The Art of Manliness - A Surprising Theory on Why We Get Fat

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now there are two

00:00:11.380 dominant theories as to why westerners have gotten increasingly obese in the last 50 years

00:00:15.800 one is that we're eating too many carbs and carbs make us fat another is that our primitive appetite

00:00:20.440 which is wired to gorge on calorically dense foods as a survival mechanism is misaligned with

00:00:25.340 a modern landscape in which food is available in an overabundance my guest today says that there's

00:00:30.620 too much evidence which contradicts these theories for them to completely explain the problem of weight

00:00:34.940 gain and forwards a different and quite surprising theory as to what may be going on instead his name

00:00:40.440 is mark schatzker and he's the author of the end of craving recovering the lost wisdom of eating well

00:00:44.920 in order to arrive at mark's theory on the rise in obesity we first unpack several pieces of the

00:00:49.420 puzzle each fascinating in its own right we discuss how the body rather than having a natural propensity

00:00:54.180 to gain weight actually typically wants to stay at a healthy set point the difference between

00:00:57.720 wanting and liking and how obese people crave more food but enjoy it less and why it is that humans

00:01:03.140 take pleasure in eating we then get into how food additives like artificial sweeteners and strangely

00:01:08.300 enough even certain vitamins may be shifting the body set point increasing people's craving for food

00:01:13.280 and triggering weight gain we enter conversation with mark's counterintuitive call to fight obesity by

00:01:17.720 thoroughly enjoying truly delicious food after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:21.880 aom.is craving all right mark shakster welcome to the show thank you so much for having me so you

00:01:40.280 got a new book out called the end of craving where you explore another theory that's out there now about

00:01:47.460 why westerners have been gaining weight for the past half century and this new theory i mean well

00:01:55.000 we'll get to it but it is it's kind of mind-blowing i'm still i'm still in shock about it so uh hopefully

00:02:01.140 you can explain it but before we get to that this theory you put out in your book end of craving

00:02:05.880 let's talk about the different theories that are out there right now to explain why westerners have

00:02:10.620 been gaining weight for the past 50 60 years so one idea is that it's the increased consumption of

00:02:16.480 carbohydrates that's been driving the increase in obesity can you walk us through this theory and

00:02:20.660 what does the research say about the carbohydrate driven idea of obesity yeah and and it's i think

00:02:27.000 it's best to understand it in its historical context and that's sort of in in line with you

00:02:31.320 might call the like what i call the wrong fuel theory of of weight gain or kind of like these

00:02:36.060 nutrient wars so in the 70s we started fighting this war over fat in the 80s i grew up in the 80s and we

00:02:42.160 were just very conscious of fat low fat there's too much fat fat makes you fat and then we had this

00:02:47.580 cultural kind of realization that this was not working and in the early 90s and progressed from

00:02:53.440 there this idea that we had it all wrong in fact it was carbohydrates that were causing obesity

00:02:57.880 and overnight the thing on this really changed and at first it was kind of a fad diet this idea that you

00:03:03.240 could eat kind of unlimited bacon and steak and cheese and lose weight but over time this this gained

00:03:09.720 legitimacy and it became known as the carbohydrate insulin model and it has everything to do with

00:03:14.640 insulin it's in the name which is a hormone that regulates energy metabolism so so basically when you

00:03:20.540 eat food the pancreas secretes insulin and fuel sugar and fat is taken up into cells and then as

00:03:26.640 insulin levels drop this fuel goes back into your bloodstream the carbohydrate insulin model says that

00:03:32.320 when you eat a diet excessively high in carbs particularly refined carbohydrates what happens is you get

00:03:38.060 these secretions of insulin that are just too big and this not only causes blood sugar to drop it causes

00:03:43.640 fat to be taken up into cells and it inhibits fat from being released and being burned so what then

00:03:49.720 happens is you have the state of internal starvation there's no fat in your bloodstream there's no sugar

00:03:54.860 in your bloodstream so you're starving you eat again what do you eat you eat more carbs and the whole

00:04:00.260 thing repeats itself you get into this vicious cycle of of eating not being satisfied becoming

00:04:05.300 ravenously hungry fatigued and then you you eat again so that was this kind of insight into where

00:04:12.480 our diet went wrong so that's the carbohydrate insulin model you also to highlight another idea

00:04:18.260 of why we've been gaining weight and you call it the hungry ape theory what's that yes and i mean to be

00:04:23.280 fair there's lots and lots of theories but i guess this is what i would say is also kind of culturally

00:04:27.140 prevalent at the moment and that's my coinage the hungry ape theory scientifically this i guess you

00:04:33.280 could say part of this theory is the thrifty gene hypothesis and that's the idea that historically

00:04:37.560 as we were evolving you know starvation or famine just not getting access to food was a real you know

00:04:44.540 present danger so anybody who had the ability to store some extra calories as fat would have an

00:04:50.620 advantage because when these times of of starvation or you know not enough food came around you could

00:04:55.560 wait it out you could survive where somebody who didn't have that stored fat died so the idea is that

00:05:00.080 this became baked into our genes this this inclination to store calories as fat gotcha so those are

00:05:06.700 like the i guess the two main theories you see out there these days yeah and i would say the reason i

00:05:10.600 call it the hungry ape is because it goes beyond that there's this idea now that we're just sort of

00:05:14.700 we have this primitive appetite that was molded by evolution that just isn't suited to the modern world

00:05:20.420 where you know we're surrounded by junk food and and fast food and potato chips all the time

00:05:26.400 so it's kind of like you know primitive brain primitive appetite ultra modern world with too

00:05:32.240 many calories and we're just overwhelmed so there's research out there that supports both of

00:05:36.300 these models of why we gain weight but is there any contradictory research out there that shows

00:05:40.880 that maybe these theories don't explain what's happening so the carbohydrate insulin model you know

00:05:45.280 that became very culturally prevalent very popular there's been different versions of it there was

00:05:49.880 paleo keto but they're all kind of you know stem from the same initial thought and there has been

00:05:55.540 studies done on it i pointed to in the book there's one that was done by kevin hall in which he's a

00:06:01.060 researcher at the national institutes of health and he brought people into kind of a hotel laboratory

00:06:06.800 setting it's called a metabolic ward where he could just rigidly control their diet and he looked to see

00:06:13.360 if there was some kind of a metabolic difference between when people were on a high carbohydrate diet

00:06:17.860 versus a high fat diet and what he found was there really wasn't much of a difference at all

00:06:22.520 if anything the the low fat high carb diet had just a tiny tiny advantage but it was such a small

00:06:28.860 advantage as to you know almost be academic what he found so interesting about that study

00:06:33.820 was that these two very different fuels were were used so similarly by the body he said it's almost like

00:06:40.540 if you could put regular gas in your car and diesel and your car would run exactly the same there's

00:06:45.820 another study i point to called diet fits and that was run by a researcher at stanford named christopher

00:06:50.500 gardener very well respected researcher and this wasn't done in a lab with a handful of people this was

00:06:55.240 done with hundreds of people free living they were out there in the real world and some of them were on

00:07:00.400 a healthy low fat diet and some of them were on a healthy low carb diet and again the the idea was to

00:07:06.080 see does does one of these you know nutrient specific diets have a particular advantage a particular

00:07:11.740 affinity and what he found again was just like kevin hall that boy they look exactly the same and it was

00:07:16.920 kind of interesting because people you know this roughly the same number of people did really well

00:07:21.500 on either diet the same number did okay and and oddly in both groups there was actually people who

00:07:26.020 gained a tremendous amount of weight on both of these diets to look at the the kind of the bar graphs of

00:07:32.760 each diet side by side they look almost identical so those are just two studies i point to but the truth

00:07:38.260 is there's been lots and lots of studies this has really been tested and tested vigorously and the evidence

00:07:44.020 just doesn't seem to show that the carbohydrate insulin model holds up yeah some other research

00:07:49.460 i've seen done is you know people somehow they're able scientists are able to study how much carbs we

00:07:54.560 consume as a society they're able to figure that out and it's decreased in the past 15 to 10 years

00:08:01.380 like significantly like a big reduction and i think it's because that new cultural norm that you know

00:08:05.740 carbohydrates make you fat sugar makes you fat like even sugar consumption has gone down it has

00:08:10.740 exactly it's amazing actually sugar consumption has gone down you know bread consumption took a real

00:08:15.140 hit you know we did respond and funnily enough this also happened in the 80s when we got freaked out

00:08:20.220 about fat we started ramping up our carbohydrate intake now what was interesting in the 80s is that

00:08:25.600 even though we were trying not to eat fat we sort of fat consumption stayed even but to me the

00:08:30.860 interesting lesson about all these things is that it doesn't seem what we change in our diet we always

00:08:36.660 find some means of eating more food and that's that's kind of where i see the smoke and the fire

00:08:42.620 and that's also kind of more troubling and then in the book you start off talking about northern italy

00:08:47.540 people in northern italy they eat a very a diet heavy in carbohydrates heavy in fatty meats they love

00:08:54.920 sausage you know stuff cooked with milk and cream and you think man they you they would be fat but

00:09:03.000 they're not this jumped out at me i was so stunned particularly that nobody had really written about

00:09:08.160 this before because um i mean let's just think for a moment with all the kind of nutrition and stats

00:09:12.940 aside just think about italian food think about the incredible richness the culinary richness that

00:09:18.660 italy has given the world there's so many amazingly delicious things you can think of that come from

00:09:22.820 italy pizza foremost among them lasagna risotto olive oil all the different pastas the most

00:09:29.180 interesting thing i found well there's there was a ton but one of them is that you know all of italy is

00:09:35.040 kind of like a culinary powerhouse it doesn't matter where you go but bologna is considered some people

00:09:39.940 considered sort of the culinary heartland of italy and they are they have what almost appears culturally

00:09:45.720 like a food obsession in bologna there are groups of people that seem almost like religious orders

00:09:52.760 there's a group called the apostles of the italia tella the italia tella is is this noodle it's kind of

00:09:58.120 looks like fettuccine but it's fresh it's made with eggs and this is a group they call themselves

00:10:02.480 the apostles it's like they sing the praises they spread the gospel of this noodle there is another

00:10:09.700 group that it's called the the brotherhood of the tortellino so we know tortellini that's the plural

00:10:15.120 this ring of stuffed pasta they dress in saffron colored robes and the leader wears a medallion

00:10:21.960 they're absolutely devoted to this what is fundamentally a blend of refined carbs and fat

00:10:28.360 and that is what you can see of so much of northern italian food and some people think like what are you

00:10:32.860 talking about italy's the mediterranean diet but that's not true of the north in southern italy they

00:10:38.180 eat something much closer to a mediterranean diet more olive oil more fish but they are oddly there's

00:10:44.240 more obesity in southern italy they weigh more than the northerners the northerners eat what seems on

00:10:48.440 paper like the worst possible diet because they're eating the two things we've been pretty much

00:10:52.760 convinced are the culprit fat and carbs so it just seems like this is a culture super engineered for

00:11:00.860 obesity their food is the most delicious in the world they seem to revel in these artful combinations

00:11:06.340 of carbs and fat and their rate of obesity is less than 10 percent which is mind-blowing the last time

00:11:12.680 the cdc released statistics for america it was 42 percent that was before the pandemic we know it's

00:11:18.740 been increasing so it's i mean it's almost hard to wrap your mind around okay and i mean do we know

00:11:25.020 like do they eat a comparable amount of calories i mean are americans just eating more calories than

00:11:29.120 the italians yes we're eating more calories i would say they're eating more delicious calories but

00:11:34.040 they're not eating as much of them and yet these are very it's very very delicious food so this this

00:11:39.820 seems to be contrary to this idea particularly this kind of hungry ape sort of idea that we're

00:11:45.020 wired for calories there's this idea we come out of the womb almost addicted to carbs and fat and we

00:11:50.900 can never really get our fill what's going on in italy suggests that doesn't seem to work that way at

00:11:55.680 least not there so like i mean the idea is like if food tastes really good we're going to get to this

00:12:00.160 like food tastes really good the idea is well if it tastes really good you're going to want to eat more

00:12:03.220 of it you're going to crave it more so you'll eat more of it that doesn't seem to be happening in

00:12:08.040 italy no exactly this idea that deliciousness is our undoing that the appetite must be curbed that

00:12:14.000 that uh that you know the pleasures of eating take us to a bad place that seems to you know not be

00:12:20.200 true in italy okay so the it's not carbohydrates not until maybe i mean maybe there's something to

00:12:25.180 that you're not you don't discount it completely in the book maybe there's something to the hungry

00:12:28.760 ape theory but doesn't explain it completely well and i'll tell you the one thing i'll say about

00:12:33.180 the hungry ape theory which i think it's kind of wrong so it's important to understand where this

00:12:37.120 comes from calories were very important to human evolution millions of years ago our brain was

00:12:42.360 about a third the size it is now and we had a much longer digestive tract so we could brains are

00:12:48.500 energy hogs but that kind of smaller brain meant that we could fuel it with um let's say less energy

00:12:54.260 dense food like uh leaves you know roots uh that those kinds of things as we evolved a trade-off took

00:13:01.680 place our brain got bigger and our digestive tract got smaller so we had this big brain that's this big

00:13:07.000 energy hog well that meant that we had to ramp up to a more energy dense kind of food so we started

00:13:11.780 eating fatty meat seeds fruit so you know rich dense calories became necessary for us and i think this

00:13:19.620 is the reason people think oh we're we're kind of wired for calories but there's something really

00:13:24.340 important that people don't consider which is that as we evolved as the brain got bigger and we ate this

00:13:30.360 diet that was richer in calories that gave us the luxury of not eating it meant we could spend a

00:13:36.720 smaller portion of the day eating but we had this ability to say okay i'm gonna stop eating and i'm

00:13:42.380 going to do something else and these are all the things that made us human we could build structures

00:13:46.880 we could craft tools we could craft clothing we could tell stories create myths so what's really

00:13:53.000 interesting to me about this is that when you think of our former more prehistoric selves it's like they

00:13:58.080 were more addicted to food they were eating all day they were like cows they spent so much of their

00:14:02.940 time consumed in getting food and eating that food spending an awful lot of time just chewing food

00:14:08.800 as we developed and we started eating richer you know food that was richer in calories that gave us the

00:14:16.020 ability to say okay i'm gonna not eat i'm gonna go do other things so i think implicit within that is this

00:14:22.360 idea that we're not you know gripped by this fixation with food that we can turn that off

00:14:28.240 and do other things so to me that's kind of the the the problem with that kind of thrifty gene or hungry

00:14:34.640 ape theory gotcha and then to add to you know this kind of evidence against the the thrifty gene theory

00:14:42.380 of why we gain weight you highlight all this i think forgotten research and studies have been done on the

00:14:48.220 human body that shows the human body is actually really good at maintaining a certain weight i mean

00:14:53.300 it has this like a sophisticated measurement tools all throughout the body so it doesn't go too much

00:14:58.840 above or too much below a certain weight so can you walk us through these studies done by scientists i

00:15:03.840 think one guy was named kabank and then there's another guy hirsch that showed the human body actually

00:15:09.100 stubbornly fights weight loss and weight gain yeah this is a fascinating vein of research it's amazing to me

00:15:16.600 that this isn't better known i think one of the reasons is that once you once you realize how

00:15:20.800 things really work you really start to question the whole possibility of these fad diets that we

00:15:25.660 we constantly go through but but let me get into it uh you mentioned michelle kabank so it started with

00:15:30.800 him with body temperature and and i'll start there because i think it's important he had this revelation

00:15:35.720 when he was at a very early point in his career he was he'd been doing kind of an experiment on himself

00:15:42.680 raising his own internal body temperature and he's really hot and he had this other subject

00:15:46.340 coming to the lab and he had to like scrub out the bathtub and so he scrubbed it out and he was

00:15:50.480 like sweating and he's hot and then he turns on the cold water to rinse it out and he and it flows

00:15:55.880 over his hand and for a moment he has this thought he goes oh gosh that feels wonderful and then he

00:16:00.380 realizes that doesn't make sense because according to the textbooks of the time water that cold

00:16:05.580 was supposed to feel unpleasant so the theory at the time was that whether water felt good or bad

00:16:11.740 all had to do with skin temperature if it was above skin temperature or below skin temperature it didn't

00:16:16.860 feel good but it was right around skin temperature it felt great so he had this revelation and what he

00:16:22.380 realized was that it didn't have to do with skin temperature it had to do with the what he calls

00:16:26.620 the internal milieu or what's going on inside when his body temperature was elevated cold water felt

00:16:33.560 good but then he'd he then reverse it and dump ice water into the bath and he'd make the subject cold

00:16:39.420 and then all of a sudden hot water feels good so what he found was two important things one is that

00:16:44.900 there is this internal calculation taking place that that what we crave what we want can change depending

00:16:52.620 on the internal milieu and then this other really important idea that what we need feels good when we need

00:16:59.660 to cool down cold water feels good when we need to warm up hot water feels good so then some years

00:17:07.340 after that he applied this idea to body weight because he thought you know this whole you know

00:17:11.600 for him his kind of body weight had always sort of been in sync with what he needed you know he ate what

00:17:16.160 he liked he loved many of the delicacies of france but he never really thought all that much about what

00:17:21.020 he ate you know when he was hungry he ate when he wasn't hungry he didn't eat and he'd always kind of

00:17:25.040 weight around 150 pounds so it seemed as though if if the brain manages body weight it was doing a

00:17:30.580 pretty good job in his case but then there was the case of obesity and said why would it be that people

00:17:35.020 seem to be you know eating more than they would need to so he did some very interesting experiments

00:17:39.860 um he had one of his you know colleagues come to the office one day and just gave him a whole bunch

00:17:44.640 of caramel toffee candies and the first this guy had been hadn't eaten since the day before first

00:17:49.860 toffee tasted great second toffee tasted great eventually they tasted terrible which is interesting

00:17:54.740 you think what something can go from tasting great to tasting terrible so it seems like something's

00:17:58.340 going on so he said well maybe you just get kind of bored of the taste so then he tried it with sugar

00:18:03.460 water and he found that sugar water too we get bored of but there was something important only if it's

00:18:09.220 swallowed so that demonstrated to him that it isn't just the taste of food that has to do with our

00:18:14.960 appetite it's also something happens after once it goes into the stomach something happens this is called a

00:18:19.880 post-ingestive effect something that happens after you eat so then he did a really interesting study with a

00:18:25.520 group of friends they basically starved themselves and early on they found as many dieters find no problem

00:18:32.200 the pounds seem to melt away you fit into your old clothes but then he kind of hit this wall it was so hard

00:18:38.500 to lose weight and it became this all-consuming ordeal he would have dreams of gorging on food he would take his

00:18:46.160 watch off when he went to weigh himself and he was just fighting this war of attrition with ounces but

00:18:51.420 he finally reached his goal i think he went from 150 pounds down to 138 pounds and then he just started

00:18:57.100 eating again they they had this massive feast at a restaurant called uh loberge savoyard and then for

00:19:03.000 the the weeks that followed he just ate and he was hungry and he would gorge himself and he came right

00:19:07.280 back up to 150 pounds and then bang it stopped he came back to his old weight and then it's like his

00:19:12.280 appetite just lessened and he was himself again so it's as though his body wanted to be 150 pounds

00:19:19.160 and what he called that is a set point it's kind of like body temperature your body seems to have a

00:19:25.160 preferred weight well he's not the only one who found that a very important researcher in in the

00:19:29.920 history of this area is his name's jules hirsch he found a similar thing he at rockefeller university

00:19:35.620 he had four extremely obese subjects and he had them lose weight by giving them a liquid diet and it

00:19:41.380 worked really well they lost weight and came to an end and you know they were kind of released you

00:19:45.140 can go home now and they all you know really look forward to their thinner happier lives and you know

00:19:51.180 they gained it all back they came right back to where they were this fueled a very interesting body

00:19:57.140 of research where they found that people even people when they are overweight or obese when they lose

00:20:03.220 weight it's as though they're starving they their white blood cells their white blood cell count drops

00:20:09.360 they became anxious they become depressed they become sensitive to cold and they become absolutely

00:20:13.820 gripped by the thought of eating very similar to studies in which people actually are starved it's

00:20:19.800 so it's it's like an identical response even though they're not nearly in the same kind of depleted state

00:20:26.460 but they experience it the same way but interestingly enough they found it works the other way too

00:20:31.440 that people are resistant to overfeeding and this is the big surprise because everybody thinks you know i could

00:20:36.640 eat and eat and eat my stomach is like an unfillable pit but they find in overfeeding studies there's a

00:20:42.440 scientist named ethan sims he he tried to get rodents fat he couldn't if he if he really force fed them he

00:20:48.580 could get them fat but then they'd lose their weight like they would bounce back to set point he tried it

00:20:52.580 with humans he tried to get college students you know college students are always short of money and

00:20:56.080 hungry couldn't get them to put on weight so he had to go to a prison and it it turned out that this

00:21:01.500 being fed these extra calories was so unpleasant that even prisoners would drop out of the study

00:21:06.420 and what he found is that you know they were eating just an incredible amount of calories 10 000

00:21:11.460 calories per day but their weight only increased by 25 which didn't seem enough it seemed that they

00:21:16.580 were burning extra calories like their metabolism was fighting extra hard to get rid of these calories

00:21:21.900 and then when that study came to an end they came back to set point so it was even found jules

00:21:28.840 hirsch did a later experiment we found it even works that way with obese people that this isn't

00:21:33.240 just something you find with people who are trim that they resist weight gain he found it's even true

00:21:38.220 of people with obesity so that really suggests there is some you know physiological regulation of body

00:21:45.580 weight well so yeah and then you also highlight there's like a tribe in africa where the men they

00:21:49.880 had to get really fat and so they'll just force feed themselves for months they just yes yes these are

00:21:55.020 the masa people of cameroon and chad it is considered a sign of virility for young men to

00:22:00.420 have this buttery rich layer of fat on their body so some of them the wealthy ones engage in something

00:22:06.160 called the guru walla where they'll sit in kind of a little you know tent all day and just stuff

00:22:13.640 themselves full of sorghum loaf full of milk all that they can only leave to basically milk a cow or go to

00:22:20.000 the bathroom and this is so difficult they have to kind of hold their head in a particular position

00:22:25.360 to make sure they don't vomit and and i mean some of the weight gain is spectacular there was one i think

00:22:30.880 in the course of a single day he ate the caloric equivalent of more than 30 big macs and they put on

00:22:36.580 serious weight you know 30 pounds but amazingly they lose it all they achieve this you know buttery rich

00:22:43.820 layer of fat hopefully they you know they find a spouse but then over time it just goes away

00:22:48.200 they want more than anything to be fat they are unlike us they they crave to be fat and they and

00:22:53.920 they can't their their wish is denied by this this seeming rule of physiology well so let's talk about

00:23:00.360 you know people who get obese so these guys who've noticed like okay there's like a set point it sounds

00:23:05.060 like there's like a shift in the set point for people who are overweight do they know like what causes

00:23:10.780 that shift no this is the burning question what is it that causes the body to defend a higher set

00:23:16.540 point i would say this is the most salient question in in this area of research and you know this is

00:23:22.140 what people are trying to figure out this is what this book became a hunt for is what is it that is

00:23:26.780 making us eat more what is it that is pushing body weight up okay so after talking about you know

00:23:33.220 theories of weight gain and how our body regulates weight gain or weight loss you take a detour into the

00:23:38.480 science of pleasure and you walk readers through the difference between wanting something and liking

00:23:44.760 something so what's the distinction and how does this difference show up when it comes to our food

00:23:49.900 yeah it's that's great and the reason i think this is so important because i mentioned earlier with

00:23:54.440 michelle kabinak that he found the urges the urge to to get warm when you're cold or to stay cool when

00:24:00.360 you're hot is the way what propels us to do that is pleasure he calls it you know the motor that that

00:24:06.200 drives human existence something i'm misquoting but it's something like that that pleasure is essentially

00:24:11.740 what gets us to do things so that that study in itself what scientists call hedonics is very

00:24:17.620 interesting and we've probably seen some of those um images on tv like documentaries where they will

00:24:21.980 stick like very thin wires into a rodent's brain into what they call the pleasure center and they can

00:24:26.620 you know the rodent will just drop everything and just sit there and want to be you know pleasured by

00:24:31.040 these electrical impulses so that research was done in the 1950s and then they subsequently found

00:24:36.480 that there was a neurotransmitter at work like a brain chemical called dopamine this is the it's in

00:24:41.920 what's called the limbic system and dopamine was considered the pleasure chemical it was like you know

00:24:47.940 yeah like like if you could you know make pleasure this kind of nectar it was dopamine it was this

00:24:55.120 chemical that was euphoria that was essentially just feeling good so in the 1980s there was a scientist by

00:25:01.800 the name of kent barrage who was an absolute believer in this theory that dopamine was pleasure

00:25:07.120 and like all scientists he he endeavored to do more research to show that this was true so what he did

00:25:12.960 was he used drugs to you know reduce dopamine in rodents and then he fired sugar water into their

00:25:19.060 mouth and what he assumed was going to happen if dopamine is pleasure that that sugar water will lose

00:25:24.960 its ability to you know to be delicious and and rodents show this when they're given something tasty

00:25:29.720 they kind of lick their paws or they stick their tongue out it's kind of like them going that's

00:25:33.700 yummy so he thought okay i'm going to lower dopamine and do that and lo and behold the rats

00:25:39.800 that the mice found that this was yummy and he's like he just assumed he must have made some mistake

00:25:45.200 that's not how it works he did it again the same thing happened so this time he he opted for heavier

00:25:51.460 artillery he lesioned the rats which is to say he destroyed this dopamine area of the brain and now they

00:25:57.840 they were truly in a kind of utterly beige like existence just utterly listless nothing seemed

00:26:04.080 to you know life was just drained of all pleasure and he was utterly sure now that firing sugar water

00:26:11.840 into their mouth is going to produce absolutely no effect and yet amazingly you know in this incredibly

00:26:18.220 almost morbid condition it still tasted good they would still stick their tongue out and lick their

00:26:23.860 paws he's like what is going on so then he decided to do something different he jacked up dopamine he

00:26:30.260 revved it up well this time the rats just ate voraciously they were eating and eating and eating

00:26:35.760 and yet even that didn't turn out quite right because as they were gorging themselves they would

00:26:40.380 make the reverse facial expression as though they were gagging and going i can't stop eating but this

00:26:44.400 is absolutely awful this made absolutely no sense at the time he had you know difficulty being

00:26:51.300 recognized as a scientist people would avoid him at conferences because what he was saying was just

00:26:55.720 so unorthodox that how could it be that dopamine wasn't pleasure but the evidence kept pouring in

00:27:02.080 and even in humans some treatments for parkinson's disease elevate dopamine in the brain because

00:27:08.120 dopamine is also involved in movement and what those patients would find is they would do the

00:27:12.480 strangest thing one of them just you know on a large just dismantled his fridge they would do things

00:27:17.660 like play scratch cards they would want to gamble they would pester their wives for sex they would

00:27:23.100 visit prostitutes they would watch pornography but they always insisted that there was actually no

00:27:28.760 pleasure taking place that this is something they wanted to do but didn't enjoy it and eventually

00:27:33.440 kent baird figured out what was going on and it's that this idea we think of as pleasure actually has

00:27:38.980 two parts that what there's what he calls is wanting and this is desire this is kind of like a

00:27:44.400 missile tracking part of the brain that when we see something we want it tracks it and we are drawn

00:27:49.740 to it and then there's what he calls liking which is the pleasure impact moment and that is when the

00:27:55.260 sugar water lands in the rat's mouth and they're they're both part of the same reward system but they

00:28:01.300 are independent and they're not always in sync i mean we know this basically because sometimes we want

00:28:06.460 something and don't like it but on a more fundamental level the question he began to ask was maybe it's

00:28:12.200 possible that though these things work it's a system that does work maybe this is where things can kind

00:28:18.820 of come unhinged and that was that was the fundamental question he asked and the first area he looked at

00:28:25.180 wasn't food it was actually you know the most famous example of pleasure gone wrong and that's drug

00:28:31.100 addiction right and so yeah there's a lot of drug addicts they they talk about they want drugs they have

00:28:36.480 a craving for it but when they actually do it they don't enjoy it like they exactly and that is what's so

00:28:40.680 important to recognize about addiction and so his his research really revolutionized our our

00:28:46.140 understanding of addiction prior to that one of the main ideas about addiction was that it was because

00:28:50.800 of withdrawal that because of the horrible experience of withdrawal people just keep doing drugs but that

00:28:55.460 didn't really make sense because you know people could be you know they'll have gone clean for a decade

00:29:00.380 and then one day they just get this craving for a drug and they relapse the other idea was that drugs get

00:29:05.720 you high and that's why people do drugs but addicts said like that's not true like these drugs don't get me

00:29:10.760 high anymore they know better than anybody else that it's ruining their life and what they would say is that

00:29:17.020 the the kind of the theme of addiction was craving and that's what kent barrage found is looking at you know

00:29:23.280 brain scans of addicts they would find that these these cues for drugs a picture of a syringe say or of a

00:29:29.260 crack pipe or something you would get this huge spike of dopamine which is wanting now initially

00:29:34.800 kent barrage thought this has absolutely nothing to do with food and this is important because a lot

00:29:39.240 of people talk about food addiction we talk as though food is just like drugs but there's something

00:29:43.520 that drugs do that food doesn't do is drugs get beyond the blood brain barrier and really tinker

00:29:48.380 with these neurotransmitters that are involved in what we call reward they're just getting right into the

00:29:53.960 machinery and messing stuff up food doesn't do that we experience food when we sense it when we

00:30:00.420 taste it when we smell it so for that reason he he thought food is very different but then he became

00:30:07.220 convinced when he saw some some research looking at people with binge eating disorder and he found that

00:30:12.400 it was very similar to the people who struggle with with drug addiction which is to say they had this

00:30:17.340 incredible desire that seemed disconnected from the actual pleasure that they would experience

00:30:23.880 and this is something that we learn about obesity as well the stigma about people with obesity is

00:30:29.360 that they're just pleasure seekers that they indulge themselves they don't know when to say no

00:30:33.000 but the neuroscience shows us that that's not what's going on you know compared to trim people

00:30:37.680 they actually seem to experience less pleasure from food what really distinguishes the experience of food

00:30:43.160 for them is the craving for it so if they see a picture of a milkshake the milkshake it just absolutely

00:30:49.560 animates them with a craving they want that milkshake when they actually taste it

00:30:53.040 the pleasure they receive doesn't come anywhere close to matching that incredible desire they had

00:30:58.240 for it we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors and now back to the show we're

00:31:06.080 getting closer and closer to this idea of your theory of what's causing people to gain weight

00:31:09.560 so i can understand why we'd want to crave food like why we want to want food say your body is like you

00:31:15.280 need to eat something or you're going to you're going to starve so you have that desire

00:31:18.480 so i mean you would think it wouldn't really matter like what food tastes like right as long

00:31:23.040 as it has calories that should be fine right i mean it's like you talk about you give the example

00:31:27.660 of a snake a snake doesn't actually doesn't taste anything it just swallows the rat hole and it gets

00:31:32.700 the calories and it's done because it has that craving for calories the body saying you need you need

00:31:37.380 food humans can taste why do we even experience pleasure when we eat if all you need is that craving if

00:31:43.580 your body can send out signal okay you're depleting on calories go consume something and then craving

00:31:48.720 satisfied why do we even experience pleasure in the first place when we eat that became one of the

00:31:53.480 most interesting questions to me because you know what kent barrage found was that there's this this

00:31:58.340 other part of the brain this liking part that doesn't run on dopamine it runs on opioids which is

00:32:03.580 like what's in heroin and i kind of assumed that you know all animals have this right you want food and

00:32:09.140 then you like it but it turns out in this respect humans are abnormal most creatures out there in the

00:32:13.760 world they just run on dopamine it's it's a much more simple system it's a little bit kind of like

00:32:18.280 a thermostat that when something goes off let's say body temperature is too low so you experience the

00:32:24.620 desire to go and return body temperature to normal when it gets back to normal the desire turns off

00:32:30.520 the same thing with food it's like my my fat stores or my blood sugar levels are down so there's this

00:32:36.180 this signal okay go get food you have this desire for food until you're back to where you need to be

00:32:42.680 the system turns off that's that's how your thermostat works if if you know in the winter

00:32:46.740 if the room temperature gets too low a signal sent to the furnace turn on and then until it it you know

00:32:53.020 it comes back up to room temperature the desired temperature that's when it shuts off now interestingly

00:32:57.940 your furnace works perfectly well without you without it ever going like oh that feels wonderful and

00:33:03.240 that's the same it turns out with snakes snakes have a system that runs on dopamine so far as we

00:33:08.020 know they are unable to experience what we think of as pleasure they can't even taste food you can

00:33:13.940 scent a tennis ball to smell like a rat and the snake will eat it because it is just consumed by the hunt

00:33:21.220 for food but actually eating food what we think of as this gustatory delight is for them kind of like

00:33:28.300 maybe what swallowing food is like for us just this sort of necessary mechanical physical act now it

00:33:34.300 almost seems cruel you're like why why would god if there is a god why would god create a creature that

00:33:39.400 is unable to enjoy its food but it turns out this is the norm this this capacity to enjoy seems to be

00:33:46.400 unusual so then you scratch your head and you're like whoa why is that why do we enjoy food if a snake

00:33:53.260 can get by with just on this dopamine system of wanting something and then having that urge go away

00:34:00.460 that urge kind of being satisfied without without ever you know experiencing delight what is the point

00:34:06.040 of experiencing delight if it's not necessary for a snake why is it necessary for us so on its most

00:34:11.780 simple level the capacity to enjoy something is kind of a quality control system when we get what we're

00:34:17.980 after let's say it's an apple or it's a it's an animal that we kill we can bite into it and see if

00:34:23.920 it's any good that is this system that we have that lets us rate the quality of food as we eat it we think

00:34:29.880 of it as enjoyment but what it really is this kind of instantaneous computation that you feel this is

00:34:35.520 your brain analyzing the food going is this good and yeah you do that when you bite into something

00:34:41.540 you can taste if it's savory if it's fatty if it's sweet and by tasting that you know you get an idea

00:34:48.640 like what's what you're about to get like your body's like okay you're gonna get some fats you're

00:34:52.020 gonna get some carbs this is good and it's really important because you know we tend to think of the

00:34:57.820 sensed qualities of food you know sweetness savoriness fattiness as just sort of like this sort of delight

00:35:04.680 that is unconnected to nutrition but it's actually really important because um there's a fundamental

00:35:10.340 difference between how our bodies work and how machines work so if you've ever seen you know

00:35:14.300 like a fighter jet when it's uh refueling in the air it's sort of like flies up to this big plane and

00:35:19.180 this this you know tube comes out and it refuels we can't do that you know try and eat a pizza while

00:35:24.380 you're running around a track good luck with that it turns out that food is like a disruption to the

00:35:30.500 body so we really have to be ready for it and one way we do that is by sensing it as it comes in

00:35:35.940 even before we taste food we can smell it this triggers something called the cephalic phase we

00:35:40.900 start to secrete insulin then as we taste it that that gets the kind of the gastric juices flowing

00:35:45.900 what your brain is doing is getting ready to digest this is a big deal so that is it turns out that is

00:35:52.740 really important information no you even give an example of a kid i think it was like in the 1800s

00:35:58.360 he had something happen to his stomach and he basically or his throat his throat this is a crazy

00:36:03.580 story he was he i don't know how he did it he was you know having clam chowder that was somehow

00:36:08.940 way too like way way way too hot i guess he must have just chugged it or something but he ended up

00:36:15.140 sealing his throat shut right it was like cauterized or something and he was unable to swallow so doctors

00:36:22.700 essentially put what's called a fistula in his stomach they just put a hole in his stomach that he

00:36:27.000 could just sort of load food into the way you would like you know load your luggage into the back of a

00:36:32.140 of a trunk of a car and when he started to do this when they created this opening he would put food in

00:36:37.560 he was very unwell even though food was getting into his body he was just unwell it was utterly

00:36:43.000 unnecessary for him to put food in his mouth at this point because he had this direct pathway right

00:36:47.380 into his stomach but one day he said let me taste it first and this is what cured him he was scrawny and

00:36:54.080 maybe going to die and then once he tasted his food he suddenly sprang back to health and for the rest of

00:37:00.020 his life he would taste food he would chew it up and then spit it into this tube that went into his

00:37:04.620 stomach and he said if he didn't do that he would be hungry after he ate so this is really interesting

00:37:10.100 evidence that this act of eating this act of sensing food it isn't just this kind of delight that's

00:37:16.080 disconnected from metabolism it is absolutely essential to it okay so when you eat something

00:37:22.060 when you taste something in your mouth you're getting information about this food now this is the

00:37:26.400 case we're getting to the point you're making in your book your your big thesis you're making the

00:37:30.260 case that one of the problems with food today in the west is that there's a mismatch between

00:37:36.520 that information that we taste and then the actual food like the calories or the nutrients in the food

00:37:42.520 yes so yeah talk is what is what is what's happening with our modern food that it that's so that the

00:37:47.740 nutritive information you know how it tastes thing no longer matches the actual nutrition content of the food

00:37:54.840 okay yeah so so remember what i was saying earlier that we find that the difference we see with people

00:37:59.320 with obesity is that they have this enhanced kind of level of wanting well that's that's what we're

00:38:04.100 looking for what is the thing that's making us desire to eat food that seems disconnected from our

00:38:10.600 physiological need what is making the brain say i want to eat more food so i came across a body of

00:38:16.460 research from a scientist i know at yale her name is dana small and she was asking what she thought

00:38:21.120 was a fairly simple question which was whether or not you could change the caloric content of a sweet

00:38:26.800 beverage and still have it be satisfying she was doing this work at the time with pepsi and on a

00:38:32.180 deeper level she was curious do we like sweet things because we just like sweetness like that's how we kind

00:38:37.920 of come out of the womb and sweet is great or is our desire to eat sweet things connected to our

00:38:43.540 physiological need for it so that's a really hard thing to test with just a normal sweet drink because you

00:38:49.340 don't know is it the calories or the sweetness like when you put sugar in you're adding both

00:38:53.140 sweetness and calories how do you disentangle the sweetness from the calories it seems impossible

00:38:58.760 but she came up with a really interesting method what she did was she created five drinks that were

00:39:04.040 all sweetened with the artificial sweetener called sucralose so these are five distinctly flavored drinks

00:39:09.220 but they all have the same level of sweetness then she added a flavorless carbohydrate called maltodextrin

00:39:15.280 this was invented in the 1960s it's a this kind of interesting human creation carbohydrate with

00:39:20.200 absolutely no taste so then she she put you know no maltodextrin in one drink i think she put 37 and a

00:39:26.040 half in the next 75 112 and then 150 so what she has is this little fleet of drinks they are all equally

00:39:34.320 sweet but they all have a different amount of calories she would have people drink the drinks and

00:39:38.800 then they would come in to get their brain scanned and she would look for the response in this

00:39:42.300 dopamine area which is to say which one of these drinks made them go i want more of that and she

00:39:46.900 thought it's going to be the 150 calorie drink because we know there's this post-ingestive thing

00:39:51.160 that happens where the brain analyzes the food that it got so she said well it's going to be the 150

00:39:55.420 calorie drink because we like calories calories are important and that's not what happened she was

00:40:01.080 really surprised by what happened it turned out it was the 75 calorie drink that got the biggest brain

00:40:05.600 response and that didn't make sense she was so weirded out by it she did it the experiment again and the

00:40:10.300 same thing happened and she's trying to figure out what's going on like if it's calories that we like

00:40:14.740 150 calories should be better than 75 but if calories have nothing to do with it why 75 why not zero why not

00:40:21.700 37 and then she realized it was the number 75 the drink that people responded to had 75 calories of

00:40:29.860 maltodextrin but it also tasted as though it had 75 calories worth of sugar and the interesting thing

00:40:35.420 about maltodextrin is it's converted to sugar as soon as it gets to the stomach by enzymes so this drink

00:40:40.100 she found was matched which is to say its sweetness was in sync with the calories that it delivered

00:40:47.260 something funny was going on with these other drinks she created these drinks that were

00:40:51.300 mismatched had either too little or too many calories relative to the sweet taste so the next thing she

00:40:57.920 did is she put test subjects in what's called an indirect calorimeter and this measures the thermic

00:41:03.300 effect of food which is to say that when you eat food you start to burn calories and there's this kind

00:41:07.720 of elevation in body heat that they can detect kind of like how your car gets hot when the engine's been

00:41:11.720 running so this test subject came in and had the 75 calorie drink and you know there was this little

00:41:17.780 plume of body heat they come in a few days later and they have this drink that tastes like it has 70

00:41:22.320 calories but actually has 150 calories she's thinking there's gonna be this nice big plume 150 calories

00:41:28.220 nothing happens the metabolic response as she put it is flat and this is a really really important

00:41:36.860 exercise because it shows us just how important sensing what's in your food is it turns out that

00:41:43.440 sweetness isn't just this kind of like thing that we like it's operating instructions it's telling the

00:41:49.820 body this is how many calories to expect and that just sends off this cascade of metabolism when it works

00:41:56.180 when it's all in sync when you drink a matched drink everything goes smoothly when it's mismatched

00:42:01.580 things go wrong it's like the brain's like i don't know what's going on and it doesn't end up getting

00:42:06.660 metabolized these calories just seem to float around the blood that they think it kind of winds up in the

00:42:11.000 liver she did more studies and she found that this causes insulin sensitivity what we think of as a

00:42:16.820 you know condition of diabetes and they did a study in adolescence and this is important because

00:42:21.820 adolescents have a kind of an outsized appetite for sweet things it's because their brain is growing

00:42:25.980 that's why a lot of you know adolescents drink a lot of soft drinks and early on in the experiment

00:42:30.520 they tested the blood of three subjects and they were already pre-diabetic the results were so bad

00:42:35.600 they had to stop the experiment so this to me is really really interesting we see some serious smoke

00:42:41.580 happening that when we start you know we know how important it is for us to sense food in fact i'll

00:42:46.280 even add something to that our ability to sense we do it with the nose and mouth that takes up more

00:42:52.140 dna than any bodily system that's how important it is and now we see that when you create food where

00:42:58.740 there's this gulf between what it tastes like and what's actually arriving in the stomach we see

00:43:04.580 problems happening so already we see that that food isn't getting metabolized properly but then you

00:43:10.580 ask it a deeper question because remember how earlier i said that the brain keeps track of everything

00:43:15.640 that that as michelle kabinac found you actually have to swallow sugar water for it to satiate your

00:43:20.480 appetite that it's it's what what we've actually found is the brain is such a kind of obsessive

00:43:26.480 accountant it doesn't just measure what happens when that sugar gets in the stomach it measures to see

00:43:31.860 if sugar's utilized you can knock out glucose metabolism you can block it from happening and when

00:43:37.100 you do that to rodents sweet things lose their allure so the the brain is like this paranoid accountant

00:43:42.640 wants to make sure the food it got is actually useful so you can then say if the brain is keeping

00:43:49.060 track of things what happens when one day sweet equals energy and the next day sweet equals not so much

00:43:56.820 energy or maybe more energy than i expected this never happened historically sweet sweetness was

00:44:03.760 always matched a sweeter strawberry had more sugar than a tart strawberry a sweeter apple and so forth it is

00:44:11.520 only very recently that we have been able to create this difference between how food tastes and what

00:44:16.320 you get and what that is called is uncertainty psychologists also call it reward prediction error

00:44:23.200 which is to say a lot of psychologists think of the brain as kind of a prediction engine what it's really

00:44:28.620 in the business of is predicting that's you know that's why it senses the brain senses what it got did i get

00:44:34.180 what i was what i was expecting to get and there's really interesting areas of research that look at this

00:44:39.240 this idea of uncertainty one of them is reinforcement psychology so that's like um

00:44:44.100 ivan pavlov that's uh you know when you uh you ring the bell and the the dog thinks dinner's coming

00:44:50.020 it starts to drool that's what's called a cue so are you familiar with pavlov that's kind of like

00:44:55.600 common knowledge right it's common knowledge yeah okay so the bell is what they call a cue you ring the

00:45:00.040 bell the dog starts drooling it thinks dinner's dinner's coming scientists always thought that the more

00:45:05.480 in sync that bell is with the food the stronger the cue it is the more reinforcing it is that if

00:45:12.000 the bell sometimes means dinner it's like ah i might drool a bit but if it reliably means dinner that dog

00:45:16.980 is going to drool well we found that's not true it turns out and this was some really interesting

00:45:21.240 research done with rodents the cue they would use was a little lever that was illuminated and it turns

00:45:27.040 out that if you would illuminate this lever sometimes the rats would push it but then a little

00:45:31.500 a little you know uh food pellet appears it turns out that if you actually make it such that the lever

00:45:39.340 might predict food you'd figure the recipe like ah who has time for the stupid lever i'm gonna go over

00:45:45.100 to the food train just wait for the lever wait for the pellet to drop that's not what happens when

00:45:50.140 the cue becomes uncertain the rats become obsessed with the lever that they're really really interested in

00:45:58.940 the lever it turns out that making a cue uncertain ramps up motivation and there's a very good reason

00:46:04.740 for it there's a very good reason we are animated by uncertainty because in a state of nature a loss

00:46:11.220 means you might die it means something bad could happen and i'll give you an example a lot of people

00:46:15.880 find this sort of conceptually interesting but it doesn't really they don't really feel it so this is

00:46:19.660 an interesting way that really makes you feel it let's say do you have a car i do okay so what if i told

00:46:26.540 you the fuel gauge was totally unreliable that it says full but it might be empty might be a quarter

00:46:32.500 it might be three quarters what would you do i'd be filling it up all the time because i wouldn't

00:46:36.720 that's right because if you're on the highway and you run out of gas you're screwed that's a horrible

00:46:41.240 problem so you probably fill it up almost kind of like in a paranoid way right right there's this

00:46:46.900 uncertainty and it it just animates us with desire a good example are our elevator buttons when you're

00:46:54.020 waiting for the elevator what do you do like like when you get on the elevator and you press the 11

00:46:57.560 button you just press it once right because you know it's gonna take the 11th floor but when you're

00:47:01.480 sitting there waiting for the elevator button you just jam you like you just keep on hammering the

00:47:04.980 thing because there's this idea like it's it's i don't know if it's working i don't know what's going

00:47:07.720 on you are animated at that moment by wanting so to bring this back to this research that dana small did

00:47:15.360 when we start to tinker with the sensed qualities of food we take a cue that for all of existence of

00:47:23.320 our existence as a species even prior to our existence as a species we're going way back to

00:47:27.340 like like cockroaches and bacteria sweetness has always matched calories very recently we created

00:47:35.700 technology such that the way something tastes doesn't necessarily match what you're getting so we

00:47:42.320 have created uncertainty we have these cues for food have now become uncertain so what does that

00:47:48.520 make us do it makes us want that's why we see it's not that food tastes better than it ever did i'd argue

00:47:54.800 that it doesn't taste as good it's that we want it more because we want to avoid a loss okay so just

00:48:01.720 summarize so like with all of our food a lot of mostly processed food a lot of it has artificial

00:48:06.520 sweeteners if you check the ingredients it could be you know a cookie a lot of companies are putting

00:48:11.360 artificial sweeteners in it because it allows them to make the food taste sweeter without adding

00:48:15.940 in calories so what you're saying is by creating that mismatch the body's like wait a minute this

00:48:22.840 it tastes sweet but we're not getting the calories that we think you should be getting

00:48:27.220 sort of states so we're going to eat more because we got it we don't know exactly yeah okay if you think

00:48:32.060 your brain is stupid and we just sort of have this dumb desire for sweetness then this would be a good

00:48:37.420 idea fool your brain your brain's a total moron if it turns out your brain is actually this kind of

00:48:41.260 maniacal obsessive accountant don't try and fool it because you're going to piss it off and you're

00:48:45.460 going to make it want more so that's exactly what we see and i ironically it's probably our fear of

00:48:52.160 calories that are fueling us in some ways we now have all these nutrient nutritional info panels on

00:48:57.740 things people can look and go oh calories those are bad so there's all this incentives now for

00:49:02.500 companies to lower the calorie count and one way they do that is by adding artificial sweeteners and

00:49:07.140 it's more disturbing i would say than ever because what dana small found it's when you mix real sugars

00:49:12.160 with artificial sweeteners that's when the worst things seem to happen and we're doing that more

00:49:16.120 than ever and it's not just like soft drinks you see it in some cold coffee beverages you see it in

00:49:21.260 energy drinks you see it in english muffins i've seen it in breakfast cereals it's happening everywhere

00:49:26.780 but here's the important thing my argument here isn't just that it's it's artificial sweeteners

00:49:32.280 artificial sweeteners this research is showing us where things have gone wrong but if you actually

00:49:37.300 start to look for ways we've devised of like messing up the way food tastes it's all over the

00:49:45.560 supermarket well yeah you talk about art there's artificial fats that the the food industry you

00:49:50.240 say try to keep under wraps because no one wants to talk about artificial fats yes so this was another

00:49:55.600 really interesting thing i i i found and i was surprised that there hasn't been more written about it

00:49:59.760 there's a whole huge family of food additives the i call them artificial fats because they're kind of

00:50:05.520 like the fat version of an artificial sweetener the industry calls them fat replacers which sounds a

00:50:10.380 little more innocuous but essentially these are substances that create the sensation of a rich fatty

00:50:17.100 you know food in the mouth but deliver fewer calories they are essentially the fat equivalent of an

00:50:22.500 artificial sweetener one of the first ones was called simples it was discovered in 1979

00:50:28.660 a scientist working for a canadian beer company tried to turn way what way is that liquid that's

00:50:34.820 left over when you when you make cheese he tried to turn it into a gel and he got this weird gelatinous

00:50:40.020 substance that that it kind of crumbled like styrofoam but it tasted fatty it tasted like like

00:50:45.900 cheesecake or like cream cheese about a decade later it comes on the market of something called

00:50:50.500 simplest and it seemed truly amazing it could take the calories in a like a tablespoon of margin from

00:50:56.240 36 calories down to eight calories could take a coffee creamer from 30 calories down to 20 calories

00:51:02.360 seems really good right what a great thing we're lowering the calories but if your body's counting

00:51:07.680 your brain's going hold on a second you're starting to mess with me now fat doesn't mean what i thought

00:51:12.520 it meant these fat replacers are all over the food environment they're they're not just in things like

00:51:19.000 low-fat dressings they're everywhere if you know what to look for but here's what kind of makes them

00:51:23.220 insidious you'll never see the word fat replacer or artificial fat you won't even see that word

00:51:28.520 simplex it's really weird in the industry they have all these really cheesy names like like simplex or

00:51:35.060 lycodex or uh keltrol those don't appear on the ingredient label you'll see things like milk protein

00:51:43.520 or whey protein concentrate there's one there's a fat replacer for muffins which is called cream fiber

00:51:50.600 7 000 that shows up on the ingredient panel as citrus fiber which to me sounds healthy that's

00:51:57.000 like wow that's like good for my microbiome or something so it's really difficult to know when

00:52:03.000 the the sensed properties of fat are being toyed with by food manufacturers you almost have to have

00:52:08.960 a phd even then i would say you can't really tell by looking at the ingredient panel okay so i think

00:52:13.280 people listening to this think okay that makes sense artificial sweeteners artificial fats i can see how

00:52:17.380 that would mess up our brain's calculation going on so to create that uncertainty so you know it

00:52:23.300 tastes like we're getting calories but we're not and so our brain to compensate for that craves more

00:52:27.900 food so that would you know increase craving and i think and i think it's important because this is a

00:52:33.100 recent change like we're trying to figure out what changed because it's relatively recent like if you

00:52:36.440 look at obesity it really took off in the in the mid 70s so that is something that's recent you know

00:52:41.320 you can talk about carbs you can talk about fat we've been eating those for millennia this is new

00:52:45.360 this is an aspect of of eating that just didn't exist until like a handful of decades ago okay let's

00:52:51.800 talk about the thing that blew my mind so one way that food has changed and you make the case that

00:52:56.560 might be contributing to our increase in weight gain is the addition or fortifying flour with vitamins

00:53:05.920 and this started in the early 20th century in america to cure disease basically you know a lot of people

00:53:12.480 were getting diseases because they were then weren't getting sufficient vitamins so we fortified

00:53:16.140 flour bread with vitamins like you look at wonder bread right the label says that was like the big

00:53:21.120 selling point fortified with vitamins how is it that something good for us like vitamins might be

00:53:26.960 contributing to weight gain yeah this is i and let me just say off the bat how absolutely crazy this

00:53:33.280 sounds and i struggled this i thought am i nuts like vitamins are you serious it's like saying like

00:53:37.920 rain causes obesity or oxygen or something like come on but i'll tell you how i came to this the

00:53:43.700 first time i got the first time i got interested in this was i the first book i published was about

00:53:48.020 steak travel the world eating steak looking for the best steak but one thing i got interested in was

00:53:51.920 was keeping cattle in feedlots where as a lot of us know we read michael paul and they're fed this diet

00:53:56.620 of corn right and the idea i was always told at the time from critics was that it's like junk food it's just

00:54:04.200 empty calories doesn't have their vitamins it's only got calories and one of the reasons they eat

00:54:08.320 so much of it is they're trying to get their vitamins they're like you know they're unfulfilled

00:54:12.380 by it so i checked with a feedlot nutritionist someone actually who devises these things and he

00:54:17.160 said no that's not true at all he says these things are absolutely packed with vitamins if they weren't

00:54:21.020 they wouldn't gain weight quickly enough i thought huh that's not really what we think we tend to think of

00:54:26.740 vitamins as making things healthier not that they could somehow play a role in a diet that is

00:54:31.300 engineered to make a cow fat well then i found a researcher a scientist at the university toronto

00:54:37.580 used to be the chair of the nutrition department his name's harvey anderson he had the same idea he

00:54:42.720 was he was interested in the difference between canada the united states because very culturally very

00:54:46.380 similar countries we have very you know similar food traditions canadians are a little bit thinner

00:54:50.380 now like americans we enrich our flour but we don't do what's called voluntary fortification that's

00:54:57.460 allowed in the states where companies can just put in certain vitamins if they want to so there's

00:55:03.120 more of this happening in the united states it's being like i said being put in energy drinks it's

00:55:07.460 in cereals there's just an awful lot of vitamins what i'm most particularly interested it's not all

00:55:13.460 vitamins or micronutrients that i have a beef with you know we we add iodine to salt i don't think

00:55:17.720 that's a problem i think there's a case to be made for adding folic acid it's the b vitamins it's the

00:55:22.940 vitamins we started adding in the 1940s and i'll tell you why why i i really start to think there's

00:55:29.680 something going on here i was thinking about this feedlot diet that cattle eat and i got interested in

00:55:34.920 pig nutrition because pigs are more like us than cows pigs are you know they're like they're very

00:55:40.060 similar to us physiologically much better model than a cow and i thought there's got to be something

00:55:46.140 going on with pigs and i would keep on searching for it nothing ever came up finally google scholar the

00:55:51.680 search algorithms got tight enough i finally found this body of research and it turns out that

00:55:56.080 vitamins utterly changed pig farming before the 1950s farmers knew that you could give pigs corn and

00:56:03.680 soy that it was kind of like rocket fuel could make them fat but only for a limited period of time if

00:56:08.200 that's all they ate they would actually get a nutritional deficiency they would lose their hair

00:56:12.200 they'd get diarrhea they'd start to get confused and they'd lose weight so there was something missing

00:56:18.140 from the diet so to make that up they would have to put pigs out on pasture or if they were keeping

00:56:23.300 them in a barn or something they'd have to bring green feed to them so they knew that there was

00:56:28.000 something you know what they would often feed them is alfalfa they knew there was something necessary

00:56:32.140 in alfalfa that was you know making their diet complete the discovery of vitamins totally changed pig

00:56:39.920 farming all of a sudden it wasn't necessary anymore for your pigs to be out there in the field

00:56:44.140 munching alfalfa you could keep them penned up all day you could give them this rocket fuel diet of

00:56:49.740 corn and soy and it was just they were like a rocket ship they gained weight and put on fat like

00:56:55.360 they never did before i found a really interesting document put out i think it was the university of

00:57:00.320 illinois where it was around the 1950s that basically extolling that there's a new way to farm they said

00:57:06.220 pigs have a reasonable ability to manage their diet but it's no longer necessary for them to get

00:57:11.980 their micronutrients from green feed you can now give them vitamins this was the new way of doing

00:57:17.460 it and it gave them what's called optimal weight gain there's a really interesting study i looked

00:57:22.920 at where they they compared pigs that were kept penned up eating this what they call a mixed ration

00:57:28.760 that had everything in there with the vitamins versus they had pigs that were out there in the field

00:57:33.520 and they had corn in one trough and then they had like the soybeans the vitamins the other trough

00:57:36.900 and then they had alfalfa and what they found is those pigs out there in the field somehow when

00:57:41.920 those vitamins weren't put in there with the corn they had this like desire to eat alfalfa they ate

00:57:47.740 much more alfalfa if you added the vitamins to their feed they didn't eat nearly as much alfalfa

00:57:52.540 but the ones that gained the most were the ones that were kept penned up with this you know fortified

00:57:57.540 rocket fuel feed and that was optimal weight gain and that changed pig farming forever that's why we have

00:58:03.560 these these like flesh factories where where we keep pigs in kind of factory like conditions where

00:58:09.140 we just jack them up full of corn soy and the vitamins necessary to metabolize that feed that's

00:58:15.560 how we invented you know factory farming vitamins played a huge role in that so oddly enough what was

00:58:21.840 such an important ingredient in making pigs gain weight optimally is what we've been doing to our food for

00:58:28.080 more than a century and we're doing more and more of it what is it about b vitamins that

00:58:32.960 causes causes weight gain what what's going on do you have an idea because they are the energy

00:58:37.900 metabolizing vitamins they are the ones that make energy metabolism possible if if a diet is deficient

00:58:44.740 in one of these vitamins you die so so this is where one of these these insights came from is um

00:58:50.140 a little over a century ago both you american south and northern italy were suffering from an epidemic

00:58:56.300 called pellagra just like you know like the epidemic we're going through uh initially people didn't

00:59:00.980 know what was going on there was all these there was a shouting match of experts who knew just what

00:59:05.920 the problem was it turned out that it was a deficiency of niacin which is vitamin b3 very

00:59:12.260 interestingly america took kind of this new scientific road that's when we decided we're going to enrich

00:59:17.740 flour we're going to add niacin to it also riboflavin also thiamin and also iron interestingly over in

00:59:25.040 italy they didn't do that they took a totally different route one that seems almost stupid kind

00:59:31.100 of like old world peasant stupid they encourage people to drink wine i mean that seems bizarre but

00:59:38.640 it actually turns out they didn't know this at the time but wine back then wasn't very well filtered and

00:59:42.760 it had a lot of yeast in it and yeast has a lot of niacin in it wasn't a bad idea it was a good idea

00:59:47.740 they encouraged people to grow rabbits because rabbits was a cheap form of meat you know you could raise

00:59:52.540 rabbits cheaply the italian method didn't it didn't work as quickly as the kind of the you know stick

00:59:58.500 the vitamins in your flour method but it did work they ate their way out of a deficiency but here's

01:00:04.080 what's interesting more than 100 years later northern italy they eat better food than anyone

01:00:09.200 else in the world i would argue maybe you could make a case for japan where people are also very trim

01:00:12.980 versus the u.s south that's where pelagra was that is now it was the pelagra belt it is now

01:00:18.680 the obesity belt so we see two different parts of the world suffer from the same nutritional

01:00:23.820 deficiency one responded by saying there's something wrong with food we need to fix what's

01:00:29.020 wrong with food because we know better and the other part of the world said no the problem is

01:00:33.700 people aren't getting enough food food is ultimately what humans should eat let's make sure people get

01:00:38.080 good food and more than a century later the results are strikingly different we have one incredibly

01:00:43.940 i would say a region that has a very healthy pleasurable relationship with food and one that

01:00:49.580 has a very morbid unsustainable relationship with food and b vitamins earn everything you know i pulled

01:00:57.300 up uh five hour energy like that's the whole thing it's got b vitamins yeah why i mean and i'll say

01:01:02.220 things like my daughter bought an energy drink that had 200 of your daily requirement for vitamins and

01:01:06.900 people look at that like yeah this is super healthy it's got double the vitamins like why would

01:01:11.840 anybody need that um it plays into our naivete i think in a very unwholesome way but then when you

01:01:18.760 look at it in terms of the the role that these things play in energy metabolism i think that's a

01:01:23.300 really bad idea right so it could be causing us so we're eating okay so there's a whole bunch of

01:01:27.380 things going on here so this processed food that we're eating there's some there's some nutrition

01:01:31.940 nutritive uncertainty going on because food tastes sweeter or fatter than it really is so like we got to

01:01:37.180 eat more to get the calories you need your your brain's like we got to something's wrong here

01:01:41.640 but in addition to that we're eating more b vitamins that metabolize calories more and

01:01:48.140 kind of increase weight gain basically yes they make weight gain metabolically possible okay um

01:01:54.280 yeah that simple yeah so and you're right there are two things they're both kind of under this umbrella

01:02:00.520 of us thinking there's something wrong with food and we need to fix it i would say that is the big

01:02:05.940 difference if you go right back to pellagra italy always had faith in food we always thought there

01:02:11.700 was something wrong with food and we've been mucking around with food ever since and so what do you do

01:02:16.360 about it so i mean most of the food we eat here in the united states it's been tinkered with somehow i

01:02:21.780 mean is there any way to counter this well i mean it can look kind of dismal when you see how much of

01:02:28.160 this is going on when you start to look at you know nutritional info panels and ingredient panels and see just

01:02:32.420 what's going on it's like wow we got a long way to go knowing things is the first part of it but you

01:02:37.660 know it is still possible to buy wholesome food if you buy real food you know fruit vegetables a cut of

01:02:43.940 raw meat those are relatively untainted not always but relatively speaking so you can still buy real

01:02:49.920 food it's it's the processed foods that i think are are essentially engineered to promote maximum weight

01:02:56.320 gain in some cases unintentionally we use things like artificial sweeteners and fat replacers thinking

01:03:02.880 it's making things better i think they're making things worse okay if all americans eating this

01:03:07.620 fortified food right pretty much all cereals breads etc are vitamin fortified why is it that some people

01:03:13.420 don't gain weight have you have we figured that out or there's are they just eating are they eating

01:03:17.700 fewer calories or what's going on there no well i would say anytime you you have a population and you

01:03:22.440 add something to it you're going to see a variation in terms of of how the population responds so if you

01:03:27.620 take a population and add cigarettes not everybody gets lung cancer not even everybody takes up smoking

01:03:32.080 but you'll see there's an overall effect the same thing with alcohol when we when we gain the ability

01:03:37.360 to distill alcohol we could make gin instead of just drinking beer that doesn't mean everybody became

01:03:42.680 an alcoholic but so there's there's going to be variation in terms of how a population responds but i do

01:03:47.960 think it's a really good question and this is something i wrestle with does the addition of

01:03:52.140 these um energy metabolizing vitamins does it raise our set point does that actually make us

01:03:57.780 fatter than we would be without it or does it just somehow make it easier to get fat i kind of lean

01:04:03.760 towards the latter it's possible to become obese in italy the rate is far far lower you just have to

01:04:09.860 work harder at it i think if i think what's going on in italy if you look at something like their

01:04:14.900 their levels of thiamine they're they're lower than what we recommend they're they're even lower

01:04:21.480 than our levels of thiamine were in the 1940s before we started fortifying and so what i wonder

01:04:27.780 is if if the i think the idea is that the low level of vitamins is kind of like a leash on weight

01:04:33.420 gain there just isn't that metabolic possibility of turning carbs and fat you know that you eat into

01:04:39.280 extra body weight because there's just not the right amount of vitamins does that does that make sense

01:04:45.060 yeah that makes sense and where do you see this research going so you know i if there's one thing

01:04:51.560 i hope this book does it changes the conversation about food we've been on this treadmill of fighting

01:04:58.140 about nutrients fat carbs keto some of these things have helped people i don't deny that but i don't

01:05:04.700 think they point to the cause of our dysfunction so i'm hoping that we can see that the problem isn't

01:05:09.700 it's with the brain we have to understand how our brains evolved to eat how the brain understands

01:05:16.340 food on an intuitive level and the big price that we pay when we mess with that so i'm already working

01:05:22.680 with um with a scientist at the icon school of medicine at mount sinai to to test this vitamin

01:05:28.420 model in rodents that's the first place you start and i think we'll see if you know the proof of concept

01:05:34.080 is in rodents then you start to look at humans and i hope it also what i'd like to do is change

01:05:39.380 we all have to stop trying to be these nutritionists thinking that we know about how much protein we need

01:05:45.080 and counting calories and carbs and fat the scientists who are absolute specialists in this

01:05:50.640 can't predict how much protein they're consuming how many calories they need even the subjects they're

01:05:56.080 studying they are always invariably surprised this idea that we have um this deep knowledge of the

01:06:03.060 nutritional makeup of food and our own needs is a total myth i think we should eat as nature designed

01:06:09.140 us to eat which is to focus on the experience of food and that's what they do in italy i had this

01:06:14.260 kind of insight going on i was visiting a bean festival and yet another argument ensued about

01:06:20.280 food and this had to do you know someone was saying don't put any onions in when you when you boil the

01:06:24.540 beans and the woman said no no you should put in an onion you should also put in rosemary and someone

01:06:28.000 else said they disagreed and then they start to argue about the type of bean because there's more than one

01:06:31.800 type of bean that's grown in this area and everywhere i went for this book everybody argued

01:06:36.200 about food but there was a fundamental difference which is that in italy they argue about is this the

01:06:42.060 best recipe my grandmother's recipe is yours my village's recipe is better every meal seems to be

01:06:47.280 this opportunity to engineer maximum deliciousness here the argument is always about nutrition that's

01:06:52.820 got too much carbs there's insulin it's it's doing this there's you know there's too much fat

01:06:57.680 we argue about nutrients they argue about experience it seems like we're more intelligent

01:07:03.340 i think they're right we evolved to eat the brain has this ability to eat that we experience as flavor

01:07:11.120 as deliciousness and i think that's where eating needs to go is is in the experience of eating real

01:07:16.580 food well mark this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in

01:07:20.640 your work i would say you know read the book it's called the end of craving my previous book called the

01:07:25.460 dorito effect also you know gets into some of this really interesting science of of how the brain

01:07:30.100 understands food and i would say be enthusiastic about food and we should celebrate really good

01:07:36.040 food and enjoy it it's uh it's i would say it's our our greatest most reliable form of pleasure we eat

01:07:41.440 three times a day let's enjoy it well mark thanks for time it's been a pleasure thank you for having

01:07:45.520 me really enjoyed talking my guest is mark schatzker he's the author of the book the end of craving

01:07:50.320 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at

01:07:53.960 his website mark schatzker.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash craving where you find

01:07:59.380 links to resources where we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the

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01:08:14.640 you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles where we've pretty much covered anything

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01:09:09.580 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

A Surprising Theory on Why We Get Fat

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