#153 - AMA #21： Deep dive into olive oil, high-intensity exercise, book update, and more
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Summary
In today's episode, we do a deep dive into all things olive oil, starting with a simple question: What's the best kind of olive oil to buy, and how do you know how to source good olive oil? And then we get into a tour de force explanation around what it means to be extra virgin, and why it's good for you.
Transcript
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Hey everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, ask me anything or AMA episode of the drive podcast.
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I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can
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access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created,
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or you can learn more now by going to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe.
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So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the ask me anything episode.
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Hey everyone, welcome to ask me anything episode 21. I'm once again joined by the one and only Bob
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the Cap Kaplan. In today's episode, we do a super deep dive into all things olive oil,
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which starts from a very simple question. I think the question was something to the effect of
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what's the best kind of olive oil to buy, or how do you know how to source good olive oil,
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and then gets into sort of a tour de force explanation around what it means to be extra
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virgin. And basically we get into all types of oils and the differences between things that
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are high in saturated fat versus things that are not in the polyunsaturated components and all these
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other things. So if you've ever really had a question about vegetable oils, lard, tallow,
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certainly olive oil, it's probably going to be answered here. And we do of course really double
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down on the olive oil issues specifically. So how do you know you're not getting robbed? How do you
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check that you're buying the right stuff? What should you be looking for on the label? And of course,
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what should it taste like, smell like, et cetera? We took so much time on that,
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that we spent the small remainder of our time together doing a rapid fire Q and A from some
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quote unquote, simple questions, questions about what's going on with my book. We talk about zone
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five training, which was a great thing to get into because we're normally talking so deep about zone
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two, but we get into zone five. We talk about massage guns and foam rollers and professional
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massage, standing desk versus sitting desk, lactate meters, and a little bit around electrolyte
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supplementation and ketosis. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 21.
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Yeah, I think we have a couple of really good topics here to get going. We got a couple of really
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interesting questions around olive oil and nicotine.
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We'll see. After we talk about it, maybe we might do some infusions here.
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On the olive oil front, I think we got a couple of questions just around, you know, we always hear
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that olive oil is really healthy for us. It's heart protective. They wanted to know why is that?
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And is it true? Is it cardioprotective? So curious about your take on olive oil, Peter.
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This is one of those topics, I think, like many others, where at the surface, it's pretty
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straightforward. But as is generally the theme of our podcast, the further you get from shore,
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the deeper the water gets. And I think it's difficult to have a discussion like this in total
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isolation from the broader discussion of fatty acids, period. But to take your question, where
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does this perceived benefit of olive oil come from? And I say perceived, not because we're going to
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necessarily refute that, but I just, I don't want to take anything for granted and I'd like to sort of
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march down the path. So it really stems primarily from first and foremost, the observational data of
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the Mediterranean diet. Now this goes back quite a ways. So I think for many folks listening to this,
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the name Ancel Keys will ring a bell, right? Ancel Keys became one of the first people to
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utilize and incorporate an assay for measuring serum blood cholesterol. So again, something we totally
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take for granted today is something that in the 1950s, the early 1950s, if my memory serves me
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correctly, it was sort of 51, 52, 53, Keys and his wife traveled abroad and began observing societies
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and asking a very simple question, which was, does the total serum cholesterol, which is the only thing
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that could be measured at that time. So that means you would take a tube of blood and you would spin it
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down, fractionate it such that at the time they didn't know that there were various lipoproteins,
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but you were sort of breaking all the lipoproteins open and you would have the total amount of
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cholesterol that was being carried by those lipoproteins. And that number, when people talk
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about my total cholesterol today is 200 milligrams per deciliter, that's what Keys was measuring in the
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early 50s. And he was asking a question, which was, does that number correlate with heart disease?
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And the answer was, yes, it did. It wasn't the strongest correlation on earth. And obviously as time
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would go on and we would learn that there were different fractions of cholesterol, the LDL cholesterol,
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the HDL cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol, et cetera, we could refine that thinking. But at the
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simplest level, when you took the bottom five percentile of people's total cholesterol and the
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top five percentiles people with total cholesterol, that clearly created a wide enough degree that you
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could predict those with higher cholesterol had more heart disease, et cetera. So the idea that what
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you ate could influence that became the next and obvious thing to look at. And it was really Ancel Keys
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observation. I shouldn't say observation. I think this is getting a little off topic, but the way he
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presented his data would suggest that the more saturated fat that was in the diet, the higher the
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cholesterol, the higher the incidence of heart disease. And there's a zeroth order truth to that,
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but it turns out the devil's in the details. And maybe we can save that for another podcast.
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Let's fast forward a little bit. Ancel Keys by the 1970s was really coming to an observation that
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a diet that was high in a different type of fat from a saturated fat called a monounsaturated fat
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would actually be more heart healthy. So he believed that fats or food sources that were
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high in saturated fats were the problem. Whereas those that were high in polyunsaturated and
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monounsaturated fats were going to be cardio protective. So you could say about 50 years ago
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is when this idea started. And I guess maybe Bob, before we go further, I know we've had a couple of
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podcasts recently that talk about what those fats are, but do you want to talk about the difference
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between those three broad categories of fat or did we get any questions about that or should we just
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keep marching along the MUFA olive oil story? No, I think it makes sense to just stop and talk
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about the, at least the three main, you've got the saturated fats, the monounsaturated fats,
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and polyunsaturated fats. And when we, you know, we say saturated fats, you think like saturated with
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what it's, you know, it's, it's, it's hydrogens, I guess is, so you've got, you know, a long chain
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fatty acid is just, it's a string of carbon atoms. At least that's one part of it. And depending on the
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number of carbons, that's, that's, that's in part how we classify it in terms of whether it's, we'll get
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into this a little later, but palmitic acid, let's say versus stearic acid, which are both saturated
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fats, but all those carbon to carbon bonds are single bonds. And if you have single bonds on
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those carbons, then you're going to have, if you know your chemistry, you're going to have hydrogen
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sticking off of, of each one of those carbon atoms as well. And then when you get into something like
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a monounsaturated fat, it means mono, which is one, and it is an unsaturated fat, which means more or
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less it's less saturated with hydrogens. And so when you have that carbon to carbon, if you have a double
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bond, you're actually, you're going to be removing a hydrogen there because you're adding the carbon
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to carbon bond. And then with the polyunsaturated fats, you've got more than one double bond.
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So if you have more than one double bond, you're going to have even, it's going to be more unsaturated
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than a monounsaturated fat. And I don't know if we're going to get into this, but that also changes
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the configuration or the structure of those atoms as well, where you have a, if you look at a saturated
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fat, normally it's, it's relatively, the chain would be straighter. Monounsaturated fat kind of
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has like a little crank and where the double bond is. And then PUFAs have the same thing going on,
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but if they have multiple double bonds, you're going to get multiple little crinks in the, in that chain.
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Yeah. And the nomenclature is not trivial. So you, you mentioned a saturated fat a moment ago,
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palmitic acid. And in sort of chemistry speak, we would reference that with two numbers. So
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we would say, well, we wouldn't expect people to remember the structure of palmitic acid. So we
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would denote it 16, zero or 16 colon zero. And what that tells you is, ah, it's got 16 carbons in it
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and it has zero double bonds. And therefore, you know, it's a saturated fat. And you also mentioned,
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I believe, stearic acid, which is also a saturated fat. But if you couldn't remember that, if you
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could remember that it was 18, zero, you would know that it's got 18 carbons and zero double bonds.
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Now let's contrast that with oleic acid. Oleic acid now has another designation. It's 18, one. So it's
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18 carbons, one double bond, but you have to add an additional piece of information,
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which is where is that double bond. And it's denoted N9, which means that it's the ninth carbon.
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And I'm sure the astute listener is saying, well, which side are you counting from? Because the ninth
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and the 10th carbons, even though right next to each other, would, could each be considered the
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ninth carbon, depending on which side you count from. And you always count from the carboxylic side.
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Now I realized as I, that was coming out of my mouth, I'm going to have to explain what the
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carboxylic side is. I'm not going to, for the sake of time, just suffice it to say, there's a clear
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nomenclature for which side you begin the counting. And therefore you can have an 18, one N seven and
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an 18, one N nine that are both monounsaturated fats of the same length, but they're going to have
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different properties because the double bond is in a different place. And to your point,
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that might mean that they kink a slightly different way, et cetera. So let's go back to
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olive oil. What is olive oil, Bob? What makes up olive oil? Thank you for listening to today's
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