Transcript
00:00:00what about blue zone diets oh my god don't get me started on that one i mean blue zones are fun
00:00:07i mean look there's a lot to say about blue zone diet the first is again you know if you it's kind
00:00:15of like a mediterranean diet but with even less meat and if you like if you look at what it
00:00:19prescribes you know and but it also prescribes um skipping breakfast um it tells you to be social um
00:00:29it tells you to uh not finish your plate um you know there's some social aspects to it
00:00:35but but what's i find and you know if you look at the the the the the the the sort of prescription
00:00:43of the diet especially nutritionally it's kind of what a lot of you know it's not far off from
00:00:47the mediterranean diet um i don't know of any really good high quality studies
00:00:52for those blue zones diet compared to say the mediterranean diet but what i find amusing about
00:00:56the blue zones diet is how it's been advertised because it's advertised and marketed as a diet
00:01:01that'll help you live to be a hundred and that's where i begin to have some concerns because even
00:01:06if you look at the data for the blue zones like if you there's these supposed blue zones these five
00:01:10regions on the planet where are they let's see one of them is in the nicoya peninsula of costa rica
00:01:17one's a little kind of little village in sardinia it's like a little area in sardinia one is
00:01:21uh an island in the mediterranean i've forgotten the name of the island
00:01:25um one is uh okinawa and the other is loma linda california right outside of la
00:01:34those are the five blue zones and and the idea behind these are these are supposedly areas where
00:01:38a hot twice as many people live to be centenarians they live to be 100 years old and so the idea is if you
00:01:44eat like the people in these areas you too are going to live to be 100 years old now there's
00:01:49some problems with this the first is that even if you believe the data that that these these regions
00:01:56have a have a higher percentage of centenarians that turns out that the percentage of centenarians
00:02:02is tiny so it's like it's like six people out of 10 000 as opposed to in the united states where it's
00:02:07three people out of 10 000. the base rate's so low that small changes are massive proportions
00:02:12these are statistical outliers so you basically have to if you if you're not a statistical outlier
00:02:16which most of us are not it's irrelevant it's not a very it's statistical nonsense basically
00:02:22secondly there's a guy in oxford isn't um uh demographer oxford i'm trying to remember his name
00:02:27saul newman i think his name is he's published this really fascinating paper he did a deep dive
00:02:32onto these blue zones and found out that only 18 of the people in these blue zones actually had birth
00:02:37certificates so we don't even know who these people are they just self-report their age and these are
00:02:44areas so and he are you telling me are you telling me that a good chunk of the blue zone fervor could
00:02:53have been around the fact that people just didn't register how old they were correct or it could be
00:02:58insurance fraud i mean i have no idea um yeah exactly i'm sorry it's you can get online you can read
00:03:04sol neumann's paper it's hilarious paper to read um um but also think about it this way like there's
00:03:11this like a little area in sardinia if you go on if you click on the blue zones map there's this like
00:03:15you know think about sardinia it likes you know it's an oval shaped island right and there's this little
00:03:20area on the on the western side there's a little blue you know zone on the map right in that little
00:03:27area you have all these centenarians now tell me that if you like go like 30 miles north or 30 miles
00:03:33south that people have totally different diets and it's like so why in this little spot are they all
00:03:40centenarians and just 20 miles north or 20 miles south they're not it's kind of suspicious what are
00:03:44the what is the blue zone proponent explanation for that uh i think he's answered i don't think
00:03:50he's is it a guy uh yes guy named um what's his name um wetner butner i can't remember he's a he was
00:03:56a he was a um he was a national geographic reporter who who got really excited by this and figured out
00:04:02how to market all this but you know the one of the most interesting blue zones is loma linda california
00:04:07do you know who lives in loma linda california what why loma linda is a blue zone because obviously
00:04:11they're not little you know peasant team you know farmers eating their traditional foods no
00:04:18they're seventh day adventists and the seventh day adventists don't believe in smoking they believe
00:04:23in exercise they're you know they believe that they're many of them are vegetarians they believe
00:04:27that they don't believe in exercise no they do believe yeah they believe that you that god gave
00:04:33us our bodies our body is a sacred thing and that it's our responsibility as um as as as as christians
00:04:41to to take good care of our god-given body that's a physiological theology very good it is it is and and
00:04:49so um you know they don't smoke they exercise many of them are vegetarians they have they do all these
00:04:54sorts of things that the you know most doctors will tell you is what you should do and guess what
00:04:59they have a high percentage of people do they eat the same thing as the people in sardinia
00:05:04no of course not they're eating right so what's going on with this blue zones thing is it is it
00:05:09fair to say that the blue zone diet isn't a diet it doesn't it's it doesn't do what it says it does
00:05:16well i mean it does if you read the blue zones book it tells you what to eat tells you to at least a
00:05:21half a cup of beans a day it tells you lots of vegetables it tells you not to eat too much of this
00:05:25and not too much of that so there it's got some it's got some parameters you know um but it's not a
00:05:30it's not a it's not a rigidly defined diet um and you know the the suggestions aren't totally crazy
00:05:37um but they're again it's it's kind of oversold i mean like one of the one of my you know the one of
00:05:43the refrains from in like you know that i keep going back to in my book is that there are a lot of
00:05:49people trying selling us optimal diets you know and i have come to hate the word optimal if you want
00:05:56to piss me off say that's your trigger word it's my trigger word tell me your diet is optimal first of
00:06:02all is it optimal for you or optimal for me because you and i are not the same right we have different
00:06:06genetics we have different background you're young and strong a lot more muscle you know but i'm probably
00:06:10faster than you who knows probably suddenly but um um i'm 62 you're probably a lot younger um um um you
00:06:18know is is uh are you are you more worried about heart disease or alzheimer's or or arthritis or this
00:06:25or that or the other are you are you do you care more about the environment etc there's you there's no
00:06:31such thing as optimal um uh and um and it's it's kind of a it's just marketing and and we and i and
00:06:38so i i now react against people who claim their diet is optimal because it's just marketing it's
00:06:44salesmanship it's not science okay let's piss off some more people what about low carb high fat oh boy
00:06:50am i gonna get in serious trouble after this one yes yes yes we both are it's fine low carb high fat
00:06:55again there used to be atkins now it's keto yeah i mean look both depends what your goals are
00:07:01right um it turns out if you want to if your goal is to lose weight for example you can lose weight
00:07:06on a low carb diet and you can lose weight on a low fat diet um it is true that people tend
00:07:12to lose a little bit more weight on low carb diets than low fat diets um but but um and in fact
00:07:19i'm one of the co-authors of the carbohydrate insulin model big paper that was recently american
00:07:24journal of clinical nutrition so i've put my i've signed my name in blood on the and i believe in the
00:07:30biology behind uh the low carb diet so we can can you explain that in layman's terms
00:07:35we can but before we do let me just get to this which is that uh pretty much any non-crap diet can
00:07:43help somebody lose weight uh and the hard part is to sustain it and so you need to make a distinction
00:07:49between efficacy and effectiveness so efficacy is basically how well a diet works when in the perfect
00:07:56world right when there's no cheating and you eat exactly what you're told and you can do it for a long
00:08:01time and you know it's perfect effectiveness is how it works in the real world and it turns out
00:08:06that low carb diets have this higher efficacy for weight loss than low fat diets this is for weight
00:08:14loss but their effectiveness because people have a hard time sustaining them is only slightly larger
00:08:20right so if you could do it you might perform very well but being able to do it the difficulty is
00:08:28somewhat harder it's hard which means that it mitigates some of those gains i mean i tried it
00:08:31i mean i tried it tried every every single one of these by the way i i have done a much more
00:08:36bro science equivalent of what you did in the research for this book yeah i've tried all of
00:08:41things yeah i mean i tried the i tried an atkins diet and i was hard because i had intense carbohydrate
00:08:47cravings and i'm a runner and you know it's hard to be a runner and not eat carbs the hunger is
00:08:51rough yeah i mean i just just i didn't like it that much um but i didn't like a lot of the diets
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