Eat to Live Podcast Season 2 Episode 16 The Truth About Protein

Hey, welcome to the Eat to Live podcast. I am here with my dad, Dr. Fuhrman. Hi everybody. Welcome. And I'm here with my daughter, Jenna. And we are diving into a hot topic today. So hot that this might be the second time we've covered it. You know, but we're hitting it from a different angle and more giving different information about that similar topic.

And that topic is protein. So we're going to dive into protein because it is so talked about in our podcast, in the Nutritarian Diet, on the internet, on social media, people are just rampant about it. So we thought we should dive in and get the cold hard facts. What do you say, doctor? I say that I've actually been discussing with people and they wanted me to go into more detail.

and repeat certain things again, and review the confusion because they're being barred by keto, carnivore, protein being bad, being good, people wanting to crave and put extra protein powders in their food. So let's go, start with this. Let me, let me start with this idea that there are people that bash carbohydrates, right?

And there are people that bash fat. Some people say, better to be a diet, be lower in carbs. Now, there are studies that show that carbohydrates are bad. And I'm saying, people that bash carbs use studies to defend their viewpoints. And those studies are showing. On poor quality carbohydrates, like white rice, white flour bread, and other processed carbohydrates, or poor quality carbohydrates.

When you look at good quality carbohydrates, you can't bash them, because the good quality carbohydrates, like beans and vegetable carbohydrates, beets, carrots, peas, are linked to longer lifespan. And I'm sure, Actually, when you're talking about foods that are health promoting and non health promoting in the carbohydrate space, there's a lot of processed carbohydrates.

So it makes sense to me that unprocessed whole foods would be the best source of carbohydrates like you get from sweet potatoes, even chickpea pasta. It's that's right. The Nutritarian diet wants you to have the best quality, most nutrient dense, the least processed foods. So you're choosing the best carbohydrates, the best fats, and the best proteins.

Now people who bash fat, every study they point to the bash fat are American style fats, which are animal fats. and butter and oils. They don't study nuts and seeds. They can't produce a study showing eating more fat from nuts and seeds has negative effects on weight loss, on diabetes, on cholesterol, or on lifespan.

As a matter of fact, the opposite is shown. When you actually look at the whole food, whole plant food fats, which are nuts and seeds and avocados, then the studies show when you go up in amount, you have longer lifespan. So it's like they're telling people and certain people Nutritional gurus in the plant based community are getting people nervous about eating nuts and seeds and avocado because they have this blanket brainwashing that fats are bad.

That was what I was just going to say is really surprising to me. I don't know if it's just my circle or world. When I go out to plant based restaurants like Cafe Gratitude or Trilogy in La Jolla, there's a bunch of options where they put like quinoa, sweet potatoes, load on the cashew sauce, avocado, all these things that are really good fats that I'm so excited to eat and they make me feel so nourished and full.

So I'm very surprised to hear you say there are people that are actually cautioning against that. A tremendous press amount of nutritional myths is propagated within the plant based community. And maybe you're not aware of living in there, but to me, I live in that community because I live, you know, give lectures, I, right?

And they use, they use science, but some people say like, the fat you eat is the fat that goes on your body, makes you fat. The fat you eat makes you fat. It's not true. And then they produce a study to show that the fat goes up, people's body fat goes up. That's not true. It's only when you look at oil, not when you look at nuts, because when you isocalorically, which means the same like, let's say, 1400 calories a day, and take out some carbohydrate, like rice or potato, and put in nuts and seeds with more fat in the diet, the same amount of calories, you get more weight loss, not more weight gain.

The idea that you're eating fat puts on fat is totally a myth, and it's a distortion of the, what the science says. So I just want to be, we're talking about, of course, if you eat more nuts, if you required 1400 calories a day and you eat an extra 300 calories nuts and seeds on top of the 1400 you were eating Sure, the extra calories of anything can make you gain weight and nuts can be concentrated calories and people can overeat on them But that's not same thing as fat makes you fat It doesn't make you fat.

You was substituted from an equal amount of carbohydrates or equal amount of protein we've removed from the diet. And when you get your fat from nuts and seeds, you're getting a protein fat mixture. You're not getting just plain fat. So when you use, and plus the fat, when people use oil on their food, they're stripping protein outta their diet because then if they got the whole nut or seed, they'd be getting the fat mixed with protein.

And if they're taking the oil, they're getting the fat mixed with no protein. Wow. You just had a lot of questions and now I got, I got lost for a second. What I was going to say originally is that it is easier for me not to overeat when I have those healthy fats in there. And I always, I kind of dumb it down in my own language to just, I really do believe there are good fats and bad fats and the good fats help me feel satiated and full.

And kind of like the, you say they, they let the bad fat slide off your body. Like that visualization really helped me. And I feel like once you start eating it and feeling so satiated, it makes you believe that, Hey, this must be good for you. Yeah, and it adds, like, flavor and enjoyment to your meal.

Totally. How can you just, it's like, Dry. I feel like everything would be really dry. But the other issue is, here, that I'm making, is that this extreme low fatism is not good for your long term health. It increases risk of cardiac arrhythmia. The cardi, the myocardium cells, the heart cells, need fat to stabilize the rhythm.

And the idea that it's better to cut out fat to reverse heart disease is actually the opposite. It's better to include some healthy fats to reverse and prevent heart disease because it makes the heart more stable. And, and I published a study on that. I have a study I, I was, I have a lot of studies in front of me.

Maybe I didn't bring that one out, but maybe, maybe I have it here. No. Well, anyway, I published a few studies. I don't have it here. One on the nutritarian diet with, with a diet is fat adequate, was able to take about 450 people, showing their blood pressure reversed. More than any study I'm aware of in the medical literature, you know, that it dropped the systolic blood pressure 26 points while the medications were withdrawn.

Not only that, but then I also gave multiple cases of very advanced heart disease, people in heart failure, irregular heartbeats, advanced, you know, blockages, that show that they recovered their health using a nutritarian diet dramatic reduction, dramatic improvement and resolution of severe heart disease using nuts and seeds.

And I gave a study, published again in the International Journal of Disease Prevention and Reversal, showing with more than 60 different references, how it's healthier to be on a diet, even when you have advanced heart disease, that includes nuts and seeds in it, includes fat in it, and all the detrimental effects you have when you cut fat out.

But the main detriment, one of the main detrimental effects is you don't absorb nutrients as well, fat soluble nutrients as well. You get tremendous increase. But the next thing is, it doesn't support the production of hormones and immune system function and longevity proteins, maintaining stem cells and maintaining telomeres as we age.

When you die, it gets too low in fat. So it accelerates aging and increases risk of all cause mortality and reduces immune resistance. Surveillance. So our body needs fat. And this idea that fat is, is, is evil is, you know, is incorrect. And so we're talking about nuts and seeds as superfoods that benefit our long term health.

People don't know this, but you are actually a poet as well, right? What is that we're talking about? Just wait for it. Wait for it. You like to rhyme, right? You do have a blog article called nuts and seeds melt heart disease, which is a nice rhyme I don't know if you did that on purpose. So a little mantra for you is nuts and seeds and seeds melt heart disease Yeah, good.

So I think that's important to recognize but what's also cool is I've seen that change happen firsthand. It is very cool to be Visibly seeing this stuff at the etaliv retreat When you've had guests come in who, instead of getting triple bypass surgery, they've come to the retreat and you put them on a nutritarian diet and they're losing weight, their heart disease is improving.

It's just their diabetes goes away in two weeks, their high blood pressure goes away in three weeks, right? Their chest pains go away. They get well so quickly and so predictably because the diet is encompassing so many beneficial factors. And then the, and then transitioning into this idea of protein because people bash protein too.

Because they say that too much protein is bad, and it's true, too much animal protein is bad. The thing we're talking about today is that just like the body needs fat, it needs protein. And the design of the plant based diet is important to make to assure protein adequacy. And the idea that you can just eat anything you want and you get enough protein, It's not true, because you could have a, a macrobiotic diet, you could have a fruitarian diet with too much fruit because fruit's too low in protein if you're eating mostly fruit, some of these raw food diets are too high in fruit and avocado, and they're not eating any cooked beans, you know, they're not, and their diet may be low in protein, especially as they age, because as we pass the age of 60 to 70 to 75 to 80, the ability, the amount of protein we absorb from the food we eat goes down, and our protein requirements go up, not go down, And therefore, some of these people who are thriving in their 40s and 50s will find they have immune suppression and failure to thrive as they get older.

And I'm mentioning this, it's so important, because so many people have turned back from eating plant based or vegan diets due to failure to thrive, because they're eating the wrong type of diet. And my experience as a plant, as a physician, taking care of a large plant based community with varied varied dietary habits, I've observed in my clinical practice over the decades, many people following fruitarian type or raw food diets have developed pneumonia, fungal infections, loss of hair and nails.

And, and in the end, what do you call it? Failure to thrive as they aged because their diet was too low in protein. They were eating the fat and just carbohydrate, but their diet was too low in protein. Which is kind of funny because I was at a coffee shop doing some work before this and I ordered lunch.

And when I ordered, the bartender asked me, Hey, are you vegan? Like, I want to make sure, you know, there's no cheese in that. And we were talking about it. He said, you know, I was vegan for three years, but I, I stopped it because I was getting too skinny. He said I needed more protein. And we were talking about it a bit.

He said, I didn't need any of like the beans, tofu, all that stuff. So I had to add chicken and meat, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, why don't, why don't you just add more beans and tofu to your diet? Beans and tofu are so delicious. I couldn't imagine not having them in my diet. So if you're someone that's eating plant based and not having those ingredients, I feel like you must always be hungry.

And you, the fiber, it all makes you feel so full and satiated. So why would you not eat? a protein rich plant based diet. That's what I'm advocating. You know, because I love to do sports, and I know I love to ski, play tennis, but I go to the gym and lift weights. Yeah. And I don't want my arms being, like, sore after I did biceps exercise and pull downs and curls and stuff.

Right. And I want to have an adequate protein in my diet, even though I'm on a plant based diet. So I'm looking to have these natural sources of plant based proteins That, and the message here in this podcast is that paying attention to the increasing these plant based proteins in your diet has been documented in scientific studies to make you live longer.

More plant protein, if you can remember anything from this podcast, it's that more animal protein shortens lifespan, and more plant protein, paying attention to it and getting more plant protein, not overeating calories of course, makes you live longer. Increasing the protein concentration with whole plant foods makes you live longer.

Just to be crystal clear. So you're advocating for the optimal amounts of carbohydrates, fat, and protein, our macronutrients. And you could do so, I think, by just eating your G Bombs, right? Doesn't that kind of cover all our bases? Greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds. Yeah, but it's a little lacking.

Because the G BOMBS don't cover all the things you may want to eat. Carrots, beets, peas, sweet potatoes, Of course. Or an intact oatmeal. It didn't, it didn't give you everything you might want to eat. It just gives you, because the G BOMBS is just focusing on those six foods that have the most scientific evidence to Prevent cancer, you know, right.

But when I was thinking about these foods, like what I shop for at Whole Foods or the grocery store, is it's really like the produce section. Like everything is game on in the produce section. You got your herbs, you got your garlic, you got any vegetable has some unique properties that are good for you.

And some are, some are higher in carbs, some are higher in fat, like whether it's the avocado or the sweet potato, whatever you're mixing at the grocery store in that Whole Foods section is good for you when it's not processed. Then you have your packaged foods and all that crap that you might want to not associate with.

But it's like, I love the fact that it's not so limiting, even though you're talking about these ratios and how you want to mix what's good, what's this, the optimal amounts, I feel like I'm not restricted or limited, I just like eating nature's food. In these mixtures and bowls that I love. That's cool because I'm saying that it's people that they Fat is bad and they cut too much fat out of their diet.

Bad. People who put too much, they, Carbohydrate is bad. They cut too much carbohydrate out of their diet. They want to be Keto. Yeah. Or they want to be Zone. You know, the Zone is 40, 30, 30. 40 percent Carbohydrate, 30 percent Fat, 30 percent Protein. Keto is 70%, is less than 30 percent Protein, 30 percent Fat.

Fat. I'm sorry. The Keto is less than 30 percent Carbohydrate. So it's like 20 percent Carbohydrates, 30 percent Fat, and 50 percent Protein. 50, 30, 20, something like that. Or 40, you know, something in that range. They want to keep Carbohydrate really low. Maybe Fat is the most thing they eat, like 50 percent Fat.

30 percent carbohydrate or 20 percent carbohydrate after 50 percent fat, leaving 30 percent Wait, I have a question. Are you saying if for like keto or carnivore, someone that's eating a very meat heavy diet, say it's just like meat and vegetables, you're saying that diet, if it's mainly meat, is higher in fat than it is protein?

That's correct. Meat is more fat than protein. Really? I don't think I knew that. Because people are protein obsessed, protein crazed. I feel like that's their number one reason for going into a diet. Carnivore keto is because they're like, I just need a ton of protein. It's like a hamburger is like 35 percent protein.

Yeah. And then like 65 percent fat, you know, most mean is more fat than protein. Right. But even if the leanest cuts of meat could be like 50, 50, maybe chicken or fish might be more protein than fat. But in any case, they're getting, they're still getting an adequate fat and protein, but they're restricting carbohydrate.

And what the studies are showing. So I'm saying here, the studies show two very interesting points. One is that carbohydrate goes down and deaths increase. And once you cut down to a lower amount of carbohydrate, Particularly in Keto, you have the highest amount of what's called early life deaths or premature deaths.

Now an early life death is a death before the age of 70. The average the average male is to be about 75. So if you're losing more than 5 years of life, early life death before the age of 70 for a male. That's what Keto diets show when they're tested long term. And I've got a whole bunch of studies in front of me, like 20 different studies that show the same, that all corroborate each other.

And the carnivore diet would be the height. of a dangerous diet. The most dangerous diet you could eat would be a carnivore diet. It's hard to believe. People believe this nut, this craziness, right? They didn't eat nothing but meat. So they have almost zero carbohydrate, because we know that the risk of animal protein creates disease in a dose dependent relationship.

The more your diet restricts carbohydrate, and we're needing carbohydrate, we need protein, we need fat, but as you restrict carbohydrate, and Too low you increased the risk of death and the optimal carbohydrate intake based on all these studies optimally is probably between 50 percent carbohydrate and 70 percent carbohydrate the optimal fat protein ratio is Not the 80 10 10 that the fruit arians in the and part of the low fat vegan community are advocating but it's unlike a nutritarian diet the nutritarian diet is more like 60 20 20 or 70 15 15 we're talking about 60 to 70 percent carbohydrate you and 15 20 percent protein and 15 20 percent fat.

That's what the nutritarian diet runs around based on eating, you know, a few ounces of nuts and seeds a day. And that's what the scientific literature has from all these studies. Those are the ranges we get where we get maximum lifespan and the most centenarians, most healthily long lived people. We have so much data here today and I'm going to show you some of this incredible data.

But the point I'm making is it's pretty interesting. Because it shows that there's an optimal carbohydrate range, there's an optimal fat range, and there's an optimal protein range for longevity that people don't even have never heard of or are not considering, because the advice they get from these people speaking at all these conferences and lectures are not accurate.

So for someone that might not know about your recommendations or your diet, how do they put that 80 15 15 or 80 Wait, it would be 70 15 15. 70 15 15 or 60 20. Okay, 60 20 20. How do you put that into practice? I get your point. You don't have to be a scientist to put it into practice. Yeah. You just have to, because when you're eating whole natural plants, they already have this kind of ratio.

If you're eating maybe a half an ounce to an ounce of nuts and seeds with each meal. That means one and a half to three ounces of nuts a day. Is what we probably, you and I probably eat. Which is that, puts us in that range. It's like a sauce, an avocado. Yeah, it's just, it's the right amount. And you don't want to eat more than an ounce of nuts and seeds with each meal anyway.

That's about the right amount. You're overeating. That doesn't mean, you know, LeBron James, or, you know, a big 6 foot 10, 250 pound athlete, who's that big, isn't going to eat more food because they eat more calories. Of course. They're not limited to 3 ounces of protein. And when I was a competitive athlete, And, you know, in figure skating, and I was, my job was to exercise all day.

And then I had to eat like 4, 000 calories a day. I had double the amount of food I had to eat then. I think mom says like the whole back of your car was packed with food. Yeah, I'd have like a bathtub full of food in the back of my car when I was, training all day long. Yeah. So then I had to eat like six to eight ounces of nuts and seeds a day.

I had to go to class in college. And I had to be eating sunflower seeds during the class because I had to go back to training again. Yeah. I didn't want to, I had to keep my weight, you know, so then I ate a lot more. But just for most of us average people who exercise, you know, an hour a day or a normal amount a day, then, you know, about a half an ounce to an ounce with each meal or about a one ounce.

I consider one and a half ounces a day of nuts and seeds to be the minimum because in the Seventh Day Adventist Health Study 2, this study published in 2018, with more than 80, 000 participants is such a fascinating study because these, this diet where people were in the seven day Adventist population, they're already eating a diet that's more plant based, less animal products, and they found that the things that modulated death and lifespan the most were regulating animal protein, more animal protein made for shorter lifespans, and More nuts and seeds as when nuts and seeds became your source of plant protein that had the largest effect at lengthening lifespan.

Wow. So let me just read this. It says a total of over 80, 000 participants, the animal protein sources analyzed, and the risk of cardiovascular deaths steadily climbed with higher consumption of meat protein, even in small amounts. A little bit extra meat protein made for higher cardiovascular deaths and steadily fell, means the risk of death steadily fell in a dose dependent manner with greater consumption of protein from nuts and seeds.

So, this was the first, that's why I say one and a half ounces is the lowest amount because in these studies it showed that when people went below half an ounce a day compared to an ounce and a half a day, there was a huge difference in longevity. And so, to conclude this, it said the group with the highest meat intake was still less than what Americans eat.

At a 60% higher risk of death in the group with the lowest and the group with the highest intake of nuts and seeds, the cardiovascular risk was 40 percent lower compared to the group with the lowest intake of nuts and seeds, even among vegans. Even, so we're talking about modulating risk of death among vegans, the most, the biggest modulator.

Is nuts and seeds in their risk of, you know, increasing risk of death. So put on your little tinfoil hat with me. I went, I sat down on my computer when we were prepping for this episode and I'm like, I'm just gonna, I know the carnivore people and people who eat high protein diets are very loud on the internet and they say, I'm right.

He's wrong. She's right. She's wrong. And so I just wanted to see where they're getting their information from, where are these studies, you know, what's, what's the other side. So I sit down and I go Google like research on carnivore diet, research on high protein, research on keto. And there is so little research.

I was shocked because I see these things on Instagram and I'm like, surely these people are saying there's. So I looked at One single study that measured, I think it was 1, 800 because they had like 3, 000, but they threw out, you know, 1, 800 or whatever. So they had about 1, 800 people left of self reported short term benefits.

So they say nothing has been conclusively or even studied for long term benefits of high protein diets or of carnivore diets, I mean. But short term, there were, you know, some benefits of X, Y, and Z. And you do not deny that there are some benefits, short term benefits of carnivore. We have to discuss the benefits, so people understand why people gravitate to those diets and feel better.

But I first just wanted to point out how little to zero research is done, yet so many people are so sure that it is the solution for their health and longevity. You know, they're looking at short term research where it lowers cholesterol, they drop their body weight, Diabetes. Let their diabetes numbers look better, and even some mitochondrial studies which reduce free radical production from the mitochondrial generation of energy from fat instead of from carbohydrate.

It means when you're getting, when you're in ketosis and the mitochondria is getting, burning fat, it might produce less free radicals than burning carbohydrate for energy. Oh. So there's some short term biochemical benefits to being in ketosis. And there's so, but in any case just to hit home that point, is that that the short term studies may show some benefits, but now we finally have long term studies, and to be a carnivore or a keto advocate, you have to have some illogical rationalization, is why you're going to disregard.

A hundred long term studies that show danger, and they do, they throw them all out the window. They say, I was, I was interviewed by and debated this guy, Saladino, who was one of the, like the founders of the carnivore diet, who said, oh, all those studies don't matter, because they're epidemiologic studies, and it's just, we add to the people who are more wealthy or have television sets are going to be healthier, and then most of the people who are vegans or something like, he just threw out all the studies.

So I'm saying, you can't throw out all the studies that corroborate each other from all the parts of the world. Now we have really incredibly effective, appropriate, and intellectually done research showing long term following these people on these keto diets and heavy protein diets for 20 years, 30 years, showing how dangerous they are.

And by the way, this guy Saladino, this doctor who is so harming people, Just was recently interviewed like some months ago and he's off the carnivore diet himself because he doing now He's doing fruit with meat now He got rid of the carnivore diet because total carnivore because he was having sleep disturbances lowering testosterone and too much joint pain and muscle aches Because obviously when you're on a keto or carnivore diet and your carbohydrate restricted you get high amounts of uric acid more the purines You're eating and purines are even higher in in organ meats, which they recommend You Which means more uric acid and more uric acid means gout it means more propensity to kidney stones It means more kidney damage But it also means more aging of the cartilage and joints and the aging of the cartilage and joints these people even though the big Weightlifters and doing all this they think they're keeping their muscles strong.

They become old, you know osteo they become in pain in pain They get in pain They get their cartilage and joints go terrible. He sounds like he's also using himself as an experiment just to see what happens and then changing which I'm just so happy that you deal with a lot of elderly people. So they like follow your recommendations.

You see how it's going well. And then you help them modulate any needed protein as they age, use protein powder, all these things. So you don't get too frail because you said so yourself, you are very, you are very like committed to not getting too frail as you age because you're 70. You still got muscles.

How are you feeling about the protein? situation. Yeah, I'm like, I exercise a lot still. And the reason I exercise a lot is because I love to downhill ski and ski powders, steeps, cliffs, moguls, you know, double blacks. And I want to, I love doing that so much fun. But to do that, you got to be strong. It's not gonna be safe.

So I'm testing my strength, box jumping and lifting weights and making sure I'm working out in the gym. So I'm safe on the mountain, right? You know, and I want to test my strength against, can I still lift as much as I did when I was younger? And I still jump up and down. Can you? Yeah. I'm a little less, a little less, but I'm still pretty good, but I'm pretty good.

But as far as like my Strength on the mountain or in skiing, I'm just as good or better because I devote so much attention to it now, you know what I mean? Right, because you look the same to me, but you, I know we were talking about this too. You said, yeah, I'm just going to be, I'm building muscle now and keeping up with it.

So I don't lose it as I age. Right. Which I think it's just going to be really cool when you're 80 to see all the. Well, I think it's, it's, that's the whole key to, to, for, for stalling aging is to try to work on keeping your muscle to fat ratio favorable as you age with this attention to diet, which I see as a fun hobby, to attention to modulating your diet, to have the, to maintain your youthful vitality as you age.

And then let's just stick on that. When you're on these keto diets with carbohydrates restricted from meat, dairy, fish, or any kind of, you raise IGF 1 into cancer promoting levels. And that's insulin growth factor one, which is a. A hormone that promotes cellular replication and promotes angiogenesis allows cells to, cells to replicate and get a blood supply.

So it allows tumors to grow as you're maximizing muscle mass, it allows tumors to grow. So extra protein, even though it may promote a little more muscle mass, Extra animal protein promotes IGF 1, and then it also changes the bacteria in the gut, which means unfavorable bacteria, bacteria in the gut promoting, promoting TMAO formation, which is trimethylamine oxide, which is a pro inflammatory substance that ages us.

and promotes atherosclerosis. And then this high diet high in meat is deficient. It's deficient in vitamin C, it's deficient in folate, it's deficient in vitamin E, it's deficient in phytochemicals, it's deficient in magnesium, it's, it's deficient. So how could these people on these, their, their diet's deficient, it's producing too much acidity, it's aging their joints, it's promoting cancer, and it's just absolute craziness and people love to follow it.

I am actually surprised because I feel like that's their number one Best point is like it it has all the vitamins and minerals you need all the amino acids. It is not deficient So I'm actually shocked right now to hear you Call out these nutrients that it's deficient folate only comes from plants vitamin C comes from plants vitamin E comes from plants vitamin You know all these things and you hear on the internet actually people are now saying there's like post on it people believe it that plants have nutrients or anti nutrients Too.

And like a poison for you? Essentially. Yeah, poison. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I mean, all animals, like humans from the beginning of time have been eating berries, plants, all So it's, and primates we're primates totally. Which fully eat plants. Right. And we have the undeniable data. And here it's 2024. But here's a study from 2023.

Let me just, let me just say, give you the title of this study. Low Carbohydrate Diets, Low Fat Diets, and Mortality in Middle Aged and Older People. A prospective cohort study. They divided people into cohorts. And a medium follow up, medium of 23. 5 years, with more than 165, almost 166, 000 deaths. Imagine the amount of people you have to follow to get 165, 000 deaths.

You have to follow like a million people to get 165, 000 deaths. Okay, so they were able to categorize all these huge amounts of people over 25 years. This is an incredible study published last year. System phenomenal. Okay. And research categorized people as eating Either a healthy or a unhealthy low fat or low carb head chi, low carb diet.

And what do you think they found? Of course, what they found all these thousands of people and thousands of hundreds of thousands of deaths. What they found is that low carb diets contribute the most to early life deaths below age 70, really with people on keto diets. 28% more likely to die of any cause, really, any cause of cancer or heart disease.

Take your pain and participants on an unhealthy low carb diet. That means. Not carb, more unhealthy, low carb, more unhealthy proteins, like more, more meat and bacon and processed foods, increase the mortality rate by 38 percent every year. 38 percent increased risk of death every single year they will follow.

These people are dropping off like flies. Yeah, it's freaking food. It's just craziness, right? It's not real food though. It's, it's manufactured in a plant that is filled with sugar and all these processed stuff. We're talking about animal products here. Oh, but you said processed foods as well. No, no. I thought that was 38 percent over the years.

No, participants on low carb diets. Oh. When they were on unhealthy low carb, which unhealthy low carb means they were having more red and processed meats. Oh, I thought you meant like sugar, candy. No. Oh, okay, okay. No, no. But that, but okay, so that's one aspect. And then we have other studies coming out, pretty much the same thing, with the same, you know, Effects it's right.

I think it's right here this study coming out in the Lancet. This is really interesting coming out 2018 Okay, people who had the lowest amount of carbohydrates had the highest amount of premature death Yes, true, but people who got more than 70 percent of their energy from carbohydrates also had a higher risk of mortality I see what you did there.

There's an optimal range, right? So here's the thing is that Less carbohydrates bad, too much carbohydrate bad. True, people could argue because too much carbohydrates they're eating may be more processed carbohydrates like rice or, you know, white rice or white bread, yeah. But still, when they went and analyzed all long lived societies and long lived populations, they found there was an optimal carbohydrate range in those, in the blue zones as well, and the optimal fat range that we're saying here.

And then the people that live the longest, who are the people, so this is published in The Lancet, 2018. The title of this study is Dietary Carbohydrate Intake and Mortality. The Lancet. A prospective cohort study and meta analysis of all the studies, right? And they eat, they follow the eating patterns of like more than a half a million people around the world.

Like half a million, you know, half a million people we're talking about. And they found that when you replace carbohydrates with animal products, more death. But both high and low carbohydrates were associated with increased mortality. The sweet spot of the longest life were mid ranged when people got more protein and fat from high quality carbohydrates like beans and high quality proteins like nuts and seeds.

So beans and nuts and seeds were the major factor modulating death here in life. More, more, longer life, less, less life. Okay, so it says, source of food, the whole plant foods modified the association between carbohydrate intake and mortality. What it meant, what that means is that this tracking of carbohydrates and mortality was showed up because people had either restricted carbohydrates too low, or when they went too high, they didn't use whole food sources of carbohydrates.

Totally. Because whole food sources of carbohydrates have protein and fat in them, except for fruit. So fruit is the only whole plant food that isn't high in protein. The other plant foods, there are five of them, intact grains, vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds. I'm missing one. I guess. Is there four now?

Intact whole grains. I guess there's only four. Intact whole grains, vegetables, nuts and seeds and beans. Right, those are the four sources of, because fruit is the sixth category, but fruit is kind of low in protein. The only way you can make a plant protein consistently too low in protein is with too much fruit, because it'll diminish the amount of the higher protein plant foods you're eating.

So as your diet moves towards fruitarian, excess of calories from fruit, lowering the amount, pushing off your plate, those higher protein plant foods, then your diet can become too low in protein as we age, and require more protein. How would someone know that? Because we're telling them right here on the podcast.

But like, would they feel symptoms of that or have failure to thrive? Because it's kind of, I don't know anyone. I've never seen someone who lacks protein. But there is that guy telling me he got too skinny. That's correct. It's that my experience working with the plant based community is people start to, they thrive on these diets high in fruit in their 30s and 40s and 50s.

But once they get over 60, they start to lose muscle mass and the immune system goes down. They start to get more chronic infections, more rashes, more risk of muscle wasting, loss of strength. For sure. And I've had people on raw food and fruitarian diets that come to me as patients who develop pneumonia.

I got sick with pneumonia at a young age. They're more susceptible to infection. I had one guy who came to me, and because he was a natural hygienist, he was on a fruit, fruitarian type diet, and he refused to take an antibiotic with pneumonia, and he, and he died. So sad. He came in and he, I said, you've got to rush to the hospital and get on antibiotic immediately, you've got pneumonia.

You know, anytime he went to the emergency room, it was too late. They couldn't, they, he gave, they, they got there alive, but he died in the emergency room. Oh man. Of ammonia. And he is a healthy guy, a young, healthy guy on a fruitarian diet. Right. Almost never see these young, you know, and so many of these fruitarians and they age, they get fungus on their fingers and nails and they on their Really, so there are signs?

Yeah, there's signs, fungal infections and Right. More infections and, and, and lack of ability to maintain muscle mass. You know what I mean? What I wanted you to explain, which has always been kind of crystal clear to me, because we've talked about it so, so much since I was 14 years old, is plant protein for a longer life.

I get that. And you said a vegan diet, you know, Nutritarian diet, but no protein like from animal sources. Cause on a Nutritarian diet, you say, you could have a little bit of fish or meat if you want it for flavoring. Okay. For special occasion or something. Right. But you do say if completely vegan is probably the longest lifespan But, it's, you're not claiming that we get all of our nutritional needs, all of our minerals and vitamins from just plants.

Correct, because there are three nutrients that we don't get optimal amounts from plants, and those are B12, Zinc, and EPA and DHA. So some of these plant based enthusiasts are so excited and so philosophically powerful and strong about their religious enthusiasm for plant based, they want to make, think that the plant based diet is perfect the way it is.

But it's not, it's good, it's good enough the way it is with just B12. If you want to live a normal lifespan, if you want to be dead like everybody else, male, you know, 75 and 80 like other people, I'm sure it's probably good enough with just B12. If you really want to push the envelope of human longevity to 95 to 105 years old, which I'm trying to do with my followers, then the plant based diet is not sufficient without supplementation.

Because then you're not getting the ideal amount of zinc, you're not getting the ideal amount of B12, and you're not getting the ideal amount of DHA and EPA to maximize brain size with aging, because we lose muscle and bone with aging no matter what. And we lose brain size with aging no matter what. So do you want to lose it the rate other people are losing it?

We want to hold on to it better than most other people to keep our brain size and our muscle and bone size to push so we can live in good health till we're a hundred years old. Then we got to do this really right, better, do a better job. Do you think it's really possible that this diet is better than the gluzones?

Oh yeah, Blue Zones don't do that great. Really? Yeah. Because people, but they do great, they're good for research. How good do they do? They live on an average about 5 to 8 years longer. Let's say 6 to 9 years. In good health though? Because I'm all about good health. I don't just want to live long, I want it to be quality years.

Yeah, the older people are definitely healthier. And they're definitely living longer than the average American. A significant amount, but not as much as a Nutritarian diet. A Nutritarian diet pushes the envelope of that type of style, because Blue Zones are in this range of what we're talking about usually, but they may eat, some Blue Zones may be up to somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of calories from animal products, and they're, but they, you know, as you know, Sardinia in Italy is a Blue Zone, and they're eating a lot of olive oil.

You know, Costa Rica, There's a blue zone in there. So, the diets are so much better than the American diet. Costa Rica. Thank you. It's so much better than the American diet, but they're not examples of an ideal diet. And my, my nutritarian family, I'm observing people who I cared for that weren't that healthy when they were younger.

And they're living much longer, that collectively I'm seeing the nutritarians. live much longer than the Blue Zones and, and thriving in their later years with their full mental faculties. You know, we give some, we talk about K2 as possibly being important vitamin D to be, to be important too. And even though there are other excess, having a little calcium, extra calcium with each meal as we age to maintain bone mass with aging as being important too.

But the major three that are shortening lifespan the most in the vegan community is B12. Zinc, because it's immune function and mental function also is where the zinc intake and DHA, DHA and EPA, mostly DHA. And like grandpa, like grandpa, who's having his actual 92nd birthday today, who had a heart attack when he was 70 because they didn't believe in your nutritional science.

They didn't believe in your protocols, had a heart attack. Mom put her foot down and said, Oh, you are improving your diet. He did 92nd birthday, right? He's a good example because he had, he had such a bad heart attack. At, in his 70s, at age 70, yeah, 22 years ago. Yeah. And he had, like, ejection fraction went down really low, and the doctors really had, in the low level of heart output, they told him he had very poor prognosis, and probably only had a five year lifespan prognosis.

Right. And he didn't even change his diet to everything I wanted him to eat. He doesn't even do it that great. I didn't even give him something to do with that good, and he's still 92 and okay now, and he didn't have any more heart Cause he eats a salad a day or something. I don't know what he's doing. No, he does do much better.

But I just wanted to point out the fact that it is really cool to see these changes in person, and it reinforces why you're doing this. And it's my mother's birthday this week. Yeah. And she's going to be 96. And she didn't eat that healthy. She ate all kinds of junk when I was a kid growing up. And she even smoked cigarettes.

And now that she got older, I forced her to do this because she's living in a neighborhood and she eats without us now. And now she's, and she has a full mental faculty. She drives. I know. She does. And she, she's very sharp mentally and plays games and plays cards and plays all these, you know but in any case, she's 96.

Her birthday's this week. She's gonna be 96 years old, right? You know, it's, it's, it's inspiring that we have these people in our lives that haven't had this, all of the, they haven't lost their lives early that we were able to get like a lot of more memories. And I just want that for so many other people because people don't deserve to have their loved ones or their lifespans.

Themselves ended early. It's just life short as it is. I know they're losing more than 20 years of potential enjoyable life Right and because and they've they're afraid to be that healthy or live that long because they think the life's gonna be Not gonna be a good quality of life live that long, but it's not true Us nutritarians, we're seeing that these people are living longer with a great quality of life.

Right. So that's the difference. People are just so afraid to give up their meat, and they, it's instilled in all of the propaganda, media, they like the taste of it, it's, you can get it easily at restaurants, and they don't want to hear that meat's bad for you, but what's the one thing you always say? You always say that I'm just the messenger?

I love when you say that. What I'm like, do whatever you want. I'm not your mother, you know, that's what I said in medical school, people would like hide their candy bars behind their back when I walked up to sit in my seat and I'd say, I'm not here to tell you what to do. You come, you could learn from me and I could, we could talk about it, but I'm not going to, you're just reporting on the nutritional studies.

You do whatever you want to do. I'm not your mother. You always said I'm just reporting on nutritional science. Don't be mad at me. Totally. And I'm not knocking people who do it, you know, by, I'm, you know, people want to believe what they want to believe. Yes. And And you know how people, their bad nutrition makes their brains not even function well.

So they're now then, you know, so we're talking about, you know, the craziness of people wanting to be on carnivore diets. They'll take any kind of information. And they'll want to believe that, and they just lose their ability to think logically. And really, what it comes down to is education. At least, look at the education, look at the studies, because you don't have a choice if you don't know.

But now that you know, you have the choice. You could feel empowered to make the decisions to choose plant protein over animal products, to choose health promoting foods, spend more time in the produce aisles. All that stuff, but it all starts with education and knowing you have options, right? Let me give you an example of some high protein foods right now some really super high protein plant protein Or yeah plant protein because that's the key case where the message here is More plant protein intake extends lifespan Even among plant foods paying attention protein does matter But it's not but so you got to get more plant food.

So lentils and beans More than 15 grams of protein per cup. That's a lot of protein. Fifty, you know, okay. Edamame, 20 grams of protein per cup. That's a huge amount of protein. Hemp seeds, 10 grams of protein for just three tablespoons of hemp seeds. That's a huge amount of protein. Talking about protein, you know.

Broccoli, 10 grams for two cups of broccoli. That's like a little box of frozen broccoli, a small box. Pumpkin seeds, 13 grams for one and a half ounces. Almonds, 10 grams, one and a half ounces. We're talking about. These plant foods, mostly beans, seeds, green vegetables, and nuts. So green vegetables, seeds and nuts, beans and legumes, are your highest protein plant sources.

And enables us to design a diet with adequate protein for the elderly people who require more protein. And to give anyone a longer life. Didn't you say, Start now? Start now? Yeah, this is what we're talking here about all the studies on protein and lifespan. And these studies are all corroborative each other, they corroborate each other with a high degree of accordance.

Which the high degree of accordance means they all show the same thing. So now we're talking about we don't want our diet to be higher in animal protein, we do want it to be higher in plant protein. And just for the people that have always, I've seen this question so many times, am I too late? Should I change my diet or am I too late?

If you are living, breathing, speaking, writing this message, you're not too late. Well, they're alive. So they could live better. They could maintain better health. They could even get healthier if they're alive. Yes. Once they're dead, they can't get healthier. Right. But that's what I'm saying. If you're writing this message, you're not too late.

So there's always time to change and improve your diet, improve your life and health span. Right. Living. If you are going to live, why not live the best you can, be the healthiest version of yourself. Live. Live. Possible if you're going to stay alive and do it, right? Absolutely. So we gave people more insight to protein and also the other macronutrients that are required for a long, healthy life.

Let's go to, let's talk about the next podcast and go into fat with a little more depth. I love it. Okay. Until next time.