Peter Attia· MD
so the idea is well these people arguing it's carbohydrates yeah we don't believe that so we're not going to spend any money researching that we use there are people believing it's fat and there are people who think it's meat um in an ideal world and we discussed this for eight years right the federal government would say we covet is going to pass and obesity and diabetes are going to go back to being the long pole as using nasa terminology there they were costing a billion dollars a year in direct medical costs we have to understand how we failed because we have to stop blaming it on industry and blaming it on the individuals and so let us put together teams of researchers red teams blue teams multiple callers and hash this out and trying to figure out how we failed to control these epidemics and until we do that we're not going to reject any reasonable hypothesis but how would you even populate said teams i mean to your point there really aren't that many people that would still stand by this idea that you propose uh yeah no it's uh i mean if we're gonna get practical here peter um we're not going to make any progress whatsoever uh the uh yeah i you know in my my dreams it's like it's like a uh populating a jury in a trial you pick people unbiased scientists who are good at what they do have demonstrated that they're good at what they do you can't pick obesity researchers because they have biases you certainly can't pick nutritionists because they have biases and they [Music] i question whether any of them are ever taught to think critically enough about scientific reas progress um and you know they treat it like we did i mean think about the kind of effort that went into covet the amount of money that was spent on research to prevent you know this disease from killing what one tenth of the number of people who die from a chronic diseases related to obesity and diabetes every year i mean i'm not i'm glad they did it but you make that kind of effort you can solve this problem step one is saying look we failed the conventional wisdom fails it's clear it fails because we have obesity and diabetes epidemics that haven't been stemmed in any way we have to question our assumptions let's go back and look at we did if the you know who who actually does that job there's a lot of very intelligent critical thinkers out there the question is how do you get them to care now some of them would argue that hey we know the answer and the the palatability of food the availability of food the affordability of food are driving this equation and the convenience of modern life is making inactivity even a greater and greater issue and and so you might argue well look we haven't put all the steps in place to address those issues this answer is going to be one through policy we have to make foods that don't taste as good that aren't you know what i mean like we you know like i'll give you a funny story like my son came home the other day and he said mommy um one of the kids at school today had something for school and i really want it too and she was like okay what is it he's like i don't know it came in a blue bag and it was a triangle and of course it was cool ranch doritos so what does jill go and do she goes and buys cool ranch doritos for reese for lunch for a little snack and you know he's got a this is not a kid who who is a kid who really likes to eat good food and and so every day he gets a little ziploc with like five cool ranch doritos the problem is i can't eat just five cool ranch doritos so the other day i'm inhaling half a bag of cool ranch doritos and all i'm thinking is this is almost as impressive as the apollo 11 program like from an engineering perspective like the way they made this thing the crunch the taste the lingering flavor it's unbelievable like there's no denying how good this stuff is so why did i just sit there and eat a whole bag of that thing you know that's a very good question okay but here's the counter argument i gave a talk a couple months ago in tahoe and it was just as the ability to give talks in person was winding down and the fellow invited me to give the talk is from texas afterwards sent me a gift box of uh wagyu stakes from a butcher in new york and these are the wagyus that cost it's about 170 a pound okay and um like one of them was called wagyu sashimi and the other way and they they it's just it's it's you just looking at it you know it's by weight as much fat as protein and by calories and farm you know it's going to be 80 fat and i actually made one of these for lunch and i looked up how to do it so you get the skillet and you use the fat on the edge to grease the skillet and hot and then it's a minute on each side and it was eight ounces and i couldn't finish it it was so filling my son harry said hey he got a taste he said this is this is beef butter dad um i still finished it okay so it was delicious however even if i could afford it i still have some in the freezer i didn't it wasn't like a dorito issue so yeah it's not quite as accessible but the question would then be is it did i get