Joe Rogan Experience #1267 - Gary Taubes & Stephan Guyenet

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Four, three, two, one.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      Four, three, two, one. (clearing throat) And we're live. All right, so to set this up, um, when Gary was on last, Gary Taubes? S- Stephan, how do I say your last name?

   2. SGStephan Guyenet0:16

      Stephan Guyenet.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Guyenet.

   4. SGStephan Guyenet0:18

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      Guyenet.

   6. SGStephan Guyenet0:19

      It's like D-N-A.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:20

      Like D-N-A, but with a G.

   8. SGStephan Guyenet0:22

      Right.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      Got it. Okay. Um, when you were on last, Stephan had, uh, some opposition to some of the things that you were saying. We talked about getting him on and you on together. We finally pulled it off. Took... There was a lot of wrangling, there was a lot of back and forth, and cat wrangling-

   10. SGStephan Guyenet0:40

       (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:40

       ... but we got it. We're here. Um, give me your position on... This is all for, for folks listening, this is all about obesity and the m- the mechanism for obesity. Is that fair to say?

   12. SGStephan Guyenet0:54

       Yeah, yeah. So essentially, uh, the main points that we wanna talk about today are-

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:59

       Try to keep this a fist from your face.

   14. SGStephan Guyenet1:00

       Okay, sure.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       Just pull-

   16. SGStephan Guyenet1:01

       So-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       Just pull... You can move it around.

   18. SGStephan Guyenet1:02

       Um, what causes obesity and what causes insulin resistance, which is behind a lot of our, um, chronic diseases that are common in society.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:11

       And please, uh, give us your background.

   20. SGStephan Guyenet1:14

       Yeah, so I have a, a BS in biochemistry, a PhD in neuroscience. After getting my PhD in neuroscience, I went on to study the neuroscience of obesity at the University of Washington, and particularly the brain circuits that regulate body fatness. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to talk about those today. And then I went on, um, to become a science consultant, science communicator, and write a book called The Hungry Brain that is, um, my attempt to explain for a non-specialist audience what, uh, what causes obesity. And, uh, yeah, so that's my background.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:53

       Now, what is your disagreement with Gary's position?

   22. SGStephan Guyenet1:57

       Everything. (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:57

       Everything?

   24. SGStephan Guyenet1:58

       Yeah, so, uh-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:59

       (laughs)

   26. SGStephan Guyenet1:59

       How about-

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:00

       Ask Gary.

   28. SGStephan Guyenet2:00

       ... how about I just-

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:02

       Mm-hmm, sure.

   30. SGStephan Guyenet2:02

       Can I start by explaining-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Right. …

   1. SGStephan Guyenet15:00

      feed... if you just increase sugar intake-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:04

      Right.

   3. SGStephan Guyenet15:04

      ... in animals or in humans, you do get weight gain, but it is modest compared to what you get when you put people around a variety of calorie-dense, palatable foods rich in carbohydrate and fat. Similarly, if you-

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:19

      Tha- that's very confusing. So-

   5. SGStephan Guyenet15:21

      How's that?

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      Because I'm, I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. You're saying you... if you give people this calorie-rich sugar diet of junk food, you will make them gain weight, but not as much weight as what?

   7. SGStephan Guyenet15:38

      Um, so (clears throat) what I'm saying is that if you, if you give people or animals the, uh, the actual human junk food-

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:47

      Right.

   9. SGStephan Guyenet15:47

      ... with all the carbs and fat and everything-

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:50

       Mm-hmm.

   11. SGStephan Guyenet15:50

       ... they gain a lot more weight and a lot faster than if you just give them a diet that's high in sugar and high in refined carbohydrate. And what that shows is that the sugar and the refined carbohydrate cannot fully explain the effect, can't, like, fully explain why those foods are fattening.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:07

       See, this is where I'm confused.

   13. SGStephan Guyenet16:08

       You see what I'm saying?

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:08

       No, I don't see what you're saying.

   15. SGStephan Guyenet16:09

       Okay.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:09

       'Cause you're, you're saying if you give people the diet of American junk food, you, you get not as much of a, an effect if you give them just the sugar and the carbohydrates?

   17. SGStephan Guyenet16:22

       Correct.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:22

       Is that what you're saying?

   19. SGStephan Guyenet16:22

       Yep.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:23

       So, but what are you giving them when you're giving them the ju- the diet of junk food? You're giving them sugar and carbs.

   21. SGStephan Guyenet16:26

       You can... Well, for example, in animals... No, it's different 'cause if you think about human junk foods, generally those foods contain fat and carbohydrate and salt-

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:36

       Right.

   23. SGStephan Guyenet16:36

       ... and all kinds of other things. So it's more, it's more than just-

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:39

       Well, it's a lot of soda, too, right?

   25. SGStephan Guyenet16:41

       ... carbs, right?

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:41

       There's no sugar.

   27. SGStephan Guyenet16:41

       Yeah, so this-

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:42

       It's just, uh-

   29. SGStephan Guyenet16:42

       And... Okay, so-

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:43

       ... just sugar and that.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Well, again, I- …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Do you-

   2. GTGary Taubes30:00

      Well, again, I-

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      What do you disagree with?

   4. GTGary Taubes30:02

      Well, virtually everything, but, um, let's begin with... I have to track back now. The, um, okay, so drugs that explain obesity, 10%. Well, the argument that I was making and the argument I continue to make, i- imagine if, you know, take Stephan's, uh, car metaphor.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:22

      You see Stephan, he says Stefan.

   6. GTGary Taubes30:24

      Okay, sorry.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:24

      You say Stefan, right?

   8. SGStephan Guyenet30:25

      It's okay.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:25

      Stefan.

   10. SGStephan Guyenet30:25

       I'm not offended.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:26

       That's okay.

   12. GTGary Taubes30:26

       But I mean-

   13. SGStephan Guyenet30:27

       I apologize.

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:27

       Just so people-

   15. SGStephan Guyenet30:28

       Stefan.

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:28

       ... don't get confused.

   17. SGStephan Guyenet30:29

       Thank you.

   18. GTGary Taubes30:30

       So the, uh-If you take Stefan's car analogy and somewhere in the 1970s ... I, I've used a car analogy for this too, but I, I don't think it's as appropriate. But one would think that somewhere in the 1970s, the aliens didn't notice that there were humans driving the car. So now they're trying to solve the problem without the humans involved. Why is it some cars drive faster than others? And they come up with all kinds of hypotheses, and some of them can explain that even when they interpret the hypotheses, one of the common problems in science is called intellectual phase lock. So what I've been arguing is, in effect, the obesity research community left out of its research 1960s era endocrinology, the hormonal metabolic regulation of fatty acid metabolism, oxidation burning. And as such, when they did it, pretty much everything they've done since has been interpreted incorrectly, just like the aliens would interpret the c- car problem if they never notice the humans. So, um, and leptin is a good example. So leptin is discovered in 1993, and when leptin is discovered, obesity becomes sort of a legitimate field of science. Until then, it's a bunch of actually mostly psychologists studying. And then now it becomes a subdiscipline in molecular biology, and all the molecular biologists jump into the field. And they assume that what leptin does is control the brain. Uh, it signals how much fat is available. It's, uh, some kind of satiety or fuel efficiency, um, hormone. And as such, they study the brain, and they study the action of leptin in the brain. Now in 2002, Jeff Friedman, who gets credit for discovering leptin, perhaps incorrectly (laughs) , um, publishes a paper in the journal Science. It's saying perhaps as much as two thirds or more of what leptin does is done in the periphery, in the body. And what leptin does, it's a hormone that sort of is, is secreted in response to how much fat you've accumulated. And then does it stimulate the brain to tell you to eat more or less depending on how much fat, or it also works in liver cells, which were the cells they were studying. And the assumption is it probably does in all cells to tell your cells to burn fat. So it makes perfect sense if there's fat available in the fat cells, now you've got a signal telling, sort of influencing the other cells of the body to burn fat. So now you've got a hormone that could work in the periphery, in the br- in the, you know, below the neck, or it could work above the neck, but you've got a community that's almost exclusively studying in the head. They don't know there are human drivers down here, so that's what they do. So even in this world, the, the, I, I don't ... I think I know the genome paper, um, Stefan is probably referenced on his website.

   19. SGStephan Guyenet33:28

       There have been a number of them-

   20. GTGary Taubes33:29

       Stefan, excuse me.

   21. SGStephan Guyenet33:29

       ... but yeah. That's the most recent.

   22. GTGary Taubes33:31

       The Harvard group? Is it the-

   23. SGStephan Guyenet33:33

       I, I don't remember.

   24. GTGary Taubes33:34

       The ... So they had two papers 'cause it's what you cited in the article you co-authored with Rudy Leibel. So they have two papers. One is genes associated with obesity, and one is genes associated with body type. So with body type, they're all below the neck. They're all, you know, fat metabolism basically, and the musc- you know, the genes that ... Aspects of your body that you would expect to be controlled, like when you build up muscle and you have to take in excess energy to do it, it makes you hungry. I don't think your brain is regulating how much muscle you're building other than your drive to go to the gym. Basically, your body is responding to the stress on the muscle, all the things you do and the weightlifting, it's all below the neck. So the argument here is again, simple. When these people looked at body type, it was insulin regulated genes for the most part, growth hormone, all these things. When they looked at excess body fat, they decided they were in the head. But the question is when they looked, they're programmed to think that excess body fat is caused by overeating, so they look in the brain. Did they do the same kind ... And I was gonna call the researcher involved, I never got around to doing it, saying if body type, body shape is determined by these genes, then doesn't it make sense that excess f- variations of body shape are gonna be determined by the same genes? And did you d- do the same kind of searches? I don't actually know how they determine where the genes work.

   25. SGStephan Guyenet35:06

       It's the same kind of searches, they just came up with different sets of genes. So they didn't start with any assumptions, they were just finding whatever was there.

   26. GTGary Taubes35:13

       No, but the question is where the genes work. So there's a common phenomenon on all this, like with leptin, a gene that everybody thinks about working in the hypothalamus-

   27. SGStephan Guyenet35:21

       Yeah.

   28. GTGary Taubes35:21

       ... seems to work in every cell in the body.

   29. SGStephan Guyenet35:23

       Can I, can I respond to that and since you get to-

   30. GTGary Taubes35:24

       Wait, let me finish talking.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. GTGary Taubes45:00

      one of the things you have to understand about this is everything that's said has two interpretations depending on which paradigm you're looking at. And these are fundamentally different paradigms. So in Stefan's world, and again correct me if I'm wrong, the leptin is signaling fuel availability in the fat cells the way I would think of it in, in my very small world. Leptin is responding to fuel availability in the rest of the cells. So it's basically a molecule that can tell other cells that there's fat available, and you could burn that fat for fuel and then you don't have to go eat. Or it can tell that there isn't fuel available, and if, depending on how much leptin there is, the cells and then that will respond by a signal to eat or not, to disinhibit eating behavior. Um, everything we're talking about... When Stefan and I first sort of fell out, I don't know, eight years ago, at, um, uh, Ancestral Health Symposium when I acted improperly, inappropriately. But one of the problems I... So the way I think you should think about this, you have a hypothesis, and, and this is the fundamental thing. Is obesity caused by overeating? 'Cause we know if you're getting fatter, you're storing more calories in your expend. That's just the, you know, that's like if a room is getting more crowded, more people are entering than leaving. That is the simplest... But it doesn't tell you why the room's getting crowded. It doesn't tell you why the f- you're getting fatter. And again, what I've been arguing is the why you're getting fatter part has been left out, and people decided that overeating was somehow an explanation. And then they went to the brain to look at why people might overeat. So what I... One of the questions I asked Stefan eight years ago, and it keeps coming up, is if we're gonna blame obesity on the modern food environment, epidemics of obesity, you know, a simple question to ask is, can we find epidemics of obesity without this modern food environment? I mean, that's a sort of Science 101, right?

   2. JRJoe Rogan47:07

      Mm-hmm.

   3. GTGary Taubes47:08

      And it turns out that the world is full. And the first one I found in the literature was in 1902 in a population of the Pima, Native American tribe the Pima living in Arizona. And observers saying these people are poor, they're malnourished, they're suffering through famines. They'd been suffering through a famine for 40 years. And famines, it's hard to overeat during a famine. And yet, the women of the tribe, who do virtually all the work, uh, they were treated as pack animals in effect, were obese. So now we can disassociate obesity from the modern food environment, and we could disassociate it from, uh, this ultra-processed foods we eat and start to ask the question, what is it about... Can we find what might have driven obesity in that population despite the existence of famine? So it's from very simple observation. Once we get into these kind of studies say this and human genome studies say that, um, I actually rarely do that in my books because you can find studies that will say anything.

   4. JRJoe Rogan48:13

      (laughs)

   5. GTGary Taubes48:14

      And you'll see in the studies, um, people misinterpreting them.

   6. JRJoe Rogan48:20

      What was the cause of the population of women to be o- obese in this?

   7. GTGary Taubes48:23

      Well, so one thing that happened during the fa- beginning in the 1860s, the Pima were put on a reserv- well, they moved onto a reserv- they were reservationized, whatever the verb form would be, and they began eating Western foods. And back then, it was sugar, flour, and lard for the most part and sugary beverages probably. So that's a reasonable hypothesis-And you could find the same thing in the Sioux, Native American Sioux population living on a reservation in 1928, where you had, uh, o- both obese men and women living with malnourished, stunted children who clearly weren't getting enough diet, but they were on a reservation, they were getting Western foods. So ultimately, y- you know, the question you ask in science determines the answer you get. So, the question I was asking is we have this observation that any population that transitions to Western diet or Western diet and lifestyle gets obese and diabetic. They, they develop what's called metabolic syndrome, which is insulin resistance and all these issues. And we know that's true all over the world, from the Inuit to the Pima to South Pacific Islanders to Africans to Europeans. So, the genetics aren't that important. The question is, what's triggering it in the environment? And again, Stefan would say, "Well, there's too much food available, and it's too palatable, and we can't say no." And I have a lot of problems with the "we can't say no" part, 'cause if we're lean, it means they can't say no, and they being the people with obesity, and I don't believe that's true. And then, or is it some specific item or some specific group in this, these foods that travel with Western populations? And so, the exist- the ability ... And today, if you look up, uh, dual burden of obesity and malnutrition, I have a Dropbox folder I could share with you, there's probably 50 studies all over the world you see the same observation. Incredibly poor populations, malnourished, the children are stunted, which means they're protein deficient and they're calorie deficient. And often, the mothers or the aunts are obese. See, obesity tends to run in the females, which suggests it has a female sex hormone-related effect that I don't believe works in the brain 'cause we're dealing with populations that could not have overeaten. If they could have overeaten, why are the kids starving? That's sort of the question. And, you know, and this was the first thing that I think we thought about back then, and it's still, if you can find populations with, uh, obesity epidemics, but without the modern food system, without Snackwell's and without Lay's potato chips-

   8. JRJoe Rogan51:09

      Mm-hmm.

   9. GTGary Taubes51:11

      ... um, and if you know that they're going through a famine or you know that the kids at least aren't getting enough food,-

   10. JRJoe Rogan51:17

       Mm-hmm.

   11. GTGary Taubes51:17

       ... how do you explain obesity in the mothers without assuming that the mothers are overeating?

   12. JRJoe Rogan51:22

       L- let's pause right there. Y- Stefan, is there a population of people that are obese that are not eating a Western diet, that are not eating sugary foods?

   13. SGStephan Guyenet51:33

       Um, that are obese and that are not eating sugary foods, probably not, because generally, once you have an industrialized food system, that's gonna include sugar. But there are populations that eat a lot of sugar and are not obese, and we should talk about some of these. Actually, let's-

   14. GTGary Taubes51:51

       Oh, can you-

   15. JRJoe Rogan51:51

       ... let's talk about the Pima first.

   16. GTGary Taubes51:51

       ... can you go back to the ... Yeah, okay.

   17. SGStephan Guyenet51:53

       Yeah, sure. Let's talk about the Pima first. Um, now, Gary has told a story. He's told his version of the Pima story. Let me tell the story, the version of the story that appears in the scientific literature. Now, the Pima, um, originally the, they were agriculturalists. They were eating traditionally a very high carbohydrate diet based on unrefined carbohydrates. Originally, it was corn, beans, and squash primarily.

   18. GTGary Taubes52:19

       They were hunter-gatherers-

   19. SGStephan Guyenet52:20

       Um-

   20. GTGary Taubes52:20

       ... and agriculturalists.

   21. JRJoe Rogan52:21

       They were hunters-

   22. SGStephan Guyenet52:21

       They were primarily ... Gary, okay.

   23. GTGary Taubes52:24

       Go ahead.

   24. SGStephan Guyenet52:24

       They were primarily eating agricultural foods. They were also collecting some wild foods. That's correct. Um, they were fishing and eating mesquite pods, primarily agricultural. And, um, data are very clear on that, Gary. So-

   25. GTGary Taubes52:40

       No, no, no, n- yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan52:41

       (laughs)

   27. SGStephan Guyenet52:41

       Yes, they are. Uh, look, we have data-

   28. GTGary Taubes52:43

       We, we can't say things like that, Stefan-

   29. SGStephan Guyenet52:45

       (laughs)

   30. GTGary Taubes52:45

       ... 'cause we're gonna disagree-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Okay, fine. …

   1. SGStephan Guyenet1:00:00

      you've never been to before. It's very difficult to get accurate measures. So just because some guy went to Trinidad and claimed- It was a woman actually.

   2. Okay, fine.

   3. She didn't-

   4. GTGary Taubes1:00:09

      (laughs)

   5. SGStephan Guyenet1:00:09

      Just because some woman went to Trinidad and claimed that people were eating 1800 calories and becoming obese does not mean that that's what actually happened. Now-

   6. GTGary Taubes1:00:18

      But let me-

   7. SGStephan Guyenet1:00:18

      No, no, no, no. Gary, I'm responding. Now, we have studies where researchers used accurate measures to measure calorie intake in people who had obesity. Many of these people were saying, "We're only eating 1200 calories a day." When they actually measured their calorie intake, what they found was that they were consistently eating more calories than lean people. So this, this phenomenon that Gary describes is something that is only observed when inferior methods are used-

   8. GTGary Taubes1:00:52

      Well, wait, wait.

   9. SGStephan Guyenet1:00:52

      ... to measure calorie intake.

   10. GTGary Taubes1:00:53

       Wait. Stefan, the, the reason I'm using these populations-... like I said, I'm just giving you an observation. Obese mother with a starving child, the dual burden of malnutrition/obesity, this isn't one observation, it's not one nutritionist. The existence of the starving children strongly suggests that there's not a lot of food available, and we have to explain obesity in the mother.

   11. SGStephan Guyenet1:01:17

       You know, I-

   12. GTGary Taubes1:01:18

       That's what I would like you to respond to.

   13. SGStephan Guyenet1:01:19

       Okay, fine. I will respond to that. Now, look, I haven't looked at these studies in particular.

   14. GTGary Taubes1:01:24

       I brought them up eight years ago.

   15. SGStephan Guyenet1:01:25

       Oh. (laughs)

   16. GTGary Taubes1:01:25

       We got in a fight about it.

   17. SGStephan Guyenet1:01:26

       Wonderful. (laughs)

   18. GTGary Taubes1:01:27

       We fell out eight years ago.

   19. SGStephan Guyenet1:01:28

       Okay. (laughs)

   20. GTGary Taubes1:01:28

       It ruined our, you know, it's like our... we used to be buddies.

   21. SGStephan Guyenet1:01:31

       Um, so now, (laughs) look, um, there are many reasons why a child could be malnourished in a non-industrial situation. And this is... I do a lot of work related to this. What you see in non-industrial situations, you see a lot of infectious disease, you see a lot of, um, malnutrition, so people not getting enough essential minerals and vitamins, not getting enough protein. And you see a lot of children who are just barely hanging on because of this collection of really bad stuff that's happening in their lives. And so-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:03

       Parasites, things along those lines?

   23. SGStephan Guyenet1:02:05

       Yeah, yeah, parasites, malaria. I don't know if there's malaria in Trinidad or not, but I mean, all the... diarrhea, pneumonia. These are the things that we all had before we had modern medicine and great sanitation in a country like the United States. 30% of kids didn't even make it past childhood. And so there's a lot of things that could have caused that, Gary. It's not necessarily because, you know... it's not necessarily the reason that you attribute it to. Now-

   24. GTGary Taubes1:02:32

       I'm not attributing it to a reason, I'm just asking for explanations.

   25. SGStephan Guyenet1:02:36

       Okay. Well, great. Well, I, I don't have an... the explanation, but I'm throwing out possibilities that are alternative to the one that you're implying.

   26. GTGary Taubes1:02:43

       And that's quite possible, too.

   27. SGStephan Guyenet1:02:44

       Okay. So now, um, I... so again, when you use accurate measures of calorie intake, you find that these people with magical metabolisms who have obesity and don't eat very much seem to not exist anymore. Um, and furthermore, I wanna, I wanna get this to another type of study that's really gonna differentiate between this metabolic effect driven by insulin and the effect of calories. So, we have a lot of studies that compared diets in which calories were the same, but carbohydrate and fat intake differed. And the ones that I really wanna focus on right now that I think are key here are the studies where they increased calorie intake. So they fed people, they, they f... one study in particular, and, um, let's see, I'm gonna give you a number here. Um, let me see if I can give you a number here. Sorry.

   28. GTGary Taubes1:03:41

       While you look at that, um, can we, uh, bring up another issue? 'Cause what we're talking about ultimately is why people get fat.

   29. SGStephan Guyenet1:03:48

       Okay, I, I don't, I don't wanna divert here. I'm in the middle of something. So, um, now if we wanna understand why people get fat, we can look at studies that overfed people on fat or carbohydrate exclusively. So there's one study, um, the first one that I wanna talk about, first they figured out peoples' baseline calorie intake, figure out wh- how many calories they needed just to maintain, and then they increased that by 50% by exclusively giving them fat or exclusively giving them carbohydrate, okay?

   30. GTGary Taubes1:04:21

       Which study was this?
6. 1:15:00 – 1:22:44

   Okay. …

   1. GTGary Taubes1:15:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      Okay.

   3. GTGary Taubes1:15:00

      Some kind of difference in fat gain. Well, actually, um, I don't wanna start taking out charts, but this gets into insulin dynamics that was worked out. So over a ... Um, I promised I wasn't gonna say oi-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:15

      Oi?

   5. GTGary Taubes1:15:15

      ... on the show, but it's my ... Thanks to my Brooklyn-born mother, it's my-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:20

      Mm-hmm.

   7. GTGary Taubes1:15:21

      ... programmed in. Um, and the same is true, a lot of these overfeeding experiments do the same thing. So when they talk about overfeeding, they, they, they literally overfeed. So they kinda do a reasonable way of figuring out what you're eating is, Stefan said they measured the ... They calculated how much energy they needed to stay in energy imbalance. And again, right there, that's a problem, because one of the hypotheses says that energy balance is dependent on the macronutrient content of the food. So you're gonna get a different, different level depending on what the macronutrient content is. And then ...

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:16:01

      A different level of?

   9. GTGary Taubes1:16:02

      Of what, what's necessary for energy balance.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:16:06

       Okay.

   11. GTGary Taubes1:16:06

       So the classic example is a study that's my not-for-profit funded that's been very controversial, where they got their subjects, this is David Ludwig and Cara Ebeling and their, their colleagues at, at, at Harvard and Boston Children's Hospital, and they did this study in Framingham. And they, they basically got, uh, subjects to lose, uh, 10 or 12% of their body weight, and then they randomized them to three different diets of three different macronutrient compositions. And they basically calculated their energy expenditure on the three different diets, which is kind of exactly what we're talking about, 'cause if you wanna be in energy balance, you know you feed people exactly what they're expending. And in that study, which was published a year ago, and they saw different levels of energy expenditure depending on the carbohydrate content of the diet. So the higher level of carbohydrates, this is trying to keep them in energy balance. The, the higher the carbohydrate, the lower the energy expenditure. The lower the carbohydrate, the higher the energy expenditure. So again, it's just whether or not they did the study right. Who knows? Science is a compilation of a lot of studies, and we're trying to, you know, address exactly this point. But merely building that into the experiment, we know what their energy expenditure should be. And then the point is when you increase ... And par- again, part of the trick of doing science is to say, "Look, we have competing hypotheses, uh, multiple hypotheses," and it's vitally important that you always keep the multiple hypotheses in mind when you're interpreting the study. So one hypothesis says it's how much they eat, and another hypothesis says it's what they eat, and that what they eat is, is moderated primarily through insulin. And when you do these experiments, like the experiment that, that, uh, uh, St- S- (laughs) Stefan is talking about, Stefan, um ... Now I'm completely confused. Uh, if you overfeed them, you start out with a 50% carb diet, now you overfeed them, if there's a threshold effect on insulin, which it turns out there is, then you're just moving them ... And when you look at insulin dynamics, when insulin is below a very low point, the fat cells will mobilize fat and the lean tissue will burn it for fuel. And above that point, you get pretty much flat. So if you start people who are eating 1500 calories from carbs and you add them, bump them up to 2500 calories from carbs, you're still in the plateau side of the insulin, you wouldn't necessarily expect to see any difference.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:18:51

       Mm-hmm.

   13. GTGary Taubes1:18:51

       The only way you expect to see a difference, and this is why it helps to really, um, interrogate both hypotheses so that you know when you're doing the experiment whether or not you're actually testing something you ... One hypothesis ... You wanna set up the experiment so the hypothesis predicts, the two hypotheses predict something entirely different. This experiment, arguably the two hypotheses predict the same thing. You'll get fat gain because insulin is elevated regardless. And when insulin is elevated, you're gonna get fat gain.... the question comes back to if, this again, always vital to keep this in mind, we wanna, what could possibly cause a 10 or 20-calorie excess that causes fat storage? I have a friend who was four- 400 pounds when he was 18. He was a tall kid, about six foot five, um, he was a, say, 200 pounds overweight. 200 pounds overweight is roughly 100 excess calories over 18 years stored in your fat cells. That's, you know, even if you assume that you have to consume 300 calories to have 100 excess stored in your fat cells, that's, you know, one, two Coca-Colas a day that he was drinking, or one half a quarter-pounder a day that he was eating that his lean friends weren't. And the question would be, why can't he just stop doing that? And again, Stefan would say, "'Cause his brain won't let him." (smacks lips) And I would say, "Because his insulin is elevated. It doesn't matter whether he stops it or not."

   14. SGStephan Guyenet1:20:21

       Can I respond here?

   15. GTGary Taubes1:20:22

       He's got to address the underlying mechanism.

   16. SGStephan Guyenet1:20:23

       Please. Okay. Um, all right, so now, again, it's easy to tell stories. It's not easy to tell stories that are supported by scientific evidence. Now, um, I wanna bring people's attention to reference number 11 on my site. There have been 29 studies now that have measured differences in energy expenditure, metabolic rate-

   17. GTGary Taubes1:20:47

       Is this the Kevin Hall study?

   18. SGStephan Guyenet1:20:49

       ... meta-analysis, correct.

   19. GTGary Taubes1:20:50

       Yeah.

   20. SGStephan Guyenet1:20:50

       There have been 29 studies to date that have measured calorie expenditure, metabolic rate on diets differing in carbohydrate and fat content, and when you put all those studies together, when you, or at least the first 28 together, and you look at what the overall literature says, it makes almost no difference to metabolic rate whether people are eating carbohydrate or fat. And in fact, this very small difference that it does make actually favors high-carbohydrate diets. So, you get a slightly higher metabolic rate when the diet is predominantly carbohydrate. Now, this study that Gary cited is the one study out of these 29 that has reported a larger effect than any others of carbohydrate restriction on energy expenditure. So this study (laughs) reported an effect bigger than any of these other 28, um-

   21. GTGary Taubes1:21:41

       And the difference we would say is, is this-

   22. SGStephan Guyenet1:21:43

       And, Gary, I'm not done. I'm not done.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:21:45

       Gary, Gary, Gary, please.

   24. SGStephan Guyenet1:21:45

       Thank you. Um, and, and interestingly, if you actually look at the data, and these data have been reanalyzed by a researcher named Kevin Hall, and if you look at the data, you find that some of the participants, some of the data th- that, uh, represent some of these participants are literally physically impossible. They break the first law of thermodynamics. This is the conservation of energy. Gary knows about this. He has a physics background. And they literally don't add up. And when you start subtracting the err- the clearly erroneous data from the pool of subjects, this big effect size starts to shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink until after you've gotten rid of all of it, this study does no long- no longer reports a higher energy expenditure on a very low-carbohydrate diet, and it's consistent (laughs) with the previous 28 studies that were done. So, that's my perspective on that. But I wanna go back to this energy-

   25. GTGary Taubes1:22:44

       No, wait, can I comment on that study?

Episode duration: 2:37:41