No refrigeration until the 1930s.
		And no vending machines until the 1930s.
		I love this because I'm a science guy, but in doing my books, you have to become a historian, and you just don't think about this stuff.
		So with the vending machines and the refrigerators, suddenly Coca-Cola and PepsiCo and these start targeting, you know, you start getting six packs and cartons, cases of sodas and big bottles of soda that you could take home, put in your refrigerator and drink all day long.
		Couldn't do it before that.
		Couldn't get ice cubes easily before that.
		You couldn't even, you know, cool it down in the summer.
		Fruit juices come in in the 1930s.
		California orange growers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a big one, right?
		Because that's one that people think is totally innocuous and actually healthy.
		Yeah, because it's got all that vitamin C. Just explain to people right now that if you're drinking a big-ass glass of orange juice, you might as well be drinking a Pepsi.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Effectively.
		That's what I believe.
		Those are the two.
		You've got these competing nutritional paradigms.
		One says if it's got vitamins and minerals in it, it's healthy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a Pepsi with vitamins and minerals.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It's a Pepsi with vitamins and minerals.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So take a vitamin pill and then drink a Pepsi and it's the same goddamn thing.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Effectively, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so crazy.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Effectively, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We always thought, like, it's fresh squeezed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Look, it's got pulp in it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is when...
		So the California orange growers formed Sunkist.
		That was a consortium of California.
		They had all these extra oranges they couldn't sell.
		You know, the oranges all come along in one season, so back then with that refrigeration and cars so you could keep fruits kind of alive for like a year by freezing them, you know, you had all these extra oranges you couldn't sell, so they said, let's get people to turn into orange juice.
		And we'll advertise that the vitamin C is good for them.
		The new nutrition of the 1920s and 1930s was all about vitamin deficiency diseases.
		And so scurvy is caused by the absence of vitamin C and berry buried by vitamin B. And that was the big news.
		So the orange growers started pushing orange juice on us because of its vitamin C content.
		So now we're drinking fruit juices for breakfast every day.
		And then post-World War II, concentrates are created.
		That was actually a defense, you know, World War II program to try and figure out how to create foods that soldiers could take into battle and get their vitamins from it.
		So that comes along.
		And then the last one is sugary cereals.
		So the cereal industry was created by Post and Kellogg, who were health nuts.
		They ran sanatoriums in Minnesota, right?
		And they knew their health nutritionists didn't want to put sugar in anything.
		They had some huge fights over this.
		But 1948 Post releases sugar crisps, and it's, you know, 30% sugar by calories or something.
		It's the first sugar-coated cereal.
		And for the next decade, you can watch the cereal industries have these internal battles where the marketing people are saying, we need a sugar sweetened cereal.
		We've got to compete.
		We're going to be run out of the business.
		And the health people are saying, no, no, sugar is bad for you.
		And in every case, the marketers won.
		By the 1960s, not only do you have like all these, some of these cereals were 50% sugar by calories, still are.
		But you've got all these iconic TV shows that were created just to sell sugar.
		I mean, Rocky and Bowling, which was my favorite.
		This was heartbreaking.
		I mean, those guys were created to sell cereal to us.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The comic?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		The comic.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		The TV show, Rocky and Bowling.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was created?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		That was created as a vehicle to market.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I forget which cereal it was, which company, but all of these things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the cartoon was an afterthought?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		The cartoon was a method.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		To sell, so the cereal industry would hire, you know, these brilliant public relations men who would create these characters and then get, you know, Hollywood to create animated TV shows with these characters and then they would always sell the same sugar sweetened cereals.
unidentified		Wow!
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And so now we're just, you know, think what happened to kids.
		Okay, so the obese and diabetic people in the world are the ones who started, we all started as children, right?
		You know, 1805, 1810, up to 1850, maybe they see sugar once a week.
		You know, they steal into the country store, and when Uncle Ed is turned the wrong way, they, like, stick their hand in the sugar barrel and lick their fingers and run out.
		By 1960, it's like orange juice, cereal, you know, sugary cereal, sugar on the sugary cereal for breakfast, you know, a Coke for a snack, a candy bar, the same kind of foods for lunch.
		I mean, I bet most Americans didn't go more than three hours without a sugar dose, whereas 150 years earlier, they'd have gone a week between doses.
		And as this happens, you see these explosions in obesity and diabetes that, you know, they're slow to build.
		And I think that can be explained, too, by the fact that mothers pass this on to their kids when the kids are in the womb.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there a difference, how much of a difference is there, if any, between dietary diabetes or diabetes that's directly attributed to diet and genetic?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, first of all, there are different types of diabetes.
		Type 1 diabetes, type 2. Yeah, type 1 is the acute form that hits mostly in childhood.
		It has a strong genetic component.
		It's an autoimmune disease, but that doesn't mean it's not fundamentally caused by sugar.
		And by that, I mean if we never got around to eating sugar, we wouldn't have type 1 diabetes.
unidentified		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So people that think that type 1 diabetes, which is something that people I know have, and, well, it's just genetic, it's just something you were born with, that's not necessarily true?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, they could be born with it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it could be, and it could be genetic, but it still has to be triggered, could be triggered by something in the environment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if these people with type 1 diabetes didn't have a poor diet, didn't consume sugar, didn't eat the average American diet, it probably would never manifest itself?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		If they're mothers, maybe even more importantly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In the womb?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		In the womb, yeah.
		Jesus Christ.
		Third to last chapter of my book.
		Two of the last three chapters before the epilogue are called the If-Then Problems.
		So let me lay out what I'm proposing here.
		The case against sugar.
		So there's a crime.
		Think of it as we're in a courtroom.
		And there's a crime that's committed.
		And the crime is epidemics of obesity and diabetes that happen whenever a population transitions from their traditional diet to a Western diet and lifestyle.
		So it doesn't matter what the population is.
		They could be the Inuit living on caribou and seal meat.
		They could be Maasai living on the blood, milk, Meat from the cattle they herd, they could be agrarian populations, they could be South Pacific Islanders living on coconuts and, you know, pigs.
		Aborigines in Australia, Middle Eastern populations, African populations, European populations, it does not matter.
		Eventually, they transition.
		You see these epidemics of obese and diabetes.
		That's the crime.
		So the argument I'm making is that sugar is always at the scene of the crime on a population-wide level.
		So there's a lot of things that happen when you transition to Western diets.
		For instance, a lot of populations eat more meat.
		But some populations, like the Inuit, they don't eat more meat, because they're the Native Americans of the Plains Indians.
		They don't eat more meat, because they were living on meat to begin with.
		But they also get obesity and diabetes epidemic.
		So I'm willing to rule out meat on that level.
		And other people did as well.
		You know, they become more sedentary when you westernize.
		You get more labor-saving devices.
		You drive places instead of walking places.
		So maybe it's sedentary behavior.
		But you can find populations that are incredibly physically active.
		Cane cut it.
		In the Natar region of South Africa, in the 18th century, they used to import Indians from India as indentured laborers, effectively slavery, but they call them indentured laborers to work in the sugar plantations.
		And the cane cutters in the sugar plantations, that's one of the most energy intense jobs you can imagine.
		One estimate was they burn 9,000 calories a day.
		And yet these Natal Indians had among the highest rates of diabetes ever seen.
		Ancestors, the population from which they were drawn in India had virtually no diabetes, and the primary difference in their diet was the sugar consumption.
		So you could play this game where you isolate out populations, and what I found is there's no population where you get an obesity and diabetes epidemic where sugar, recent increases in sugar consumption haven't occurred.
		And by recent, it could be 20 years ago, it could be 50 years ago.
		So it's always at the scene of the crime.
		Type 2 diabetes, the common form that associates with excess weight, is fundamentally a disorder of what's called insulin resistance.
		So type 1, your pancreas doesn't secrete enough insulin.
		Type 2, your body is resistant to the insulin that your pancreas secretes.
		So you got to pump, you got to secrete more and more to keep your blood sugar under control and the idea is eventually your pancreas gets exhausted and it can't do it anymore and then you have a deficit of insulin and it looks like the results are pretty much similar to type 1. Insulin resistance is also very closely associated to obesity, and we could discuss that as well.
		You could look at these epidemics, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, basically as manifestations of insulin resistance happening all around the world.
		In different ways, in different people, but they're all related to insulin resistance and insulin.
		And then you ask yourself, what causes insulin resistance?
		So the best researchers in the world who study insulin resistance, the leading hypothesis is that it starts in the liver.
		And it starts in the liver with the conversion, with the accumulation of fats in liver cells.
		And in fact, we also have an epidemic of what's called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in this country right now.
		It used to be 20, 30 years ago, if you got fatty liver disease and you saw your doctor and you told them you didn't drink, they would just assume you're lying.
		Because clearly alcoholics got fatty liver disease, but suddenly people started showing up who swore they didn't drink, and then kids started showing up with fatty liver disease who clearly didn't drink alcohol.
		So we got this concept, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
		It's basically indistinguishable from the alcoholic kind.
		And the CDC estimates 40 million Americans have this.
		And if it progresses, it could progress to what's called NASH, which is non-alcoholic stereohepatitis, and eventually to the need for liver transplant.
		So, sugar.
		What are we talking about when we're talking about sugar?
		So sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar are technically sucrose.
		It's a molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose.
		Fructose makes it sweet.
		High fructose corn syrup is 45% glucose, 55% fructose.
		Same chemical constituents.
		They're not bonded together.
		I don't think that makes a damn bit of difference.
	Some people do.
	The fructose is metabolized in your liver.
	So the glucose gets into your bloodstream just like any other glucose from any other carbohydrate.
	The fructose goes to your liver.
	And if your liver gets it in a high dose, like say from an apple juice or something...
	It has trouble dealing with that much fructose.
	It never evolved to see a glass of apple juice or a can of Coke's worth of fructose be delivered over the course of 5, 10 minutes, probably even 30 minutes, so it converts it into fat.
	So we have a condition, insulin resistant, that's epidemic worldwide, that's The leading research in the country, I think, is caused by the accumulation of fat in liver cells.
	And we've got a substance, sugar, that's been exploded in use worldwide in which half of it is metabolized in the liver and is converted into fat in liver cells.
	So it's like it's at the scene of the crime in populations and it's at the scene of the crime in The body.
	And it's got a mechanism.
	It's got the gun.
	Necessary.
	You know, you can match the bullets almost, but we don't have a smoking gun.
	That's where the research falls short.
	And so this is the case I'm making.
	And then if sugar causes insulin resistance, there are all kinds of downstream effects, including what mothers will do to their children if they are insulin resistant and have high blood sugar when they're pregnant.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And that's why my argument is, you know, it's almost too much.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It would be easier if I just said it's empty calories because, you know...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What pushback against your book and against your research have you experienced?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, there are people who just object to my existence.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Have you debated these people?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I'm in the process of debating two of them online now.
		Cato Unbound, it's called.
		I wouldn't have, by the way, done this if...
		I'm not a fan of debates in science because I don't think they settle things.
		I'm a fan of people getting together and saying, look, you believe this, I believe this, what experiment can we do to find out who's right, not who's the better rhetorician.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know what you're saying.
		Who's more charismatic?
		Who can get the point across more?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		The obesity society and the nutrition societies once a year, they'll have their annual conference.
		They'll have a debate over this.
		Everybody, oh yeah, I thought you did better.
		But nobody walks out of the debate saying, what experiment can we do to settle this?
		And I think it's, you know, again, we have these epidemics.
		They're tragic.
		The cost of obesity and diabetes in the U.S., direct cost to the medical system is estimated as a billion dollars a year.
		I mean, excuse me, a billion dollars a day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Like, direct cost to the...
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Healthcare system.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		$365 billion a year just because of obesity.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And diabetes.
unidentified		Jesus Christ.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And if you think about it, so that's $365 billion.
		It is a direct cost.
		It's a burden on the healthcare system, but it's tremendous for the pharmaceutical industry, right?
		And the physicians and the hospitals that are getting that money.
		So they don't have quite as much motivation as might to stem this tide.
		Because they're profiting from it tremendously.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, also, are they even aware of the causes of it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if your work is so controversial, and there's so many people out there that are disputing it, or disputing this link between sugar and all these horrible diseases, and they're calling it empty calories, is this even something that, in the medical community, where they spend a ridiculously short amount of time in school learning about nutrition?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank God for that, because if they learned more, they would learn the wrong thing, right?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Then they'd be even more dogmatic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good point.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, these people, they don't really have the information.
		You can go ahead and blow your nose, man.
		Don't worry about it.
		You've been struggling with it for a while.
		Gary's sick because he hasn't had enough sugar, ladies and gentlemen.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yes, exactly.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It's a low-carb diet I ate.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But...
		I mean, it seems to me like they don't have the time.
		I mean, I don't have the time to do the research that you did.
		Very few people do.
		It really takes someone like you.
		It takes a maniac to go out there and stretch your finances and put yourself in a bad position and really be obsessively chasing this down.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, it's true.
		But again, that doesn't mean you're supposed to believe somebody like me.
		And again, you can't...
		You know, I'm a journalist.
		I used to think, how would I... You know, imagine some...
		Plummer came up to me one day and he said, you know, I just spent like the last 10 years of my life studying how to do journalism.
		And I've written this book and you're doing it all wrong.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a good point.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You know, and I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, I'll take the book, you know, and I can't wait to read it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And I'm going to go home and I'm not probably even going to throw the book out because the odds that that's a waste of time for me are enormous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When did diabetes first sort of emerge in medical records?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, in medical records, you see it 2,000 years ago in like Hindu medical documents.
		Coincidentally, with the beginning of the sugar industry.
		Really?
		Yeah, I mean, just give or take 200 years.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Holy shit!
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And even back then, they speculated that it was caused by sugar, although I think for the wrong reasons, because the diabetic urine, you're pissing out a lot of glucose, right?
		Because your body can't handle it, so it's sweet and it'll attract flies.
		And back then, even up until 17th century, part of classic medical practice was for the physician to have his assistant taste the urine.
		He didn't have to do it himself.
		And that could be, by the way, one reason why a lot of diabetes went undiagnosed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because people wouldn't drink the piss?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Because people wouldn't drink the piss, yeah.
		So you've got to keep all this stuff in mind.
		I mean, this is...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a ridiculous way.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		It's all they had, you know.
		Science is determined by the technology available.
		That was one of the lessons when we get into this.
		Because all my books are about good science and bad science.
		And I hope I understand what I'm doing.
		Like I said, if I don't, it's really bad.
		It's embarrassing.
		I wake up at 3, 4 in the morning and I'm thinking, why am I so obsessed about this calorie issue?
		Nobody else seems to care.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But people do now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Don't you feel like that?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		We live in a very small world.
		You know, it's hard to understand.
		I mean, even with your, whatever, 20 million downloads a month and all your followers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a lot more than that.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, think about how many of those voted for the current president, for instance.
		I mean, it's just, it's a very, I'm glad to hear it's a lot more than that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I am too, because I want to get this out, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, even if it's just for this one particular subject, which I think is probably the most important subject today, when in terms of health and wellness and just optimizing your existence, cutting out sugar and changing your diet, I think, is one of the most important factors in living a healthier, more productive life, and also mental clarity.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, now let me ask you a question.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		When you cut out sugar, so you said you cut it out slowly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		What were you eating at the time?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I never ate bad, but I ate pastas and I ate bread.
		I always supplemented with vitamins, I always worked out hard, and I was always lean because I worked out so much.
		So I never thought I had an issue with fat.
		I never thought I had an issue with any of those things.
		But I would get that crash.
		I would get that late afternoon crash, and it was a fucking insulin dump.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I used to say, I don't take naps, they take me.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You know, like an hour after lunch, and I'd be interviewing some Nobel Prize winner, and I'd have to think of an excuse to get off, because I was falling asleep doing the interview.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that doesn't happen to me anymore.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, it's fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's unbelievably fascinating.
		I would never have guessed.
		I would have thought you needed some sort of a stimulant to keep you going like that.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Although, in honesty, we're both drinking Bulletproof coffees right now.
unidentified		Yes.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So we are getting some sort of a stimulant.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We are, but I didn't have to have that.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I did, but that's the book tour.
		Well, you're sick.
		But here's the thing, when you cut out the grains, the bread, the pasta, that's still, that's glucose.
		So, were you eating sugar?
		Were you drinking Gatorades?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
		Very rarely.
		Very rarely.
		I was still eating pretty clean.
		Like, I would have dessert every now and then, but it wasn't more than a few times a week.
		I wasn't eating candy bars during the day, but I was eating the occasional protein bar that was loaded with sugar that I didn't even think it was.
		I thought it was eating healthy.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		That's what gets me.
		So once we got into this diet, to this idea, so one of the things, and this was the second article I read, so is there evidence to support this idea we should be eating a low-fat diet?
		I mean, the second article I wrote.
		And I recreated the history of that and it was fascinating because once these people got this idea that fat caused heart disease...
		So remember, science is determined by what you can measure.
		So the technology you have tells you what you can measure and what you can measure is what you can ask questions about and then that gives you the answers.
		And if you're a bad scientist, you forget that it's completely limited.
		To the technology.
		So there's this old joke in science called the drunk in the streetlight problem.
		Do you ever hear about that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So a guy's walking down the street and he comes upon a drunk who's crawling around on his knees under a streetlight.
		And he says to the guy, what are you doing?
		And the guy says, I'm looking for my keys.
		And the guy says, so is this where you lost them?
		And the drunk goes, I don't know where I lost them, but this is where the light is.
		Okay.
		So in science, it's like what you could measure is where the light is.
		And you got to remember that there's a universe out there that you can't see yet.
		But most scientists don't realize that.
		They're just not good scientists.
		So in heart disease, the light was on cholesterol.
		That was at 1950s, 60s.
		That's what they could measure.
		And they got this idea that it's caused by dietary fat.
		And because of that...
		We just, you know, again, they tested and tested, and this hypothesis kept being failed in the test, but they didn't care because they thought it had to be true.
		And by the 1980s, we lock it in as a dogma.
		And now we have this idea that the healthy way to eat is a low-fat diet, and you start making products where you take the fat out of it.
		And once you take the fat out of something, it doesn't taste all that good.
		Like yogurt's a classic example.
		I mean, it is fat and some, you know, modest amount of lactose.
		I don't even know if there's lactose in it.
		I should know this stuff because then people say clearly you're not a nutritionist.
		So the candy bars, instead of eating Snickers bars, which is a high-fat, high-sugar thing that we grew up on, you create Cliffs bars and Nature's Whey bars and all these low-fat health food bars that we think are healthy.
		Because they're low in fat, they're loaded with carbs, and they fill them up with sugar.
		And then to this day, I'm wondering, like, should I just let, you know, we have a drawer with these health food bars, and my wife, I'm not the only parent of the family, so my kids aren't tortured by my food beliefs.
		Would they be healthier if they just ate Snickers bars like we did when we were kids?
		And I don't know what the answer is.
		I literally, I could argue it either way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How could you argue that they would be healthier if they had all that sugar?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, they both have the sugar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean both?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like Laura bars versus...
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You ever seen one of those Laura bars?
		I really love those.
		They taste good, but they're 19 fucking grams of sugar or something crazy, and it's only like the size of your thumb.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so basically, I don't know what the sugar content is.
		You can probably Google it while we're talking about, you know, regular size Snickers bar.
		It's probably more than 19 grams, but it's also got all that fat in it, which will slow down I found the digestion of the sugar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So, a Snickers bar arguably is better for you than some of these really super sugary, what we think, air quotes, are healthy snacks, like trail bars.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and the key word there is arguably.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Here we go, 20 grams of sugar, and what is that, a Snickers bar?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a lot.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's a bigger, it's gonna be a big, way more.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So what about the Laura bar?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's gonna weigh more?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's 44 grams.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, those things, Larabars.
		Find out what the fuck is in those bad boys.
		Because I had one.
		I bought one once.
		This is before I had gone on my crusade against sugar.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Wait, there's no added sugar, it says, in the Larabars.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		But they're fruit and nut bars, so the question is how much sugar are in the fruit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Maybe it's a different one.
		Which one are you looking at here?
		Yeah, that's it.
		What does it say here?
		How many grams?
		20 grams!
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		20 grams, so it's the same as a Snicker.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So why the fuck are they lying?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No added sugar.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, it could be because it comes from fruit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's still fucking sugar.
		Your body doesn't know that.
		You're playing a goddamn game.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you're playing a game, exactly.
		That's crazy.
		Let's see, I'm just curious.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Using natural fruits and nuts in their bars.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		The World Health Organization's recommended daily sugar intake for adults.
		5% of daily caloric intake for a normal-weight adult eating 2,000 calories a day.
		That's 25 grams.
		So...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, is that added sugar per day?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, when you're talking about lactose, when you're talking about fruits?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's funny.
		A friend just sent me an article today on a European Journal of Clinical Nutrition where they were looking at sugar content of children's diets in Europe.
		And at age one, they were 30% of their calories from sugar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		But, I was trying to make sense of it, I'm pretty sure that included lactose from milk.
unidentified		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Which was a primary source.
		He said the primary source of the sugar were dairy products.
		It could also be from artificial formulas.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People never take that into consideration, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you eat a piece of cheese, you're getting some sugar.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Although, again, once you process it, you lose the lactose.
		But yeah, it's sort of, but even the lactose is metabolized differently than the fructose.
		I would argue that we evolved to consume lactose, at least until we were, you know, out of, you know, weaning.
unidentified		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		A few, three, four years old.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you drink milk?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No.
		I actually gave up dairy, but for a different reason.
		Not because I, for me, it has unfortunate gastrointestinal side effects that my whole family could live without.
		If you go into a low-carb, high-fat diet, which I think is a, you know, certainly those of us should be eating who are predisposed to get fat or diabetic, cheese is a very valuable item of the diet.
		And clearly, like the French and the Swiss and even the Greeks eat enormous amounts of cheese and they live...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you believe in raw milk?
		Have you attempted to try that?
		Or raw cheese?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I don't think it.
		My gut feeling, remember, I focus obsessively on one subject, and it's the carb content, and it's the sugars, and the refined grains, and what's the cause of obesity.
		Raw milk doesn't enter into that discussion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What I meant about it is just from the gastrointestinal issues, because a lot of people believe that raw milk with all the natural enzymes in it is easier for your body to process.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's quite possible.
		But again, as a...
		If you're gaining weight easily, then I wouldn't be recommending liquid carbs of any kind, including the lactose and milk.
		So you look at the low-carb diets traditionally and historically, they never allowed for milk.
		I mean, you might go for heavy cream or cream, you know, the sort of Atkins thing.
		The bulletproof coffee thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know a lot of people who are on the ketogenic diet that will actually drink heavy cream.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		My friend Kyle, who actually was one of the first people that turned me on to it, Kyle Kingsbury, he carries around this little fucking pint of heavy cream, but he's a savage.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no.
		My former collaborator, Peter Attia, whose internet handle at one point I think was Ketogenic Man, and he used to drink olive oil and cream.
		Well, because you've got to really up the fat content on those diets for a lot of people to get ketonic, not everyone.
		Yeah.
		It's interesting.
		I heard you were trying it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I did.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I'm on it.
		Essentially.
		So tell me your diet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of avocados, a lot of coconut oil.
		I might eat a little bit more protein than I'm supposed to, which unfortunately does convert back to sugar in your body, glucose, but much more easily processed, obviously, than high fructose corn syrup, right?
		Very, very little pastas or grains or breads or anything.
		It's a rare thing that I eat that stuff.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Do you actually measure ketones?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've done it before, but I have a problem with those things.
		When you jab your finger, it's too hard for me to get blood out.
		I do a lot of kettlebell stuff, and so I have calluses on my fingers and my hands.
		So I have to actually go into the side of my hand to get the blood.
		I have to go, like, above the fingerprints into the upper skin area and squeeze out the blood.
		It's fucking annoying.
		So I know when I'm in it.
		And also I take ketogenic supplements.
		I'll take, like, exogenous ketones.
		Like, there's this stuff called Kegenix.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything that tastes decent?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Kegenix tastes really good.
		It tastes good.
		It's a good drink.
		It's made by Dom D'Agostino.
unidentified		Do you know who he is?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, sure I know.
		So he's one of the...
		I'm a premier research scientist that's devoted to a ketogenic diet, and I heard about him from Tim Ferriss' podcast, and I've read some of his work online and listened to some of his lectures and talks.
		And I find it, first of all, as far as appetite suppressing, it's fantastic.
		Once your body starts burning fat, you don't get that weird hunger thing.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's the thing, because you're just mobilizing your fat and burning it.
		It's all coming out.
		Your body isn't trying to hold on to it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're not freaking out.
		That's the thing.
		When I was on a heavy carb diet, because I love pasta.
		God, I love lasagna and linguine with clams.
		I just love it.
		It's fantastic.
		Occasionally, I'll indulge as a rare treat now, but when I was eating it all the time, I would have this two or three hour post-eating thing where that stuff would be gone, it would all be digested, and then I'd be fucking starving in the next hour or so.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I remember the old joke about You know, Chinese food, right?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Like, two hours later, you're starving.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, that's really what it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Your body starts craving those carbohydrates, the simple carbs.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the thing, because you're burning the sugar, so the carbs are converted to glucose, you're burning the glucose, you're secreting insulin, and the insulin's telling your fat to hold on to fat.
		This is my theory, anyway, and it's backed up by the evidence.
		So, as the blood sugar starts coming down, Your fat tissue is supposed to release the fat and allow it to come out and be oxidized by the same cells and the mitochondria in your cells in this famous Krebs cycle that we're all supposed to learn in like 11th grade biology and can never remember.
		The Krebs cycle is just as happy to burn fat as carbs.
		But if the insulin's high...
		It's telling your mitochondria to burn carbs, not fat, and it's telling the fat cells to hold on to fat, and now you've just got a dearth of fuel.
		It's actually telling your lean tissue to hold on to protein.
		So now your blood sugar is coming down, but the insulin is still elevated, and there's no fuels replacing the blood sugar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You bonk.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You bonk, or you start to panic.
		This is why once we instituted this low-fat thing and people said, well, Americans get fat because they snack all the time.
		They're constantly grazing.
		Well, they're constantly grazing because their cells are running out of fuel.
		No matter how much they're eating for breakfast of their low-fat stuff, if their insulin is elevated, their cells are going to want to burn carbs.
		And this is one of the observations you found in the literature in the 1830s.
		There was a Hungarian endocrinologist working at Northwestern University who talked about some of his obese pain.
		He said he had a patient who was an obese laundress who used to eat laundry starch.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Jesus Christ.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What the fuck is laundry starch?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It's starch.
		It's a carbohydrate, man.
		I had no idea.
		But the point is, if your insulin is elevated, carbohydrates are your fuel.
		It's signaling your cells to burn glucose and not to burn fat and not to burn protein.
		So carbs are your fuel.
		That's what you need.
		So when you start to get hungry, you crave that because that's the only thing your cells are going to burn.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So then if you try a ketogenic diet or low-carb, high-fat diet, whatever you want to call it, you get rid of the carbs and you get enough fat, your insulin comes down, then you get in this natural thing where you eat, you store some of the fat, you're burning fat.
		When you're done burning the fat in your bloodstream, the fat comes out of your cells.
		There's this nice cycle that's supposed to happen.
		You always have enough fuel available that you're not hungry.
		That's one of the common phenomenons.
		The idea that suddenly I have breakfast, the next thing I know it's 2, 3 in the afternoon, and I'm thinking, maybe I should eat lunch just because I should eat lunch.
		Not because I'm hungry, not because I'm starving.
		And then you eat lunch, you don't fall asleep afterwards.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because your body has a fuel supply.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Because your body has a constant fuel supply.
		Your cells are being fueled whether you're eating or not.
		You've got enough fat in your body to live for like a month, even if...
		You're relatively lean.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, I should point out that some high-level athletes are having an issue with this.
		Some people that are used to burning off massive amounts of calories through the day, like mixed martial artists and things along those lines, some of them adapt to it fine and are having a great time with it and find it easier to make weight and easier to train.
		But other ones say that they have just a lack of that extra gear in training.
		Now, I don't know if they're doing it Some of the earliest studies ever done on this was by a guy named Steve Finney, who's co-author of two books, Ardent Science of Low Carb.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Living in the art and science of low-carb performance.
		And Steve, back in the late 70s, early 80s, he was at, I think it's Vermont, where there was a team of people studying, doing some interesting diet experiments.
		And he put professional bike racers on ketogenic diets and measured their performance versus their sort of traditional high-carb diets.
		And he keto-adapted them, so they were fully adapted to burning fat for fuel.
		And from his studies, basically, he said they're more efficient until they have to push that last sort of 5% out, like up a mountain or a marathon or getting to Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon, and then they lose that extra push.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		See, that's what makes sense, because that extra push is all what mixed martial arts is about.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That extra push is all about...
		I mean, in MMA, it's all about exploding when you're tired.
		It's all about being able to manage your endurance over the course of five minutes, but figure out these sprint times and being able to squeeze the most out of those to break your opponent.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A lot of times, it's based on how much you have in the tank.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's the thing.
		And I mean, a lot of it, you should still...
		You can still...
		Even the...
		It's funny, carb loading, when it was first...
		Sort of perfected was developed in Scandinavia back in the 50s, I think it was, by the coaches of cross-country skiers, which is incredibly physically burdensome.
unidentified		Brutal.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Brutal.
		And they trained all year long on low-carb diets.
		So they would train on low-carb diets, and the idea was they would eat the plate of pasta the day before the race, and they would maximize their glycogen stores in their liver and in their cells, and then when they needed it, it was there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And has that been proven efficient?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it was a great way for them, but again, the point is they were eating the low-carb diets the rest of the year.
		Up until then, yeah.
		And then once marathoners started doing it, everyone thought, well, marathoners should eat carbs the night before a marathon.
		We should all eat carbs.
		And then this idea that carbs are heart-healthy came in and they just took over the world.
		But my area of expertise is by no means like high-performance athletes.
		There are people out there who could talk to you for, you know, and I'll recommend some when we get off.
		You know, it's interesting because even when you read the debates about this stuff, what the high-performance athletes, I see this in like Outside Magazine and Runner's World stuff, so there's this fundamental argument that, look, we don't get fat because we eat too much.
		We get fat because the carbohydrates in our diet cause this hormonal metabolic dysregulation that makes us store calories of fat in our fat cells.
		And that implies that the healthiest diet, for those of us who get fat, are diets absent easily digestible carbs and sugars.
		But if athletes, very high-performing athletes, eat those diets and don't perform better than before, it's not a good diet and therefore all the rest of it is wrong.
		And that's just crazy.
		You know, it's sort of what Lance Armstrong needs to win the Tour de France, whatever it is, doesn't tell me a hell of a lot about why, you know, Shirley McClintock weighs 300 pounds and can't lose that weight unless she gives up carbohydrates.
		Right.
		You know, and all of that gets confounded in these discussions.
		And one of the things I'm constantly doing when I talk about this stuff is saying, you've got to keep your eye on the question.
		Because we were all given different answers to different questions.
		So what's the best diet for winning the Tour de France or MMA fight?
		Probably got a lot of the same themes that I'm talking about.
		But even then, Funny, when sugar came in, beginning around the 1890s, and it was cheap and easily available, and beet sugar was available in Germany, the German army started testing sugar as a performance enhancer, and actually doing sort of trials where they would send troops out with or without sugar for, you know...
		30-day marches and then they would see when they came back which ones had more energy and the ones who ate more sugar had more energy and some mountain climbers started using it.
		Crew coaches started testing it on the crew.
		Like rowing back then was among the most popular sports in the world and so they would give their We're good to go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have girls.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay, not an issue.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Boys, circumcise them, give them a little bit of sugar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ, I've never heard of that though.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Sugar kills pain?
		Yeah, it's a distraction.
		It's a painkiller.
		I mean, it's wonderful psychoactive properties.
		No short-term side effects.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you must be talking about a very minor killing of the pain.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, also, if you start with populations that never consume sugar, so babies never consume it before, you give them a little sugar, like on day three, you can circumcise them, and they're just tripping.
		They're fine.
		Hey, cool.
		Take it off.
		I don't need to live with that.
		What am I going to use that for?
		I mean, when you're three days old, you've got no imagination.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		We could talk about that.
		Yeah, so anyway, that's the thing.
		It's that it could be a performance enhancing drug.
		That would enhance the performance of athletes at the highest level doesn't mean it doesn't have long-term chronic effects just like any other performance enhancing drug.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So there's a big difference between people that are like say climbing K2 that needs something to push them forward versus the average person who likes to play racquetball and works a day job and you know and that kind of a diet.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and think about, I mean, the athletic trainers who have been telling you, I mean, the guys you work out with, you know, the lean, muscular guys who never had an ounce of fat in their lives, and they're saying we should all eat carbs or we should all eat sugar because look how well I process it.
		And my argument is like, if you think your body works the same way as your cousin who weighs 300 pounds and the only difference is you exercise more, Like, that's a serious delusion.
		And, you know, we're different people.
		I don't know, do you have siblings?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Are you all built alike?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have a sister.
		Okay.
		Yeah, I mean, she's lean.
		I mean, she works out a little bit.
		Not like I do, but, you know, we have good genes in that regard.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		But, I mean, when I was a kid, my older brother, mathematician, brilliant guy, but he was...
		Always taller, leaner, like you could see the veins on his arms and the ripples on his stomach when he was seven years old.
		It wasn't genetic because I clearly had the same genes in a different body type.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But they vary.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So when he got to college, he was a rower.
		He couldn't get over 195, no matter how much he ate.
		And he used to say, I'll never forget this.
		I never get stuffed.
		I just get bored of eating after a few hours.
		And I was shorter, thicker.
		You know, I put on weight relatively easily.
		By the time I was in high school, I weighed 195. When I was playing Division II college football, I could get up to 237. No matter how much I ate, I could not get above 237, and I was three inches shorter than he was.
		We just had different body types.
		I built muscle easier than he did, and I put on fat easier than he did.
		It had nothing to do with how much.
		We both ate as much as we could.
		In fact, dinners in our family lasted like 18 minutes because it was, you know, my mother put down like, you know, enough for four, eight people and if I didn't eat it fast, my brother, yeah, exactly.
		Start at seven over at 718, no matter what she served.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you're looking at all this data and you're putting together this book and you realize that you're going to drop this mind blower on people that We've been essentially misled by almost every established organization when it comes to health and diet.
		How are you feeling when you're about to release this?
		Are you hesitant?
		Is this like one thing where you're like, Jesus Christ, am I just...
		I mean, did you have this incredible desire to double-check, triple-check, quadruple-check?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, but I should have.
		Okay, so the first time this happened...
		So the articles in science, for whatever reason, didn't create all that much controversy.
		I mean, they won awards and reporting awards, and they were in books about the best science writing, but nobody really cared.
		I mean, there was enough controversy about whether this low-fat diet, for instance, was the right thing.
		Then I do this New York Times Magazine article where The idea was to go out and find out that this was pitched in 2001 and our awareness of the obesity epidemic was only about three years old.
		And you could pinpoint it in time, from between the late 1970s to the early 1990s, two surveys that were done.
		And during those two surveys, the prevalence of obesity almost doubled the United States, the percentage of Americans.
		So you'd ask the question, what caused it?
		And I had two hypotheses.
		One was we had shifted.
		In the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that Carbohydrates are uniquely fattening.
		One line I quote in two of my books was the first sentence of a British Journal of Nutrition article in 1963, written by one of the two leading British dieticians, was, every woman knows carbohydrates are fattening.
		And every woman knew this car, you know, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, beer, sweets, you know, they'd go right to your hips.
		That was a lot.
		And then we turned them into heart-healthy diet foods by the 1980s.
		And that happened between, was institutionalized between 1977 and 1984. And by 84, like the New York Times health reporters writing her best-selling Diet, you know, health cooking book called the Good Food Book, and she's saying, yeah, we used to think carbs are fattening, but now we should eat pasta and bread all the time.
		So that was one hypothesis.
		The other was high fructose corn syrup, which came in in 1977 and had sort of replaced sugar and Pepsi and Coke by 1984. Anyway, as I'm doing that piece, I realize I stumbled upon five studies of the Atkins diet.
		The Atkins diet is what scientists call the anomalous observation.
		What you're always looking for in science is the anomalous observation.
		That's the thing that doesn't fit with any of your beliefs.
		You've got a theory that says this and then you find that.
		And now you've got a way to come up with a better theory because you've got something else you have to explain that your present theory doesn't.
		And it's the anomalous observations that move science forward.
		It's the thing that just doesn't fit with your belief.
		So here's the diet trials where you've got the Atkins diet, high in fat, high in saturated fat, so it should give you heart disease.
		You know, double quarter pounder with cheese, no bun, lobster, Newberg, you know, eggs, bacon, sausage.
		And you're allowed to eat as much as you want.
		Okay, so it's not a calorie-restricted diet.
		It's ad libitum.
		As long as you don't eat carbs, you could have eight eggs for breakfast and a rash for bacon and, you know, whole chicken for lunch.
		So the other theory, one theory is that fat is going to cause heart disease and the other theory is that the eat as much as you want, you tell a fat person to eat as much as they want, they're going to get fatter, right?
		Because we think they got fat to begin with because they ate too much.
		And then you compare those people to people you put on an American Heart Association low-fat diet and you tell them to calorie restrict.
		Am I repeating myself?
		No, go ahead.
		You know, the ice cream scoop size of tuna salad on the lettuce patty thing that we all went through at some point in our life.
		Maybe not you if you were naturally lean.
		Anyway, in all five of these trials, and they'd been done but not published yet, and they'd been presented at conferences, the people on the Atkins diet not only lost more weight than the ones on the calorie-restricted American Heart Association low-fat diet that all American people were supposed to eat, so that refutes the eating too much hypothesis, because these guys on the Atkins diet can eat as much as they want, but their heart disease risk factors are better.
		Okay, so they're supposed to die of heart disease.
		You know, you eat the bacon, it clogs your arteries, you fall over dead, but they were healthier.
		So it refutes the heart disease thing too.
		So there's the anomalous observation.
		How do you explain that?
		If dietary fat causes heart disease and eating too much causes obesity.
		So I write this article.
		I lead it with this young Harvard endocrinologist, pediatrician who's feeding low-carb diets to his patients at Boston Children's Hospital.
		He's like politically acceptable.
		He's sincere.
		He's at Harvard.
		I want to ease people into it.
		And then I talk about the Atkins thing down below and how Atkins had gotten pilloried back in the late 60s, early 70s for telling people they could eat these high-fat diets because we thought, you know, and what these studies showed.
		And the editors of the New York Times Magazine said Atkins is the elephant in the living room.
		Like, get rid of this Harvard guy.
		Put him down below.
		Lead with Atkins, okay?
		I mean, they know how to get people to read an article.
		So I write this lead.
		I read it to my wife, and it's, you know, if the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, have a find yourself standing naked nightmare in Times Square, excuse me, find yourself standing naked in Times Square nightmare, It's that all the advice they've been giving to the American people about a healthy diet for the last 50 years is wrong, and maybe Atkins was right all along, and maybe both.
		And I read it to my wife and I say, they will never run this in a million years.
		And I email it to the editors and they don't change a word.
		And that's the lead of the magazine article.
		And then they put this picture on the cover of the magazine, which is this kind of cheap-looking porterhouse steak.
	They didn't go to, you know, the photographer to make a delicious, you know, and it's got a pat of butter.
	And the headline is, What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
	And I didn't stop them from doing it.
	But I didn't know what to expect.
	I knew it was going to be controversial.
	Getting back to your question, I tend to answer long-winded.
	I knew it was going to be controversial.
	I knew it was going to be the most controversial article they'd run since a friend of mine ten years earlier had written an article about how recycling is a complete waste of time and money.
	I had no idea what was going to happen.
	No idea.
	And I compare it to my boxing career.
	When I was younger, when I was at Harvard, my best friend was a boxer.
	He was a street fighter from Manhattan, a Puerto Rican kid, and a wonderful guy.
	I mean, everyone in school loved him.
	And then he taught me how to box, and we used to, you know, box in the gym, and I would do this sort of Muhammad Ali imitation, because that's what I thought boxing was in 1977. Then he actually had an amateur fight in Lomas in March 1977, and got killed in the fight.
	And of course, me being young and stupid, it's not enough to prevent me from Continuing, so when I moved to New York...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you watch the fight?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we were there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You were there?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		We didn't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What happened to him?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		He danced into a right hook and went over backwards like it was frozen, like it was a plank of wood, and his head bounced off the mat.
		That is how I remember it.
		God knows if my memory is right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's one of the scariest things is when the head bounces.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's one of the worst ways to get knocked out.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and we knew it was bad, but we didn't know.
		He didn't die.
		He was in a coma.
		They took him to the hospital.
		We went all home.
		And then a week later, there's just no brain activity.
		This is how I remember it.
		I hope I'm doing him justice by getting the memory right.
		Of course, nowadays you can Google it and read about the article on the Boston Globe, and it was an article.
		Anyway, I moved to New York.
		I go to journalism school.
		I have a friend who is Norman Maller's nephew.
		And Norman Mailer had a group of people who used to get together at the Gramercy Gym on Saturday mornings in New York.
		This is another long-winded answer to your question.
		I mean, talk about shaggy dog story.
		So every Saturday morning, we'd meet at the Gramercy Gym, which is 14th and around Lexington.
		Back then, it was a very seedy neighborhood, and it was...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Classic Jim.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, classic Jim.
		And some really, like, Ryan O'Neal's buddies with Norman would show up once every three months, and there was a guy who ran, I forget, it was a porn magazine that was sold in a brown paper bag.
		He would show up, and then, you know, a half dozen other people, I had this friend, Steve Chow, went on to I'd become Barry Diller's right-hand man, and yeah, Hollywood, who had actually been the valedictorian of our class at Harvard.
		And we would spar, and I enjoyed it, and I got into it, and it was getting the crap beat out of me first.
		But eventually, I kept doing it, and then I decided to fight in the New York Golden Gloves and write about it for Playboy.
		So the piece was called Life is a Standing Eight Count.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, but this is after your friend died.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		This is after my friend died.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So, anyway, the point is, kind of like going from sparring to your first match.
		Now, you had a much more successful career than I did.
		I had two fights.
		Wow.
		I won the first one because the Irish cop I was fighting got tired of punching me, and I finally thought if I hit him back, maybe that'll slow him down.
		It worked.
		But that transition from sparring to being in the ring and having someone want to beat the crap out of you is like you just can't.
		You cannot conceive of what it's going to be like until you do it, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if you can remember back to your first fight, and you might have been more of a natural animal than I am.
		I'm kind of a cerebral guy.
		I think too much.
		But that's what it was like getting this article published.
		Like, I knew it was going to be controversial.
		You want me to tell you the end of the boxing story?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I won my first fight.
		I knocked out this cop from Staten Island, and I was done.
		I didn't want to do it again.
		I didn't enjoy winning.
		I did not enjoy knocking him out.
		I didn't like anything about it.
		This nose was not built for getting pummeled, and I was not a very good defensive fighter.
		And then the second fight, I went up against the guy who won it.
		This was not the open category, the 10 fights or less category, and he knocked me out in a minute and 37 seconds.
		I had a friend who, a photographer for life, who came.
		Norman Mailer was at the fight, too.
		Like, Norman's sitting there watching me get the crap beat out of me.
		And my friend, who was a photographer, didn't have time to get her lens cap off, basically.
		So I have a photo that ran in Playboy with the article, which was, you know, you could see ring level and you see these two big feet sticking up and this body prone on the ring, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you get knocked unconscious?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you woke up, how terrified were you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Were you thinking at all about your friend who died?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, that's the funny thing.
		Not at all.
		But I thought about it afterwards.
		So it's interesting.
		Apparently, you know, I woke up in the ring.
		I mean, I stood up.
		They raised the other guy's hand.
		I don't remember any of that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you remember the fight at all?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		A little bit.
		A little bit of, like, these roundhouses whizzing by my head.
		And I had this tendency I would, like, pull my head back, so I'm pulling my hands down instead of...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Terrible instinct, but natural for some strange reason.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's very difficult to teach people to not do the worst thing.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and you know, if my career had lasted past that fight, my very good coach would have broken it out and he would have said, don't ever do that again.
		Anyway, my memory is I'm sitting outside the ring and a doctor is saying to me, do you know what your name is?
		So there's a period in my life where I was clearly conscious, but I have no memory of it.
		Um, then they, they make you go to the hospital afterwards to make sure you're not going to die overnight.
		And I was in the emergency room and there was a guy next to me who had had a motorcycle accident and a cab had cut him off.
		And he had the same, we were talking, he was about my age, Hispanic.
		And he, um, you know, this thing where there's You know, the way you say the next thing I remember.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And then there's this awareness that there could very well have never been a next thing I remember.
		You know, the moment could have just ended there, and that's when I started thinking about my friend.
		But I was too busy getting mad at the hospital attendant who kept telling me that my nose was broken.
		And I kept saying, my nose isn't broken, asshole.
		This is the nose I was born with.
		Oh, man, that's a broken nose.
		I know a broken nose when I see one.
		But...
		Anyway, that was a little bit.
		So I published this article.
		I've got no idea what's going to happen.
		And, you know, it was like just the universe.
		I mean, first of all, there's an enormous amount of media attention.
		So I'm doing TV shows and radio shows and people are writing about me.
		But people are attacking me because the implication is not just did the nutrition, obesity community screw up.
		But my journalist friends who have been covering this field screwed up.
		They got the wrong story.
		They missed the story that I found.
		And nobody wants to think like that.
		You don't want to think you're bad at what you do, right?
unidentified		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, friends are writing articles about me.
		You know, one woman journalist in Boston who used to be a good friend who thought I was one of the five best...
		Writers in the country, science journalists in the country, until I wrote a piece that came to a different conclusion than a book she had written on obesity.
		And the headline in Newsweek was, it's not the carbs, stupid.
		The Center for Science and the Public Interest did a piece called Big Fat Lies, cover of their newspaper, basically explaining how I had screwed up on everything I had screwed up.
		A journalist who had written a book on obesity did a piece for Reason magazine about all the ways I had screwed up.
		Luckily, I hadn't screwed up in any of them, so I could get back at them and take them down.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But when you did get back at them and take them down, you're talking about a time where, I mean, what year was this?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		This was 2002. So you had a blog?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		How did you get back at them?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you publish a response?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		The Center for Science and the Public Interest piece, they wouldn't even let me respond.
		Reason Magazine was interesting.
		I called up the editors and I said, look, this is just complete bullshit and you've got to let me respond.
		And they said, okay.
		They didn't care because they put it online.
		So if Albus is going to write for him for free, let him write for him for free.
		And more controversy brings more readers.
		So I... I spent the weekend, I remember I wrote like a 9,000 word response and there's still some great stuff in there where, you know, even the very end of this thing, I was pointing out every way this guy had screwed up, like taken down my article by saying I made mistakes when he was the one making mistakes and the last line was something like, he had called my editor and Who had now bought this book for a lot of money.
		He had called my editor, I think he used the last name, he called him Richard Siegel or something.
		So the last line of the book was in just the final word.
		My editor's name is not Richard Siegel, it's John, period.
		9,000 word takedown.
		This guy ended up never writing for Reason Magazine again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Congratulations.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He got rid of an asshole.
		And also, the human ego is shocking and horrifying.
		because that's the only reason why someone would look at what you wrote and step back and look at what they wrote and decide to attack.
		Instead of deciding to go, wow, this guy went deep with this research, I need to really look at this.
		And I need to really find out whether or not I've been incorrect.
		And I need to really reevaluate what kind of advice I've been giving to humans.
		Think about the hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of people that have read articles from these people that gave them poor advice.
		And that advice adversely affected their health directly.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But instead, they cover their ass.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		We're not programmed to do that.
		They are we.
		We need mushrooms.
		That's what you always got to remember.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dietary mushrooms.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Remember of my...
		Well, this is a low-dose diet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Acid thing.
		Sounds like I could really transform my personality.
		I could become a different person.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Have you tried it before?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, no.
		I'm a little scared that I'll become a...
		I'm going to try it now.
		Is that what's going to happen?
		I have to...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let me know after the show.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I have to be able to get to Burbank and catch...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you can get to Burbank on acid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's the best way.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there we go.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You'll instinctively know where Jay Leno's garage is.
		It'll be like a beacon.
		You'll see it above.
		You know how you have a 3D map and it's got that little balloon where your location is?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, okay, we're there.
		You know, hey, I live in Oakland.
		We don't need help with psychoactives up there.
		We're good.
		Anyway, what was I saying?
		So yeah, it's just a natural human tendency.
		But you wish somebody would say...
		Jesus, I never thought of this.
		That's all they need to say.
		They have to say, we never thought of this.
		This is an interesting take.
		Clearly, the editors at the New York Times Magazine are really smart people, thought this was interesting.
		The fact-checkers fact-checked it.
		There's no mistakes.
		That's why at least I was safe there, because they're really good fact-checkers.
		It didn't rely on me.
		Why don't we...
		And it just doesn't happen.
		I mean, it was funny, even...
		Afterwards, I start doing this book, and now I'm going to interview hundreds more people, and you would expect that a lot of the scientists aren't going to talk to me, because they're going to be so mad at me about this article, but most of them actually were good.
		There was one scientist I wanted to talk to specifically, because a guy I was talking to said he hated your article.
		He thought it was total crap.
		So I sent him an email, and I said, you know, I'd like to interview you.
		He thought the article was total crap, and I'd like to know why, because if it was, I want to make sure I don't make those mistakes again.
		And he said, sure, as long as you make sure you check on my quotes, because I don't trust you to get my quotes right, because that was another story that was going around at the time.
		And two weeks later, we get on the phone, and he says, you know, I've got to apologize.
		When I read your article, I was so pissed off by the title, what if it's all been a big fat lie and you're holier than thou, smarter than we are attitude, that I never actually thought deeply about what you were saying.
		And I pretty much agree with you.
unidentified		Wow.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Now that I've read it again, and context is everything in these things.
		And I notice that when I lecture, so I give a lot of lectures.
		I talk grand rounds in medical schools.
		If somebody introduces me to a room full of doctors, as this is a very well-respected journalist, he's won all these awards, including these influential public health awards, he's written this incredibly thoughtful, provoking book.
		And we managed to get them here to give you the arguments.
		Doctors will be completely receptive to everything I say.
		I've also had people introduce me as, yeah, here's this guy Taubes.
		He wrote this big book.
		He says everything we say is wrong and he's going to give a lecture.
		And now it's like they're tuned out from day one.
		From the moment I opened my mouth, they're looking for reasons not to believe a word I said.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Arms crossed, pose, sitting back.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
		And then they're looking at the phones five minutes later and checking their email.
		It's sort of, so context is everything.
		And by making this article as controversial as it could with putting Atkins in the lead and the porterhouse steak on the cover and what if it's all been a big fat lion, And I actually wasn't calling it a lie.
		There's a lot of mistaken assumptions, a lot of bad science, but nobody lied.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you create the title?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's always what happens, right?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I didn't reject it either.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a great title.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the thing.
		So it got me a big book advance.
		It made it exceedingly controversial, but it turned a lot of people off because they were being accused of things they didn't want to think of themselves, especially the lie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, perhaps them initially, but over the course of time, it's got a lot of support behind it now by so many people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You've been recommended to me by at least a half a dozen people that I deeply respect.
unidentified		Yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is the thing.
		It's an extraordinarily powerful thing.
		What you experienced, and you weren't even overweight.
		You know, this is...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a good point.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Two things that, you know, when I talk to my colleagues about this, I say it's like you're playing in a poker game with a thousand people in the establishment, and they cheat because they all talk to each other, and they share cards, and they show each other what they get, and they tell them what they're going to bet.
		But God keeps dealing you four aces.
		You've got the best hand.
		And the best hand is you shift your diet, you get rid of the carbs and you replace them with fat and it does remarkable things to most people, not all.
		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I want to talk to the people that it doesn't work on.
		I really do.
		I want to know what they're actually doing.
		The problem with people, when they, you know, it's so subjective.
		It's also, you don't exactly know how they're doing it, what their diet is like, in terms of, like, how are they cutting out carbs?
		What kind of nutrients are they taking in?
		What's their rest like?
		How much sleep are they getting?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		That's the thing.
		I mean, I have a friend...
		Diet book author, I think one of the smartest doctors out there.
		Whatever he says, it's always worth listening to.
		He believes that when people fail on the diet, it doesn't matter what age they are, what sex they are, when the diet doesn't return them to a relatively healthy weight, he believes it's because they're not conforming to the diet.
		I disagree with him, actually.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's talking about any diet, period?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, the low-carb, high-fat diet.
		So, you know, maybe they're eating too many nuts and there's carbs in nuts, or maybe they're lying to him about what they're doing, or they're still having the occasional sweet, and clearly there are people...
		Who try to compromise on these diets.
		By compromise, I mean, you've been hearing so long that fat is bad for you.
		I'm sure I'm going to restrict sugar and grain and starches, but I'm also going to restrict fat.
		Now you're eating skinless chicken breasts with green vegetables, and you're not even putting butter on it, and it tastes awful, and nobody's going to stick to that diet anyway.
		And in order to give the skinless chicken breasts some flavor, you've got to marinate it in some sugar marinade.
		So, and the protein, you don't want to eat a high protein diet because you're going to convert the protein to glucose, some of those amino acids, and that's going to raise blood sugar and that could be a problem.
		So, maybe they're just doing it wrong.
		But there are a lot of hormones that influence fat accumulation.
		So this is, remember I said the Germans and Austrians had concluded, maybe I didn't say this, I can't even remember what I, you know, I've been doing this book tour.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I got it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Germans and Austrian research said, look, this has got to be a hormonal metabolic issue.
		The whole idea that it's just calories in, calories out is...
		It's an explanation.
		It's like somebody gets heavier, they take in more calories than they expend.
		We know that.
		It's like somebody accumulates energy in their fat tissue, they're accumulating energy in their body, which means they're taking in energy more than they expend.
		That's just a description of what happens.
		It says nothing about why.
		Clearly hormones play a huge role in fat accumulation or men and women would look identical.
		Boys go through puberty, they lose fat and gain muscle.
		Girls go through puberty, they gain fat in very specific places.
		Not everywhere.
		Places designed to drive the boys crazy and get some procreation going.
		And that's all hormonal.
		It's all estrogen in the girls, testosterone in the boys, you know, little mix going on.
		It doesn't matter how many calories they're consuming.
		So these Germans and Austrians would say it's, you know, it's clearly a hormonal thing.
		I mean, the only way you could explain obesity is a hormonal dysregulation.
		And then in the 60s, we learned that insulin controls fat accumulation, dominant hormone.
		But these other hormones play a role as well.
		So stress hormones...
		So estrogen and testosterone both inhibit an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase that, when it's on your fat cells, basically pulls fat out of the circulation and into the cell.
		That's a simplistic way to put it.
		So when you're pumping out estrogen and testosterone, you're inhibiting this enzyme, which inhibits fat accumulation.
		Then you get older.
		You secrete less that these Hormones, women go through menopause, they secrete less estrogen, the lipoprotein lipase is upregulated on their fat cells, so you get more of it, so it just starts accumulating fat, no matter how much the woman wants to eat or exercise.
		And this is why they put on fat when they get older.
		I think women are programmed to put on fat when they're pregnant.
		Men are never really programmed to put on fat, but women have a fat accumulation program when they're pregnant, and it sort of kicks in a little bit.
		As they go through menopause.
		And so I think historically, when you look at the anecdotal evidence, you know, older women have a much harder time losing excess body fat, even on very calorie, carbohydrate-restricted ketogenic diets.
		And it would be completely understandable.
		And the argument I make is that this would still be the best diet, still be the leanest they could be.
		You know, for all intents and purposes by getting rid of carbs, but it does not mean that it's going to work or it's going to work as much as they want it to because of these other sex hormones and the influence on, you know, body fat as well.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And perhaps the only way to adjust that would be extreme exercise, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like they don't have to go crazy CrossFit or start running up hills with weights on or something.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And that's a question I don't know.
		And that wouldn't address it.
		That would be sort of a temporary fix.
		You know, so you might be able to, A, stimulate some more, even testosterone production.
		I mean, but...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Temporary fix unless you continue that activity.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but the problem is if it may be virtually, you know, again, I... Here's my issue with...
		I... I don't know.
		There was a Harvard psychologist in the 40s and 50s named William Sheldon who came up with this idea.
		I'm going to need some Googling here, by the way, of three different fundamental body types.
		So there's an ectomorph, some mesomorph, and what was the third one?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Endomorph.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Endomorph.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Which is the obese one?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Endomorph.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Endomorph.
		And he said, and which is the thin one?
		Ectomorph.
		So he said you can starve an ectomorph and you don't turn him into an ectomorph, you don't turn him into an ectomorph, you turn him into an emaciated endomorph.
		I don't know if it was his metaphor or mine, I forget now, you can't starve a basset hound and turn it into a greyhound, you just end up with an emaciated basset hound.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So are these genetic factors determined by the environment where their ancestors developed?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And the environment in the mother's womb and the, you know, and it's not necessarily, like I said, genetic.
		It's certainly biological factors.
		Who knows?
		Maybe the gut biome is involved.
		I doubt it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there's also the shapes of the bodies are radically different, too.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The width of the shoulders for the lesomorphs.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
		My brother was an actor.
		I mean, he was always tall and thin.
		And he got, you know, at 195, he was buff, but he wasn't.
		I could put on muscle much easier than him.
		I could put on fat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I had a friend who was a taekwondo champion in the 80s, and he was 6'2", 6' maybe 3", and he fought at 147 pounds.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Jesus, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you couldn't even get anywhere near him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm like 6'2", and I'll starve to death at 175. But it was in his hands, it was in the shape of his face, he was very narrow, his feet, everything.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And that's how his body...
		So part of this alternative hypothesis, which I find...
		So, you know, we believe today is, you know, the conventional thinking is...
		How much you eat and exercise drives how much fat you accumulate.
		And the alternative hypothesis is that how much fat you accumulate is very well regulated by the human body, although you can change that regulation by changing the macronutrients.
		So, people who fat tissue doesn't want to accumulate fat, who are constitutionally lean, like your buddy, When they eat a meal, they can't store it as fat temporarily.
		They've got to burn all those calories.
		The way they'd burn it, prior to the 1950s, a clinician studying obesity used to talk about the impulse to physical activity.
		Lance Armstrong eats 1,000 calories of pasta, and his body doesn't want to store it as fat.
		It wants to burn it, so he goes for a three-hour bike ride after lunch.
		Because his body's trying desperately to get rid of those calories and it doesn't want to store him as fat.
		I have the thousand calories of pasta.
		My body's happy storing it as fat and I'm asleep an hour later.
		But I'm not thicker and fatter than Armstrong because I'm asleep.
		I'm asleep because that's the way my body processes the carbs by storing calories.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But is that a case of nature or nurture?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		That's nature.
		No, it's not because the nurture part is how the diet influences.
		So if I have exclusively fat and protein, if I'm eating a ketogenic diet, then I'm minimizing fat accumulation and my body wants to burn more of those calories.
		So I am closer to being a Lance Armstrong.
		So Lance Armstrong can be lean on his high-carb diet.
		I am closer to being Lance Armstrong-like, closest on a diet to absent all carbohydrates.
		But I'm still, you know, now I'm just a bigger individual.
		I mean, it's interesting.
		We were talking about, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine who was the freshman manager of my college football team.
		So this was Harvard, okay?
		It was Division II football.
		It was a lot of smart people.
		You know, guys who couldn't make it in Division I. We had kids who went to Harvard because they didn't get scholarships at Holy Cross, so they went, okay, I'll play football for Harvard.
		They were local.
		1976, my senior year, the biggest kid on our team, Danny Jiggetts, weighed 265 pounds, 6'5".
		From our standards, he was enormous.
		He went off to play for the Chicago Bears for five or six years.
		I think we had one other offensive lineman who was 265, also 6'4", 6'5", maybe two.
		This year, Harvard football team, smart kids, same socioeconomic status.
		The entire offensive, they got, I think, 12 players over 300 pounds.
		Jesus Christ.
		And these guys are enormous.
		I mean, they're 6'7", 300 pounds.
		They didn't grow people that big when I was growing up.
		I mean, I could say maybe I didn't see them.
		Maybe they weren't around.
		Maybe they were 6'7", and they only weighed 230 because they weren't being bulked up, so they were playing basketball instead of football.
		I mean, I could imagine ways that that's confusing, but from our perception, if you look just what happened, when I was a kid, In the early 1960s, as far as I know, there was one 300-pounder in the NFL and AFL, two different leagues back then, Bob D. I remember his name.
		He played for the Boston Patriots, and his head was small compared to his body, and he was a big, fat guy.
		You know, what is there now?
		20, 30 per team?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's a good example.
		Big George Foreman from 1970, whatever it was, when he fought Joe Frazier.
		He only weighed 217 pounds.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Is that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		George only weighed 278 pounds?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		When he came back, he got really fat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When he came back, when he took a long time off, he ate himself to be well over 300 pounds, but he was extremely obese.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Draining all the fat from the George Foreman grill.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was even after that.
		But back in those days when he was a terror, before he fought Muhammad Ali, he was relatively small by today's standards.
		I mean, if you look at UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic, I believe Stipe walks around at about 240 pounds.
		And he's small compared to Brock Lesnar, who's 285 pounds.
		Like, here's a good example that Jamie just pulled up from 1927. God, blow your nose, man.
		You're freaking me out.
unidentified		Don't be scared.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You're the only one who can hear it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Everybody can hear it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Trust me.
		They can hear it.
		And then 190 pounds Morris Red Badgro.
		How do you say that name?
unidentified		B-A-D-G-R-O. Badgro.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Badgro.
		He's growing bad.
		That's why he's only 190. Exactly.
		He's six foot tall, 190. And this is 1927. He played offense and defense for the New York Giants.
		So that guy's 10 pounds lighter than me, and I'm 5'8".
		He's six foot tall, and he's a pro football player, which is fucking terrifying to me.
		And then you go to 1967, and you got Alan Page.
		He's six foot four, 245 pounds, a relative giant in comparison.
		Then you go to 2006, and you have, boy, say that name.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Haloti Nagata.
unidentified		Haloti Nada.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Nada?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You say Nada?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I think it's...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't pronounce the G? You don't pronounce it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		G is sign on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Haloti Nada.
		Okay, and he is 6'4", 335 pounds.
		He's got a big old gut on him.
		He could lose some weight.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Look at his 40 time, under five seconds.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow, that's insane.
		So he's a giant.
		I mean, people are just much larger.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Can you pull up the starting left tackle for the Dallas Cowboys right now?
		I forget his name.
		Just Google left tackle Dallas Cowboys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, even heavyweight boxers today.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Tyrone Smith.
		That's it.
		Get a picture of Tyrone.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		312-65.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Get a picture of him.
unidentified		Whoa!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a big fella.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Get the one with the shirt off.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, without the shirt off.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's go pornographic.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so they're not...
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I mean, people didn't exist like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		When I was growing up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		There's this new heavyweight that's fighting for the UFC. His name is Francis Ngannou.
		And he's one of the most exciting prospects in the UFC right now.
		He's a heavyweight.
		He's undefeated.
		And he is fucking enormous.
		And he is probably...
		Yeah, go to that picture right there.
		The far left.
		Far left.
		Jamie, upper left.
		Yeah.
		I mean, that is a giant, man.
		Ridiculous, brutal knockout artist, too.
		And go see if there's a Wikipedia on his size.
		But I'm pretty sure he's super lean at around 245, something like that.
		What does it say there?
		It says 6'4".
		It doesn't say his weight right there.
		Does it say his weight anywhere there?
		257. 257. Jesus!
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so he's 40 pounds heavier than Big George Foreman.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That may or may not be correct.
		As far as the weight, but it's close, and I wouldn't be shocked.
		He's one of those guys where he walks into the octagon, and when I do commentary, I sit at a desk that's touching the octagon.
		So I'm sitting here, there's a desk, my notes are on it, he's in front of me.
		When he walks in the octagon, I can feel his footsteps on my hands.
		He's like he's made out of stone.
		And then when he hits people, just Jesus Christ, you see the look on their face when he hits them.
		See if you can find just a quick highlight reel of this guy.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Now, what's interesting is some of that, I mean, training has changed dramatically.
		Oh, for sure.
		Like even when George, I mean, you know, boxers didn't...
		Lift.
		They didn't do resistance training.
		They didn't do any of that back then because they didn't want to slow them down.
		Yeah, that's what they thought back then.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, look at this.
		Boom!
		He's a giant dude.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		French, too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, French, but I believe originally from Nigeria, I believe.
		Really, look at that.
		Boom.
		Big, powerful guy.
		Terrifying guy.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So here's the thing.
		One of my pet theories I don't talk about.
		This is why I let my kids have sugar, by the way.
		Ouch.
		Okay, so one of the things that happens when you increase insulin, so sugar, the idea is sugar causes insulin resistance, that results in chronic increases in insulin levels.
		So insulin stimulates fat accumulation, but it also stimulates secretion of what's called insulin-like growth hormone, which is similar to growth hormone.
		So the reason we grow is not because growth hormone drives tissues and skeletal muscle to grow, but it drives insulin-like growth factor, which then works on a local level.
		So if you have more insulin in your system, you're going to have more insulin-like growth factor, and it's going to be more bioavailable.
		There's these proteins called binding proteins that float around the bloodstream, and they'll bind to IGF, insulin-like growth factor, and make it so it can't get into cells or can't bind to the receptors.
		So you would expect...
		As populations become more insulin resistant, you would expect them to grow, to be taller as well as thicker and fatter and more diabetic.
		One of the classic observations, as populations become westernized, they get taller.
		You look at medical records or army records from the Civil War and all the men were like 5'6".
		You know, now clearly the average height has gone up and it's kind of leveled off a bit in the United States, but there's still countries in Europe where it's gotten higher.
		And one of the things that freaks me out is when I go to Europe nowadays and walk around a lot of Scandinavians and I feel petite.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, in Holland.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The average man in Holland is over six foot tall.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, when I was growing up, I was definitively tall and now I haven't shrunk, I don't think.
		I might be getting there.
		And now it's just like everyone seems 6'4", 6'5".
		The conventional thinking is they get more calories, they get more protein, you need the protein for the growth and the calories, and that's kind of the explanation.
		But it could be that they get more sugar, and that drives vertical growth as well as horizontal growth.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that makes sense because don't bodybuilders, like in extreme situations, don't they take insulin in order to gain muscle?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because it'll drive muscle development as well.
		I mean, again, it works as a growth hormone.
		An IGF is a growth hormone.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So could there be an argument for bodybuilders to consume a diet that's high in sugar?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In order to spike up that insulin?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You know, now you're getting out of my area of expertise again.
		But it's funny, when Arnold came over in the 60s, one of the advantages he had, other than massive amounts of steroid consumption, was...
		I forget who his mentor was back then, but they put him on a very low-carb diet because that definitely cuts the fat.
		Again, this is far out of my area of expertise, but you get a bodybuilder and they'll tell you how they oscillate between high-carbs for...
		Development high fat to cut the fat and get down to...
		I had this debate.
		Do you know Alan Aragon?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know who that guy is.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so Alan, we had a debate.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he's very skeptical.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's a kind way to put it.
		And I think it's a bit of a...
		I don't get it.
		I always wanted to ask him, like, Alan, you know...
		That this isn't...
		You know, I'm arguing that...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, define his position, because he doesn't think there's any issue with sugar.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		His position is all about calories.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It's just all about calories, and you get people to exercise enough, you'll turn an obese person, lean, and, you know, I mean, the implication...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that can happen, but, you know, who the fuck is going to do it the way you would have to do it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You would essentially have to starve your body.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, but this is the point.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It's like I could...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It can be done that way.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I know, but it doesn't say anything about why they got fat to begin with.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't say anything about the damaging effects of sugar.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I could inhibit your kid's growth.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		By starving them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You know, and they're going to be stunted.
		But that doesn't mean they're growing because they get to eat as much as they want.
		They're growing because their brains are secreting growth hormone, stimulating IGF, and that makes them hungry.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what is he denying about the...
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		We were in a debate in England that it was about...
		I don't quite understand what he was denying.
		That was the interesting thing.
		He basically was denying that...
		It was about that obesity was a hormonal metabolic disorder.
		He had to deny that a journalist knows something that he doesn't and that the advice he's been giving and what he's been voicing over the years is right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is his medical background?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		He's got no medical background.
		He's a physical trainer.
		Maybe he's an exercise physiologist.
		He's no more doctor or nutritionist than I am.
		The point is I was looking for ways to debate him, so I found a clip on the internet, one of his lectures, where he was talking about how there was one particular athlete he was training, a bodybuilder, he had to get, you know, maximum cut for the competition, so he cut his carbs down.
		And if you cut the carbs preferentially, you do that because you're going to reduce insulin and you're going to mobilize maximum amount of fat and you're going to get the most possible fat out of the fat tissue by doing it.
		It clearly meant he believes what I believe.
		But some people just, you know, you've got to establish that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do you respond to that?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		He laughed.
		Everybody laughed.
		He got kind of embarrassed.
		But it was a, you know, it was an interesting debate.
		It was a fitness expo in, I forget what, you know, red brick town in England, you know, one of these...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The reason why I keep bringing him up is because I've been...
		I've been...
		I've been contacted by fans of his.
		I've been in communication with him at one point in time, and I didn't realize how strongly against this proposition he is, or this concept he is.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, you should get him to do the show.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I mean, he's a very chatty, talkative guy, and he'll explain it to you, and then you could argue, and we could argue.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But what does he say about the impact of sugar?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does he deny all these things that you're talking about in terms of diabetes?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		We did not say this in the debate, and I would hate to get Alan's position wrong, but if he's implying that obesity is an energy balance problem, it's calories in, calories out, that seemed to be the argument he was defending vociferously when we debated.
		That, in turn, means that the only way that foods can influence your body weight is through their Caloric content.
		And that means sugar is, you know, an empty calorie.
		The worst you could say about it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But that's clearly not true if sugar actually does affect your hormonal state and that affects the way your body processes fat and insulin.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		If he were to believe that, then he would have been conceding that I won the debate.
		So I'm going to say...
		Which he clearly doesn't think I did.
		And frankly, I didn't because the crowd was 100% with him when we started and it was like 95% with him when we left.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's still pretty good.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		That's what I would argue.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And I learned my lesson that you can't win a debate when you're going in and everyone sides with your...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, why did they all side with him?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because they love sugar?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Remember, it wasn't about sugar.
		It was about the cause of obesity.
		We were actually debating different things.
		It was a weird situation.
		I may have blocked it out of my head, but we were debating.
		Again, my argument, obesity, what I thought we were supposed to be debating.
		Was whether or not obesity is caused by consuming too many calories or the macronutrient contents influencing this sort of hormonal metabolic regulation of fat accumulation.
		What we ended up debating was whether or not the people in the audience would rather be trained by Alan Aragon, the physical trainer, exercise physiologist, or Gary Taubes, the journalist.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's kind of ridiculous.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It is kind of ridiculous, and it was a bizarre experience, and it was an interesting trip, and you learned your lesson.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've had those conversations with people before, and the problem with those conversations is you're taking a very simplistic approach to a very complex scenario.
		If you did work out more and if you did do all these different things, you're going to affect your body and your hormone levels.
		If you start doing deep squats with heavy weights, you start doing deadlifts, you start putting a weight vest on and hiking up hills, you're going to massively affect the way your body produces hormones.
		Your body's going to ramp up.
		It's going to deal with these new demands.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It's going to change the way you partition fuels.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Things are going to happen.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		See, it's not as simple as a lot of people like to point it out.
		And the people, they seem to want to do it as a math problem.
		You know, calories in, calories out.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I just had, I was in Altadena on Sunday talking at a skeptic society meeting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why don't they all go to Altadena?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it Michael Shermer?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Michael Shermer, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Everybody's in fucking Altadena.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And it was during the torrential rainstorms.
		It was touch and go getting there because the roads were flooded.
		But, um...
		There's one guy sitting in the audience in the front row who's a calorie restrictor.
		You know, one of these guys who eats like, he lives on 1,800 calories a day because he thinks he's going to live longer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ask him if he wants to spar.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Guy will get tired in about 20 seconds.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
		There's not a lot of...
		Well, the other thing with those guys, there's not a lot of muscle tone, right?
		Because they don't have enough calories to support the muscles anyway.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to live forever as a skeleton.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is...
		I did give a talk to the Calorie Restriction Society.
		I'm digressing again.
		This is in Novato, north of San Francisco.
		And I got one of the guys in the email afterwards said, and I was explaining that I thought all the benefits of calorie restriction come from carbohydrate restriction because there's a lot of evidence suggesting that what makes it, if it is beneficial, it's because these guys minimize insulin and IGF secretion.
		And you can minimize insulin and IGF by just not eating the carbs, and then you get to fuel the rest of your body, so you get the calories you need, you get the protein you need, you get the fat you need, you just don't eat the thing that stimulates insulin and IGF. And after the lecture, I got an email from a guy in the audience who was part of this society who said, you know, I'm going to experiment.
		I should get back with him to see what happens.
		It was like four years ago.
		He said, you look so much healthier than all of us.
		And your argument was compelling.
		And I'm going to experiment to see if maybe there's something to what you say.
		And I'm going to shift over from eating 1,800 calories of like 50% carbs to 1,800 or maybe 2,500 or who knows how many of protein and fat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I had Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the other day, and she was discussing some pretty compelling evidence about the amount of time that you eat during a day, and intermittent fasting, and the importance of only eating within a 10-hour period, from the morning you wake up to the time you stop eating, no more than 10 hours, and then the rest of your day, the remaining 14 hours, no food.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, and it's interesting because even...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But she was talking about the massive benefits of that in terms of gaining and lean muscle mass just from doing that, losing body fat just from doing that.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, I'm skeptical of everything.
		I try to be as skeptical of my ideas as others, although people say I fail.
		But I haven't read those studies closely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll get them to you.
		I'll get them to you after we get out of here.
		I'll send them to you and send you the actual podcast itself.
		I think you'll find them pretty fascinating.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and the issue is I don't doubt it works.
		I know people who had trouble losing significant weight on low-carb diets and then switched intermittent fasting and broke through their plateaus.
		There's some people I know in the field who I like who think that you might get excessive stress hormone stimulation from the fasting so that the long-term effects may not be as beneficial as a ketogenic diet where you're not...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there evidence of that?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Increased stress hormones?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You mean cortisol?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		That would be, yeah, my understanding.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I haven't paid a lot of attention to it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But is this based on people with a carbohydrate-rich diet or people who are on a fat-rich diet?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Let's Google Steve Finney, P-H-I-N-N-E-Y, and fasting.
		I love this, by the way.
		It's like having...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Pretty awesome, right?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I don't need a memory.
		All those concussions, you know?
		It doesn't matter anymore.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How many concussions did you have, buddy?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I I think between football and...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		As soon as you say, between football, I start thinking about it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Between football and boxing, I'd say five or six.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You got off light.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I did get off light.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Steve and Jay Finney on making a low-carb diet sustainable.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		But we want to do Steve Finney, try intermittent fasting.
		Let's see if we pull up low-carb preserves.
		Well, that's obvious.
		Cutting-edge fat-burning.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This doesn't make for very good podcasting.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we're done.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
		Hold on.
		The truth between the world's most cutting-edge fat-burning performance meal plan, the keto diet.
		Okay.
		Well, folks can get into that.
		You don't have much time left because you're going to have to bail soon to catch your flight.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So I don't want to make you miss your flight.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But this is another thing that people can look into once they're done listening to this.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So anyway, the interesting thing, even the intermittent fasting, the interesting thing is there's two ways to think of it.
		One is, okay, you're eating fewer calories, and that's why it works, right?
		And the other is you're maximizing the amount of time during the day when insulin and IGF are low.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But not necessarily when you're saying eating fewer calories because that's not necessarily what they're talking about.
		What they're talking about is taking time, allowing your body to process all those nutrients and not using the resources that could be developing muscle and building your body up.
		So that would account for the increase in lean muscle mass simply by following this intermittent fasting program.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Although it's interesting.
		I don't know if you had this experience when you went on the ketogenic diet.
		Because you often read, people say, well, you lose.
		I was looking at a study today that was done, a one-week study done in like 1967, where they lost more protein on the ketogenic diet than a calorie-restricted diet.
		They were all calorie-restricted.
		But when I went on this diet, it was interesting.
		My waist size went down and my jacket size went up.
		And I'm probably, my upper body, I mean, my lower body doesn't work because of, you know, cartilage and the knees and You know, the other wonderful things football left me with.
		But, you know, I'm stronger now than I was when I was in college.
		I was working out three hours a day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how old are you now?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		60. You look great.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're welcome.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You look good too, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		But, anyway, so what's the point?
		The point is...
		You know, by changing the time of what you're eating.
		And I believe you could probably eat just many calories.
		Maybe you could eat more calories by doing it.
		It's not a calorie thing.
		It's a how does your body respond to having more time at low insulin levels, basically, and more time at low IGF levels.
		And I could imagine, even in the low-carb diets when people were prescribing them, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, they used to prescribe a walk before breakfast, which is interesting because that's the time when your insulin levels are lower, so that's the time when you're really mobilizing the most fat from your fat tissue.
		So, in that sense, skipping breakfast, prolonging the amount of time before your first meal in the day, Would actually maximize his time when you're mobilizing fat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people prefer fasting cardio.
		They enjoy that.
		Waking up in the morning and having hard cardio or some sort of a hard workout first thing in the morning.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's interesting because that's the point of the day when they're most likely to be burning fat rather than glucose.
		If they're not drinking a juice or a soda beforehand, I could never do it.
		I always wanted to be able to do cardio first thing in the morning.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you certainly could.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You just don't want to.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, I end up, I'm just enervated the whole day.
		It's like I'm dragging my ass all over.
		I cannot wake up afterwards.
		It's just my body doesn't do it.
		But it's even, I got, you know, I got two kids.
		I got two boys, 11 and 8, and I feed them breakfast in the morning and I cook them dinner maybe three times a week.
		My wife's kind of a vegetarian, so I gotta cook the meat if I want them to eat animals.
		They have, their body clocks are entirely different.
		They have very different body types.
		My youngest is not hungry in the morning, and my oldest is, and my youngest at night, like if you put pasta in front of him, he would just keep eating it and eating it and eating it until you finally just say no more, you're going to blow up.
		My oldest in the evening doesn't care.
		He's not interested.
		You know, he'll eat a little bit.
		He could skip dinner even.
		Like entirely, not just body types, but timing of their hunger, which has got to be related to insulin secretion, other hormones, you know, biorhythms.
		So...
		Everyone's different in that way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, biodiversity is a very important consideration when you're talking about any kind of diet, whether it's a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet, ketogenic diet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Everybody's body responds differently to different things.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		But what I'm saying about getting back to the case against sugar is we got obese and diabetic because of the sugar and the processed grains.
		The people who became obese and diabetic...
		Did so because of the sugar and the processed grains.
		In that sense, their bodies all responded the same regardless of what their genotype was.
		And now when you want to get them back from the edge, That's where individual variation plays a role.
		I mean, that guy McDougall who pushes the starch diet, he's got people on his website who swear that they lost 100 pounds eating only potatoes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Don't you think though that a lot of people, when you start concentrating on losing weight and concentrating on being healthy and concentrating on your diet, you make a concerted effort sort of across the board.
		So if you just go, I'm only going to eat sweet potatoes and, you know, I'm going to...
		Like, just the very act of considering your diet and being conscientious has an effect.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, it has an effect in many ways.
		One of them is you do consistent things that you don't do.
		So, like, McDougall puts people on a starch diet, and Atkins puts them on a ketogenic diet, and Ornish puts them on a 10% fat, mostly vegetarian diet, and Esaltine is, you know, a low-carb diet, and none of them All of them say don't eat sugar, don't drink sodas, don't drink fruit juices, don't eat white bread.
		And they all do it for the same reason because it's going to stimulate insulin.
		And then when they benefit, you don't know if they benefited because they didn't eat meat or they didn't eat...
		You know, gluten or they didn't eat sugar and white bread and, you know.
		So the question then would become, and even if the ones who benefited, like on the McDougal diet, the thing that makes me suspicious is the people always say, I tried Atkins and it didn't work for me.
		Did they really try it?
		Did they try it, lost 60 pounds, and then went back to eating carbs and gained it back and said the diet failed?
		Did they just find it too hard to live without their pastries?
		But once McDougall came along and put them on a potato diet, or did he just tell them to say that because he wants to point out that this works for people that low-carb doesn't?
		You just never know.
		It's crazy.
		Crazy world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's very hard to tell when you're dealing with anecdotal evidence, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's very hard to tell when you're dealing with personal experiences about what someone says they did versus what they actually did.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's what nobody knows.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And one of the great flaws, I mean, there's tons, if we could talk about the flaws in nutrition research for, you know, another three hours.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That'll be our next podcast.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, it's interesting because I'm doing this talk with you.
		I've never done a, like, two-, three-hour podcast before, and you're, like, still laser-focused.
		And I could imagine.
		I think, I wouldn't want to get in the ring with you.
		I could see it happening, that exact thing that we discussed earlier about that, you know, you're needing that, like, five minutes of energy to overwhelm your opponent.
		And I could see it happening here.
		And I'm thinking, okay, if I didn't have a cold and I could breathe through my nose, I could take Joe.
		We could go for seven hours.
		I could wear him out.
		And if it gets bad, we'll take out the drugs and the tequila and we'll see, you know.
		Although he's probably got, you know, I've got to get back in shape there.
		But anyway, it's interesting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Get back in drug shape?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's been a long time.
		I got a certain, you know, establishment veneer that I gotta present to the world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I'm responsible.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I gotta get people who wear jackets and ties and, you know, button-down shirts from Brooks Brothers to take me seriously.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Believe me, as weird as it sounds, a lot of those fuckers are listening right now.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		That's good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And have been for a while.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is a really important subject, and let's just wrap this up here because I just want to thank you very much for writing that book and taking the time To put in that research against probably a lot of people's advice.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Just my wife.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it worked out.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And my in-laws.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Overall, you've made a substantial impact.
		And like I said, at least half a dozen people that I deeply respect have recommended your work.
		And I'm really glad we got a chance to sit down and talk about this.
		And I think a lot of people are going to benefit from this podcast.
		And this is one thing that's just sort of piling on top of a massive amount of data that's now available to people.
		That lets them make better food choices.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the one thing I was going to say is what's really been the Trump...
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I can't use that word.
unidentified		Whoops!
unidentified		Jesus!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He fucked up Trump card!
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yes, he's out.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		What's really pushed, you know, what allows us to win, okay, which we couldn't win 50 years ago as the internet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And that and people can try these diets.
		Remember I said, you know, we're dealt four aces.
		The fact is you go on these diets, it helps people and it helps them a lot.
		Not everyone.
		And we got distracted and some people, I don't know, maybe some people just have bad reactions to cutting out all the carbs.
		But for most people, some significant proportion, they give up the carbs, they're healthier.
		And then they can talk about it on the internet and they can share with people and they don't have to live in the same town or go to the same school.
		And so the word gets out and then other people want to be And, you know, even with physicians, it's like I got these doctors saying, you made medicine fun for me again because I can help people.
		And that, too, gets spread around the Internet.
		And, you know, you create clusters and Facebook groups.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You create momentum.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		And you break out of the gatekeepers.
		It's no longer just, did I or did I not get into the medical journal?
		Was I influent enough to write this review?
		It's like, wait a minute, you said this, but...
		Look at what happened to my neighbor.
		I want that to happen to me.
		And so you get this kind of revolution.
		It's slow, and it takes time, and there's a lot of resistance.
		And the vegetarian community, they resist it because the implication is That a lot of people will be healthier if they eat animals.
		It's micropollens, you know, eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
		And for the obese, diabetic individuals in the country, which represent virtually 50% of Americans, maybe mostly animals.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm hoping, though, that with...
		I mean, there's been some really significant breakthroughs over the last few years with factory-produced meat that does not involve any animals dying.
		I mean, they can take initial meat from a dead animal and reproduce it in factories.
		And I think we're probably just a couple of years away from mass production or something like that.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's interesting.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		One of the things that worry me is they're going to make low-fat meat, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, maybe with what's going on right now and the understanding that people have today versus what they had only five or six years ago, I mean, I think there's probably going to be a market for high-fat meat.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I hope so.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm going to wait for you to try it and tell me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm not eating that shit.
		I have the benefit of being a hunter, so I kill my own meat, and it's as healthy as it gets.
		But I sympathize.
		I completely understand where the vegetarians and the vegans come from.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I get it, and I admire them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		More the vegetarians, because I really feel like anybody could eat naturally sourced eggs.
		Like, I have chickens, and they don't get harmed by me eating their eggs at all.
		They live a natural life, and everything's fine.
		There's no cruelty involved whatsoever, and those eggs are extremely healthy and beneficial.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's some of the best emails I ever got were from vegetarians who said, you know, I read your stuff.
		I didn't want to like it.
		I thought I'm intellectually open.
		I'll read a couple chapters, decide it's full of shit, and then I'll be able to close it.
		And much to my dismay, I found your argument compelling.
		Some of them start eating meat again.
		Some of them just add eggs back to their diet and get rid of the sugar and the crap and find that they're healthier and happier and they feel better.
		That, to me, when you see somebody say, hey, I get it.
		I do see your point.
		I can change.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I feel like for people, eggs are the best compromise because you can easily digest them.
		There's very few issues whatsoever with that.
		And again, if you have a yard, you could have your own chickens.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Well, not only that, you can make it quick.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you could scramble four eggs in the morning in almost as much time as it takes to pour cereal into a bowl and get the milk out of the refrigerator.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, yeah.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		So it's not like I don't have time to eat.
		They don't take a lot of work to be good.
		Some people, I mean, my oldest son, I can't get them to eat an egg unless it's got matzo mixed in and maple syrup poured on it.
		But I don't know what it is.
		Again, it's one of these things that's like it's poison to them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Listen, Gary, thanks so much for being here.
		I really, really appreciate it.
		And I urge anyone listening to this to check out Gary's book, The Case Against Sugar.
		And anything else?
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		No, that's it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I really appreciate it.
gary taubes ▲ ● ▼		It's cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Alright folks, we'll be back tomorrow with Shane Smith from Vice.

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