Eat Like the Animals with Professors David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson

Our guests this week are Professors David Raubenheimer and Stephen J. Simpson, authors of the book Eat Like the Animals. We talk about the modern food system and how to use your natural appetite to eat the healthiest way possible.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:46

Gib. Hello and welcome to another episode of intelligence for your life. The podcast, I'm Gib Gerard, and our guests this week are none other than professors, David robinheimer and Stephen J Simpson. They are authors of the new book? Well, it's not really new. It's been around for a while, but it's being translated into 10 different languages. Now, eat like the animals. Is the name of the book, and it is exactly what it sounds like. It is about how we can use our own natural appetites, understanding our own natural appetites, in order to eat food and navigate the modern food system in a way that is beneficial to our bodies. We're going to talk about this in detail in a second here, but look, the core problem is this, we have a ton of calories and not a lot of nutritious food, and that is creating a huge problem when it comes to the health of our society. So it's a unique time in human history. We've never had people that get more calories than they do nutrients. But that's where we are right now, and he they're going to teach us how, through their research, we can use our again, our own natural appetites in order to eat the right kind of foods, so that we're getting the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that our body actually needs to function without having an excess of calories. This is, this is the kind of thing that, like you talk about, how hard, how much willpower it takes to lose weight. This is the kind of understanding that actually hacks your own willpower. It doesn't become willpower. You can just follow your appetites if you are eating, if you start by eating the right foods. So there's some amazing nuggets in here. If you are somebody that that struggles with late night snacking, if you're somebody that that always has those, you know, those, those comfort foods that you reach for when you're not feeling great about yourself. This is the way to start to unload those things so that you in those habits, so that you can actually live your best, best life and have your have the best health from the food that you're eating in your body. I have two quick pieces of intelligence to give you before we get to the interview. If you would like people to agree with you, I have some tricks to help make that happen? They come from management expert Jeff Hayden, author of The motivation myth, and these tactics are proven to make you significantly more persuasive. First, focus on the positive. For example, instead of telling people what they're doing wrong, tell them you can help them get things right. Hayden says that simple shift in phrasing and mindset is guaranteed to make you more influential, because when people see what the positive outcome could be if they make a change, they are far more likely to agree with you. Also pay attention to how people are responding to your ideas and adjust your rate of speech accordingly, meaning talk faster if they seem ready to give you a rebuttal. Hayden says there's a reason salesmen are notorious fast talkers, because a faster rate of speech gives people less time to think of reasons to disagree. Fast talking holds people's attention if you want to go further. Again, that book is the motivation myth by management expert Jeff Hayden. All right, that's, I mean, there's some good advice packed in there. I'll put a link to the motivation myth in the show notes, so you guys can check out that book if you're interested. You're interested. Here we go. One last piece of intelligence. We talk a lot about the health benefits of being in nature. I mean, we talked, we're going to talk about that in a second here about, you know, natural food eating, but, but it's it's important. Studies have shown it can actually lower stress and blood pressure and reduce the risks of asthma, diabetes and heart disease, while also boosting mental health and longevity. But how much time outdoors do we need in order to reap these results? Well, according to the scientific reports, the answer is right, about two hours each week. The study looked at data from nearly 20,000 people who recorded their activities within the span of a week, and it found that people who spent two hours a week outdoors reported being in better health and having a greater sense of well being, and that's why an increasing number of physicians are writing nature prescriptions to motivate people to go outdoors. And the Journal found you don't need your nature fix every day. They found that getting your two hours all at once, it works just as well. So there you go. You know, focus on the positive. Adjust your rate of speech. That's in order to motivate people around you, and, of course, get into nature. Those are two pieces of intelligence you can take with you in order to live your best life this week. But folks here, most importantly is my interview with the authors of eat like the animals, professors, David robinheimer and Steven Simpson. David robinheimer and Steven Simpson, authors of the book, eat like the animals. Very excited to have you guys with us. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks guys again. All right, so we're going to dive right into this, because this is actually something that I'm really passionate about. I believe, I believe that we have too much food that is too easy for us to get, and it's all been engineered to make us want it in a way that we shouldn't ever want it. And because of that, we have, we have overweight, malnourished people for the first time in human history, which is like mind blowing to me, right? We're not getting enough vitamins, but we're getting too many calories. And you seem to have the solution with this from from all of your from all of your studies. So you know, I. Uh, how do we eat like animals? How do we get how do we get that back? How do we get that sort of natural way of eating back? Well, Gib, you've stated the problem perfectly. That's exactly the situation, and the reason is precisely, as you said, that we've designed a food environment that quite literally, is hacking our basic biology and the story of eat like the animals is, how does our basic biology work, and how should it work, and why does it go wrong in the modern food environment? And what we've learned is essentially that we, like all animals, have evolved these exquisite appetite control systems that measure and regulate the intake of a series of key nutrients in our diet, protein, fat, carbohydrate, salt and calcium, and that those appetites should be guiding us to a healthy, healthy weight and good lifelong health, but Because of the fact that we're now in a world where our food environment is tapping into those appetites, subverting them, hacking them, we've got terrible problems, right? So we're we're really trying to understand the biology of where things have gone wrong, and coming up with simple solutions to put it right again. And it's not only the biology. We're also trying to understand the ecology of how these these mechanisms that we share with other species, what sort of circumstances they involved in, and how those circumstances differ in our modern world. And one really key difference is that we've studied over the past 3035, years, I think it's 40 or more species, and both in the wild and in the laboratory. So we understand the natural world well. One very key, very important difference is that in nature, there are very few foods that are designed specifically to be eaten and eaten in large quantities. If you think about that, maybe fruits are that way because they provide a dispersal mechanism for the seeds of plants. Nectar is a little bit like that, but most foods are averse to being eaten, so biology has evolved to deal with that aversion, to cope with the obstacles to nutrition, and suddenly we find ourselves in the environment that's the exact opposite, and that is, we've got foods beckoning out our appetites to be eaten and eaten in large quantities. Interesting. I mean, I never thought of it, framing it like that, but it is. It's a great point. Like you said, there's, there's a handful of things that are meant to be eaten, and the rest is a fight. Have we lost this battle? I mean, obviously you guys wrote the book, so you don't think we've lost it, but I I being inundated with all of this stuff, day in, day out, and fad diets and all of these other things. How do we begin to unpack those? You know, you mentioned five core appetites for, you know, carbohydrates, protein, fat, calcium and what am I missing? Siding, yeah, yeah. So we've far from lost the battle. I think we've just begun the battle, because it's only very recently that we've come to understand the mechanisms in the way that we've described in the book that are driving the problem. So I think with that understanding, we really empowered to approach the situation in a very different way, and that is what the book is about. Because there's a really, it's a good news story in the sense that we haven't broken our biology. It still works. It's still there. And it's really a question of how we use our biology of appetite, those five appetites you mentioned, to our best benefit, to our best health, rather than for the profits of the ultra processed food industries. So it's not a bad story. It's a good story. We've got these latent abilities, extraordinary abilities, to regulate our our own nutrition, without having to have technology involved, without having to even count calories. It can be done for us, but we just need to listen to those appetites and to put them in the right food environments. Right. Okay, so, so most of us are not. Most of us are not very well educated about the food that we're putting into our bodies. Most of us are overworked, over stressed. We don't sleep enough, which also, you know, I've messes with our ability to make good food choices. So we live in this life that a lot of us can't undo. You know, we've got children and jobs and hobbies, and at the end of the day, we are going to go the path of least resistance. No matter how much we fight. We may die it for a little while, we may get in better shape. How do we start to deal with a multi billion dollar industry that is telling us to just reach for the quick fix and. And instead, listen our bodies, because I would love to go live on a farm and grow my own food and eat organic vegetables all the time, and listen to my body. I just I don't live that life. So how do we start to unpack what you've learned and what your research has shown and applying it to our daily lives? Well, there's there's a long term solution and a short term solution. The long term solution is that we really need to work as a society together with industry. Industry is not an evil organization institution trying to ruin the health of the population. Industry is doing what industry is set up to do, and that is making profit, right? Doing it very well, unfortunately, now via route that is wreaking havoc on public health globally. So that's a longer term project, the shorter term project that is each of us is really empowered and is the capacity to decide what sort of food environment we want to live in. Do we want to live in an environment where a food by a food environment, I mean a local food environment. What sort of foods do we want to surround ourselves with at home, so that when we when our appetites are activating us to eat, they we reach for something that they're equipped to cope with, which isn't highly processed foods, but our whole foods. Fortunately, those are still available in large quantities within our environment. They are open to our choice, to our selection. We can regulate what comes into our household. So the way that we put it is to to shop with your brains and eat with your appetites. Interesting. Okay, so that's actually a great point, right? If you don't have the cookies and the Pop Tarts in your house, you're not going to reach for those engineered foods. You're going to reach for whatever you have, and that could be a thing of blueberries or an apple or whatever that may be. So the first step is to, I love that shop with your shop, with your mind, eat with your appetite. So the first step again, shop and put the foods, the whole foods, into your home, that that will, that are, that are best suited for you. How do we how do we begin to deprogram ourselves? Because I know when I'm exercising well and I'm eating well, I have no problem listening to my body and eating good foods. The hard part is getting to the place where I've deprogrammed myself after a little while. So how do we start that deprogramming process so that we can listen to those two we can listen to those appetites that we really need? Yeah, now that that's that's a great question and, and as David said, it starts with surrounding yourself with appropriate foods. And it's, it's a really, I think, an important lesson to learn is how your appetites are being distorted and and hacked. And a beautiful example of that is the protein appetite. Now we know, and we'll talk about that more. I'm sure that the protein appetite is our most powerful appetite. It's the one that will dominate when you come to be faced with choices around what you should or shouldn't eat in relation to other nutrients, protein will dominate. Now, when your protein appetite is hungry, you start to crave particular flavors, and those are the classic savory flavors, umami flavors, as the Japanese call them, your body's telling you you need to eat protein. Protein has become associated in our evolutionary past with that flavor, that set of flavors, and so you you're seeking those flavors. Now, the nearest source of savory flavor in most food environments will be a packet of Doritos or some other savory snack that has that distinctive lip smacking umami flavor that is, in fact, simply a protein decoy, because all it is is a pile of fat and carbs you're going to reach for those, they'll taste fantastic, and your your protein appetite will remain unsatiated, and you're going to have to eat yet more calories to Try and find it. So there's an example where a simple understanding of an appetite system can be it can sort of lift the veil over over how the food environment is is manipulating our appetites, and it gives you something to work with when it comes to fighting back. And you can see the same mechanism operating in the natural world. We write at length in the book about the orangutans and how they respond in the wild. So orangutans have this situation where fruits are periodically abundant and then they're very scarce. And what happens is, of course, it's in the trees interests to have the fruits eaten by orangutans, because that's a mechanism for dispersing the seeds. So the fruits are effectively, the trees are enticing the orangutans to eat those fruits, and the way that they entice the orangutan one of the few foods in nature that really are designed to be eaten in large quantities. And the way they do that is very similar to the way that processed foods entice us to eat them, and that is, they have a low proportion of protein to fats and carbohydrates. And what that means is you have to eat a lot of the food to satiate your protein out as Steve was saying, so in a way, the food industry is keyed into something that nature has keyed into millions and millions of years ago, using similar mechanisms to entice over consumption of foods for the benefit not of the consumer, but for the benefit of the food producer. Trees in nature, a highly processed food industry in our society, that bliss point is the other obvious example of that, where if you combine fats and sugars in roughly equal measure, then you end up with this super palatable substance which is going to induce you to eat a little bit more of it than you otherwise would. And again, we see this in nature on occasions, and we've even got there's a massive study coming out from the lab in a couple of weeks time in in a journal called Nature metabolism, where we've found that high fructose corn syrup, that one to one mixture of glucose to fructose, hits not only The sweet spot when it comes to driving over consumption far more than even sucrose, the table sugar, which is those same two nutrients, mixed but but bound together in a single molecule. And also it activates lipogenesis with fat deposition with greatest with, with, with with greatest force. So you actually have this combination which is designed to cause you to eat more and has biggest impact on your physiology, in this case, in terms of laying down fat. And add to that the fact that fiber is also stripped out of highly processed food, and fiber operates as a brake on the appetite system. So if you have a relatively low protein diet combined with high fiber, you don't stay hungry because the fiber satiates you instead of the protein satiating you. So that combination of low protein, high fat and carbohydrate, low fiber, aggressive marketing, addition of flavor and including salt, large quantities of salt, that's what the food industry has designed in order to entice us to do what we're doing at the moment, overeating highly processed foods to our detriment. I mean, you've plugged into a couple things that I had not occurred to me, like one, I was not fully aware that protein was our main driver. And I what I you know? I know that fruit is designed to be eaten, but I did not know that it had a sort of a trace amount of protein that was meant to make us eat more of it in order to in order to get that protein fix. So that's kind of I absolutely once you say that I can start to see it in all of these other foods. The damage of high fructose corn syrup, I've heard about that before, is the solution to that as simple as replacing or as easy as replacing real sugar with high fructose corn syrup wherever we can. Could, could we just clarify one thing, what's happening at the fact that that fruits in nature cause primates like orangutans to overeat energy and become obese. It does not imply that the same happens for us. And the reason for that is that, is that on fruits, we don't overeat energy, fats and carbohydrates, for the reason that they're also rich in fiber. Right? Orangutans and other primates have a gut that isn't satiated nearly as easily by high fiber content. So it's a very different situation. Yeah, we're certainly not saying don't eat fruit. No, I get that. I get that. I get no, no, I understand what you're saying is, you observe this behavior in orangutans in nature, but then apply and then you can see that same behavior in the processed food industry and how humans relate to it. I understand the distinction there, and I love the idea of using fiber. I mean, look, I know for a fact we just don't get enough fiber in our diets. It's a great prebiotic for keeping your gut in check. I psyllium. Hushed powder is a really inexpensive way. You can add it to your food, or you can just put it in water. It's a really inexpensive way to keep the fiber up in your diet. So big fans of both of those, I just, I guess, you know, I want to start getting into how to begin to unhack ourselves and start to do so like, I mean, high protein foods to have around. Do we just? Should we just be having nuts and seeds that are naturally high in protein, having low sugar, beef jerky around, that kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah. Well, the key is protein. And of of all of the nutrients, it's the one that gives you biggest bang for your buck when it comes to regulating your your appetites. And is that because of the 12 essential amino acids like this idea that there's some things you can only get from eating actual protein? Yeah, so there are, it's an extraordinarily interesting macronutrient. So it has a couple of properties. One is that you can get energy from it, of course, as you can from fats and carbs too. But the one thing that you can't get from fats and carbs is nitrogen, and you need nitrogen to build new tissues, to reproduce, to maintain your cells and so on. And it comes in the form of 20 amino acids. A bunch of those, nine or 10 of them are essential. You can't make them yourself, nor can most animals actually and therefore, you need a diet which contains sufficient quantities of protein, which has an appropriate balance of those essential amino acids. So it's quite a complex piece of nutritional balancing that's required, but happily, nature's done that for us and the protein appetite animals care a lot about so it's bad to eat too little protein, because ultimately you won't grow, you won't be able to reproduce, and all those other things. But, and we showed this really importantly, in a whole series of studies, you don't want to eat too much protein either, because there's a downside to eating too much protein, and we can unpack that a little bit, but the whole point about protein, and I think one of the key insights that came from our work was that if you look at the last 50 or 60 years over which the obesity epidemic has happened globally, remarkably, protein intake has stayed virtually the same across that period of time. The excess calories we've eaten have come as fats and carbs. And that's led everybody to say, well, it's fats and carbs are the problem. We must have a really powerful appetite for fats and carbs. And then there's been this sort of 40 year fight over which is worse, saturated fats or sugar, and that's become more and more exaggerated, in fact, over time. And what we pointed out was the fact that protein carbs haven't contributed to the growing global waste line. It's remained virtually the same. But that's that's that's the cause our body's trying to keep that same intake year on year of protein in a world where fats and carbs have diluted protein in the food supply through these ultra processed foods, that's driven us to eat more and more and more, our protein appetite sits underneath all of this, and that really turned the world on its head when it came to understanding the global obesity epidemic, everybody else had been looking at fats and carbs and fighting with one another over which was worse, and all The while, protein was sitting there, constant, but driving masterminding, if you like, the entire problem. Another reason why our appetites work so hard to ensure that we get the right amount of protein on a daily basis, as is the case for many other species, is unlike carbohydrates, unlike energy, we don't have a mechanism for storing excess protein, right? We overeat it on a given day, and that means in days when we are vulnerable to under eating it, we don't have a store to draw on to derive amino acids to fuel our metabolism and all the functions other than lean muscle, right? You don't, don't want to be losing that unnecessarily, yep, right? So that, yeah, so that's actually, really, that's, that's another great point. Is you have to do this consistently, right, where, if you eat plenty of fat, you'll store it as fat, and you'll be fine. If you eat plenty of carbohydrates to store as glycogen and fat, and you'll be fine. But, yeah, this protein concept, that's so I mean, is, is Atkins. The key is that, I mean, I know you guys aren't fat diets, but that seems to be what you're pointing to. Right? Is this idea of a high protein diet is the starting place. Well, as if you increase the proportion of protein in the diet, then you need to eat fewer calories to reach your protein target, as we call it, right? And then you'll feel more satisfied. So that, to that extent, that explains actually why Atkins works. And not only Atkins, Atkins has has concentrated protein in the diet, principally by removing carbohydrate. And that's that's taken to a the next level in the ketogenic diets. And even. Further if you're if you're moving into carnivory and that particular fat. But it doesn't really matter, actually, if you remove non protein energy from the diet, you concentrate protein. You need to eat fewer calories to reach your protein target. So as a means to limit calorie intake, a higher protein diet is fantastic, but and this, and our discovery of that is used by the fad diet, the higher protein fad diet industries as justification for their particular business model. And that's terrific. But like good scientists, we asked the question, well, if our bodies don't want us to eat too little protein, we can understand that. But why are we regulating to an upper limit? Why aren't we overeating protein when we have the opportunity? Because we just don't. And the answer to that came from our and many others. Now experiments showing that there's actually a cost to going on to a higher than optimal protein diet, and that cost comes particularly in mid age, middle age and early late age, where you super drive the pathways that produce the biology of aging. So you you turn on the pathways that that accelerate the biology of aging, the growth pathways, the reproductive pathways, and you turn down the protective pathways that would otherwise that would otherwise protect your cells through period of shortage. So it's there's a cost to eating too much protein. So it's great thing to do if you want to manage calorie intake for a period, but once you've normalized it's, we would suggest, probably not a good thing to do in the long term. Interesting. So okay, so let me just try to get as practical as possible here, what I hear you say is, if we overeat the protein, we're going to accelerate our aging processes at the cellular level. I understand that, but so what we should do is start this whole process by ingesting more protein or or eating protein and fiber first, so finding dietary sources of protein and fiber to start our days and and then eating to satiety. On top of that is that, is that the key? Yep, that's that's not a bad formula, actually. Gib, yeah. And the simple way to do it is to remove extraneous fats and carbs and try to get to the point where you get that balance of your protein appetite being satiated, you've got lots of healthy fiber in your diet, And yet you're not otherwise hungry for carbs and fats, because you do have separate appetites for them as well. And that sort of balancing point, you can titrate protein and fiber into the diet till you reach that and you you'll know that. You'll start to feel that yourselves. I mean, what you're saying is grilled chicken. Grilled chicken salads. Basically start with grilled chicken salads. That's your ideal, that's your ideal palette. And then you can just sort of replace the grilled chicken elements of the grilled chicken salad with other things as you eat. You know, maybe you don't want spinach today. Maybe you want, you know, mixed greens. And maybe it's not just chicken, it's salmon. And instead of dressing you're gonna, you're gonna use a bun, whatever that may Yeah, sure, sure and healthy, healthy, particularly resistant starches are powerfully protective, not only of your gut microbiome and immune function, but they're also really healthful carbohydrate sources, so things like sweet potato and starchy, healthy starchy vegetables with complex starches, the so called resistant starches, and that can include wholemeal pastas and even pastas that you cook, cool and then refresh with boiling water. What's happened in there, in that process is that you've bound the carbohydrates more tightly, and they're more resistant to digestion, and so you're going to be feeding your gut microbiome with those sorts of carbohydrates in a better way. And similarly, of course, healthy fats, the monounsaturates, polyunsaturates, and there's, there's an entire argument around healthiness of fats and of different carbohydrates, and sadly, much of that argument is played out one nutrient at a time, and that's a fundamental problem in the whole of nutrition science, which is diametrically opposite to the way we've gone about trying to understand. Interactions between nutrients and other food components. It's also very important, especially for your listeners, to not to overthink the issue in terms of specific nutrients. In terms of the science underlying it is a very simple formula, and we've shown this in experiments. If you surround yourself with healthy foods, human beings use our appetite systems, like any other species, to instinctively select a balanced diet. Our bodies know what it wants, what they want. They tell us what to eat in those situations, and that leads to a balanced diet. Yeah, okay, what I'm hearing you say again is I fill my fridge up with whole foods. I keep a protein and fiber the shortest distance away from me at any given time and and then I can listen to my body after that, which I think is, is probably the the best thing we could, we could have in this situation, right? Like there's a little bit of, if you can, back to the one of the first things you guys said, which I think is, I know you guys have plenty of academic accolades, but I think this one line is really kind of geniuses, is shop with your head, eat with your gut, or, you know, eat with your with your appetite. And I think that's, that's amazing. I mean, I think that's the key, right? Like, fill up that house. Start with protein and fire. Make sure you're getting enough of that, and then leave, leave the rest to your, your natural desires. That's absolutely right, and and where is susceptible is everybody. You know, if I, if I have stuff in the house that I shouldn't eat, I'll eat it because it's designed to to make it impossible to resist. And it's not a failure of willpower. It's not a a failure of of anything. It's nothing to do with with human frailty. It's it's the fact that these things are designed to tap into and to manipulate the most powerful biological urges and systems that that we've evolved, every animal has two things that has to get right in life. One is to eat, and the other is to reproduce. And those are the two biggest drivers, along with the risk of being eaten by somebody else and avoiding that, those drivers have led to the entire history of the evolution of life, a good way to think about it is highly processed foods. They're entertainment, they're not nutrition. And there's nothing wrong with entertainment, but when entertainment displaces nutrition and diet, then the problem sets in, and that's what's happened on a very large scale over the past 50 or 60 years in our societies. I mean, and it's not just in food, like, to your point, we have these appetites for all kinds of things, for emotional connection and what we can get addicted to television and video games and all of these that take us away from real human interaction, that actually, you know, again, that's a different kind of satiety, but, but it's, it's the same content concept. I know I've asked you to be overly reductive about your very extensive and academically rigorous research, so I appreciate you guys bearing with me on that. But I really do think that the key takeaway here is pretty amazing, which is fight start with vibrant protein and go from there. I do want to talk about the calcium appetite that you mentioned, and how I don't I don't really understand. I mean, I know calcium is good for me. I know why I need it for my bones. I know all of that stuff I've been marketed to by all the different supplement companies. But how do I how do I do I have the high calcium foods there, I can get it naturally without having to take like, a chew or something that's gonna hurt my kidneys. Ah, well, the calcium apatite is probably the least well understood of them, but you're exactly right. You need it for your bones. You need it for every cell in your body to work properly, because calcium currents are part of the spark of life, along with sodium currents and potassium currents and so really, and your heart beats as a result of calcium, so that everything about you is reliant on calcium and sodium as to the two key mineral nutrients. And therefore, not surprisingly, we've got separate appetite systems for them. The sodium one is better understood, and we we know that. You know when you need sodium, you get the craving for salty flavors. And there are wonderful stories in the natural world of elephants walking miles into underground caves to to find salt licks and and salt can be generally eaten as a separate source from the rest of your calories, so that that makes it an easier appetite to understand. Calcium is a little bit more mysterious. We have a specific taste receptor in. For for calcium, but, but it doesn't tap into our consciousness in the same way that salt and sweet and some and and umami do, and calcium is found and separately ingested. You see this in the animal kingdom with birds during periods when they're they're laying their eggs or manufacturing their eggs, they need calcium, so they seek out high calcium foods, including snails with snail shells and other sources of calcium. We get calcium in a whole range of different places. Obviously, dairy is a rich source of calcium, and many of the leafy green vegetables as well. So calcium comes coupled with the nutrients in many of the foods that are important staples in the human diet, and it's probably the one you need to lead to worry about or think about, least, because you're going to get it if you eat whole foods. There's no need to really worry about it beyond that. And in the case of sodium, the thing to worry about there more is not getting sufficient. It's it's having to eat too much as a role as a result of it being added in to other foods that we're eating right to make them taste nicer. And this takes us back to the processed food industries, because what you're doing there is you're pitting your appetite for sodium against your appetites for protein, carbohydrates and fats, right? Protein will win, and you'll over eat a low protein food, despite the fact that to do so, you'll get not only more calories, but you'll get more sodium as well, and you'll end up paying the price in both cases, right? Sodium actually is a very, very important part of our food environment. It's probably, well, not probably. It certainly is the nutrient that causes the most preventable deaths. Wow, in human societies now over consumption of sodium associated with hypertension, heart disease and so forth. And the reason is, as Steve says, is that it's not the sodium, it's not the salt that we're putting on our foods at home that are at filters, the fact, without even knowing it, we're eating large quantities of sodium in the form of foods that have been industrially processed, and sodium is added as a flavor enhancer to those foods. Yeah, I've noticed when I've gone on, when I've like, when I when I've cut out processed foods from my diet, periodically, there is a period of time about takes about a week, maybe four days to a week and and all of a sudden I have these really bad headaches and all of these things, and my stomach starts to hurt, and I if I have to actually supplement with a little bit of salt at that time, and all of a sudden, my mental clarity comes right back, because when I've cut the processed foods out, my body is adapting to a much lower baseline of sodium intake, and it takes me a minute to re normalize myself to that. And I know I'm not a chemistry set, but it feels like it at those points. Yeah, now you are a chemistry set. You're a fantastic chemistry set, very complex, but beautifully designed one, but you're exactly right, and your body will adapt to deal with a higher intake of salt than perhaps, is healthy, and when you come off it, your body is still expecting it, right? And, and, and getting rid of so what happens, typically, is, if you have too high an intake of a nutrient over a given period of time or a prolonged period of time, your body gets very good at getting rid of the excess, so keeps what it needs and chucks the rest out. The process of chucking it out through your kidneys, in the case of salt, comes at a cost, but it can be done, but it means that you're really inefficient in the way you're using the salt. And if you cut the intake of salt, then you'll you'll continue to be inefficient, and therefore not get enough to meet your actual requirements. So you'll have at least for a period to up it a little bit and and to readapt physiologically, to set or reset your physiology so that it's, it's more efficient, and you're eating, you're of that that you're eating, you're wasting less and using more. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a good example actually, where this is a very positive side to the story, and that is that the processed food industry is highly motivated to find ways of producing profitable foods that aren't damaging to health and, and many examples where, where, where this has been attempted. One of the ones that I like is in the United Kingdom with reducing salt intake in the English population and and the strategy taken there, for the reasons that that you you saying Gib is not to reduce the salt. Content of their products overnight, but to gradually reduce the salt content of the product product, so that consumers, their bodies, can adapt to it. And also, the other thing is that there's no big shock. There's no big change in the flavor, in the perception of those foods for consumers, and they reduced salt content in their lines, in their products quite considerably without consumers noticing, because they stepped it down gradually, in a single step interesting. I mean, it's good to know that there is a that there is a policy level change, that that that is bringing that about, because having experienced it firsthand, it sort of makes me hyper aware of just how much salt is actually in processed food because I felt that withdrawal situation. So, yeah, yeah, weirdly, you probably it's probably healthier to be adding salt from a salt shaker right to your food, because you're able then to control it independently of your other appetites. And that's the way we design we evolved to meet our appetites for both sodium and calcium, to do it separately from the calories and the macronutrients. And that's true of pretty well all animals as well. We've caused the problem by combining them also the strong flavor from the real source of the thing, generally speaking, has a much more satiating effect. So you know, I if, if I'm drinking a soda with high fructose corn syrup, I can maybe have three sodas and during one movie, but try drinking a real sugar soda. It's hard to finish one. Even if you're used to drinking soda, it's hard to finish one because the sugar satiates you. Yep, that's and that. That really accords with our big study that's coming out soon, in mice. Exactly that phenomenon. That's spot on the other the other thing, of course, is that if you took something like fruit juice, where you've taken the fiber out of it, right? You imagine eating the number of apples that would be required to get a liter of apple juice, which you can swallow in a couple of minutes, you would burst because of the fiber. Right? In the book, it's it's four apples per glass. Of our industries, who's going to be able to eat four apples anyway? Yeah, who's going to be able to eat for four apples that are sitting but we could easily drink two glasses of right? And the difference is the fiber, everything else is the same. I mean, the book, eat like the animals. And the big takeaway for me again is is surround yourself with whole foods. Focus on that, on that protein. Make sure you're getting enough fiber, and let your body do the rest. Our guests, David robinheimer and Steven Simpson, both professors. Thank you guys so much for your time. They ask you two last questions. I know your time is valuable, but one last question, two questions, one, where can people follow up with you? Aside from buying the book. Link to where to buy the book in the show notes. Follow up us on Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter at eat like the animals. And actually, if you if you've searched for us on the internet, you'll find the link to the Charles Perkins Center here at the University of Sydney. And we're really delighted to engage with people. We're trying here to change the way that we conceive of nutrition and the food system, and really, ultimately, to put it, put it right, yeah, and taking our inspiration from the process that is evolved the solution to the most complex challenge that faces biology, which is the challenge of nutrition, natural selection. Evolution has solved that innumerable times in animals across the history of the evolution of life, and we've got a lot to learn, to learn and a lot to listen to from them. And as we said at the beginning, it's actually a good news story. It's not a bad news story, because we now understand clearly what is driving the process of the epidemic of poor health, poor nutrition related health. And if you understand that process, then it's much easier to deal with it in a constructive way, both at the individual level, as we were saying, in terms of choosing which foods you surround yourself with, and ultimately, at the societal level, of changing the broader food environment to help individuals to do that. Yeah, I appreciate you guys allowing me to be, again, so reductive in my assumptions about your research, but I think you're absolutely right. Like it's not really, it's not a bio hack. It's a bio unhack. We're really just allowing our body to adapt, to adapt back to what it's supposed to be, as opposed to what we've we've sort of fixed it in one last question for both of you and I, because I ask it to everybody, what is one thing that we can all start doing today that will make our lives a whole lot better? Yeah. To reduce the amount of highly processed industrial foods that we buy and take into our homes. Very simple step to sum up again, shop with your mind and eat with your appetite, spot on, and eat like the animals. I think you should read it, because it's a remarkable detective story, apart from anything else, a scientific detective story. So if you want to understand how your body works, how it's evolved, and how to listen to it, then I eat like the animals link again, where to where to buy that in the show notes translated into what 10 languages now? So this is a phenomenon. Well, yeah, I think it's 10 or 11 at the moment. Yeah, it's been a, it's been a great ride. It's, it's 35 years of hard science. But we tell that story professors, very different one in the sense that we've taken our inspiration and our insight and an approach to the human nutrition crisis from the natural world, and that is what has enabled us to see things in such a different way, as we say in the book, sometimes to see things clearly. It's an odd truth that you first have to look away, and that's what we've done. We've spent many decades looking away at other species and then turning back to our own, and that's what that's the story we tell, indeed, like the animals, there you have it. Professors, thank you guys so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. That's a pleasure. Gib, good speaking with you. That's it for our show today. If you like the show, please rate, comment and subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast, it helps us out a lot. You can also link with us on social media, facebook.com, John Tesh, at John Tesh. On Instagram, you can also call me. I'm Gib Gerard on Twitter, at Gib Gerard on Instagram, at Gib Gerard. And facebook.com/gib, Gerard. I try to respond to everything that you guys say or post about the show, because ultimately, I do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening. You.