Joe Rogan Experience #1393 - James Wilks & Chris Kresser - The Game Changers Debate

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   All right, here we…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      All right, here we go. Uh, first of all, um, welcome, James. Good to see you.

   2. JWJames Wilks0:07

      I really appreciate you having me on.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      My pleasure. Um, and, uh, welcome again, Chris. Uh, so this is essentially, uh, giving you an opportunity to refute some of the things that Chris has said about your film. We should tell everybody that you... you're the producer of Game Changers?

   4. JWJames Wilks0:23

      Yeah, as one of... I'm one of two producers, yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      One of two producers. Uh, I know you also from, of course, from The Ultimate Fighter-

   6. JWJames Wilks0:28

      Yep.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:28

      ... UFC. And Chris, this is your, what? Fourth appearance here, uh, up like that?

   8. CKChris Kresser0:32

      Fourth or fifth, yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:33

      Th- fourth or fifth. Um, did you get a chance to see what Chris had said?

   10. JWJames Wilks0:38

       Yeah, I've watched it. Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       You watched it, okay, well-

   12. JWJames Wilks0:39

       I've ma- I've made a bunch of notes there.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       Excellent. Let's start from the beginning. Um, the beginning of the show, the beginning of your film, you talked about the gladiators and all that stuff, and the, the fact that you were shocked to find out that they, they had eaten a vegetarian diet.

   14. JWJames Wilks0:56

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:56

       Yeah.

   16. JWJames Wilks0:56

       I mean, and I'll... You know, that's been misrepresented, right? So, even before the film came out, people are like, "Oh, there's this vegan film coming out. It's vegan propaganda." People were judging the film before they'd seen it, right? And the vegan sort of community really pushed it, like, "Hey, look at this documentary." So, there's been things saying, "They claim that the gladiators were vegan," right? "And if we can just prove... They think that the whole film is based on this premise." That was just like an inciting incident for me to start digging into it. First of all, Fabian Kent said they were predominantly vegetarian, and I said they ate mostly plants. And that is what I couldn't believe, right?

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:28

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JWJames Wilks1:28

       So, they, we didn't claim that they were vegan, didn't even claim that they were vegetarian, they were just fueled mostly by plants. You know, and people say, "Oh, you cherry-picked one location." It was the only known gladiator burial site in the world based on archeological and anthropological data at the time.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:42

       At the time where you read the study-

   20. JWJames Wilks1:44

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:44

       ... 'cause there, there have been other studies that were-

   22. JWJames Wilks1:45

       Well, there's been, there's been some that have been questioned. So, like, there's one in York. There was one in York at the time that had a few gladiator skeletons and it was questioned whether that was the thing. But I'm, I'm happy to address every critique.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:55

       Okay.

   24. JWJames Wilks1:55

       But if, if you wouldn't mind, I just wanna make sure that Chris and I are on the same page about how, um, evidence is evaluated.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:01

       Sure.

   26. JWJames Wilks2:01

       So, Chris, would you consider yourself a nutrition expert?

   27. CKChris Kresser2:06

       Um, no. I would consider myself someone who is adept at reading the literature and, um, learning from experts in nutrition, medicine, anthropology, et cetera. Although, I do have master's-

   28. JRJoe Rogan2:21

       (coughs)

   29. CKChris Kresser2:21

       ... level training in nutrition.

   30. JWJames Wilks2:24

       Okay. So, is it fair to say that any one study cannot show what, you know, the human race should be eating? Is that fair? Any one study?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Absolutely. …

   1. JWJames Wilks15:00

      uh, do you agree that that was the quote from the study? That's, that-

   2. CKChris Kresser15:02

      Absolutely.

   3. JWJames Wilks15:03

      Okay, good. But, okay, so-

   4. CKChris Kresser15:04

      But no, but I, I'm, I'm asking you what your interpretation ... Does that, in your mind, show a strong connection between dairy and cancer?

   5. JWJames Wilks15:11

      Okay, Joe, you're gonna really realize here what Chris is doing, okay? This is really ... And I'm glad that you brought it up.

   6. CKChris Kresser15:16

      Just please answer-

   7. JWJames Wilks15:17

      Okay, okay-

   8. CKChris Kresser15:17

      ... what he's saying.

   9. JWJames Wilks15:17

      Okay. So can I just say, the reason you brought this up is because Walter Willett said there was a strong connection between prostate cancer and dairy, correct?

   10. CKChris Kresser15:24

       Yeah.

   11. JWJames Wilks15:24

       So you brought up about something about all cancers. Okay.

   12. CKChris Kresser15:27

       Yeah.

   13. JWJames Wilks15:27

       So-

   14. CKChris Kresser15:27

       And in this study, about half of the studies showed a connection between prostate cancer and dairy, and half didn't.

   15. JWJames Wilks15:34

       Right. Okay, so-

   16. CKChris Kresser15:34

       That's still not a compelling argument that dairy-

   17. JWJames Wilks15:37

       No, no. It's a-

   18. CKChris Kresser15:38

       ... is, is associated with cancer.

   19. JWJames Wilks15:40

       Okay, so can we-

   20. CKChris Kresser15:41

       You got, you, you got a coin flip, basically.

   21. JWJames Wilks15:43

       Right. That's not actually true.

   22. CKChris Kresser15:44

       You still haven't-

   23. JWJames Wilks15:44

       I'll explain, I'll explain why-

   24. CKChris Kresser15:45

       You still haven't-

   25. JWJames Wilks15:46

       ... that's not true.

   26. CKChris Kresser15:46

       ... answered my question-

   27. JWJames Wilks15:47

       I will, I'm gonna ... I'm trying to tell you this.

   28. CKChris Kresser15:48

       ... about this, this-

   29. JWJames Wilks15:48

       I'm trying to tell you.

   30. CKChris Kresser15:49

       ... data here.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Right. …

   1. CKChris Kresser30:00

      There are other f- claims in the film made about dairy and metabolic pro- uh, issues and saturated fat and metabolic issues. So the operative question that I'm trying to answer is, do the data support that? Not does Walter Willett think that-

   2. JWJames Wilks30:14

      Right.

   3. CKChris Kresser30:14

      ... or any other expert in the film. Do the data support that conclusion?

   4. JWJames Wilks30:18

      Right. I agree.

   5. CKChris Kresser30:19

      And even in that study, it, the data don't strongly support that. If you have half studies saying yes, half studies saying no, that's not a clear signal. And it's definitely not evidence of a causal relationship.

   6. JWJames Wilks30:31

      But, but-

   7. CKChris Kresser30:31

      So, so having Walter Willett or anyone say, "There's a strong relationship and we know the mechanism and there's, you know, it's causal," that...

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:40

      Can I pause here? Can I pause here?

   9. CKChris Kresser30:41

      That is disproven by the study.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:42

       Can I pause here? Didn't you tell me that two-thirds of people, um, have an intolerance towards, uh, towards milk and-

   11. CKChris Kresser30:50

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:50

       ... towards dairy?

   13. CKChris Kresser30:50

       And I have a study here that-

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:52

       Is that what the number is?

   15. CKChris Kresser30:53

       I- it's one ou-... two out of three people in the world-

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:57

       Okay.

   17. JWJames Wilks30:57

       So, can I just ask a question then?

   18. JRJoe Rogan30:58

       Hold on, because this is actually to your point.

   19. JWJames Wilks31:00

       Sure.

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:00

       So, two out of three people have an intolerance towards dairy in the world. And if you're talking about a study that shows 50% of the people in these studies that are consuming dairy th- there's a correlation between prostate cancer and, and dairy.

   21. JWJames Wilks31:15

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:16

       Wouldn't you assume that maybe w- the same thing that we're talking about with two-thirds of people are intolerant to something, they consume this thing that's intolerated, it causes inflammation in the body, and that inflammation in the body could possibly be leading to cancer?

   23. JWJames Wilks31:30

       Correct.

   24. CKChris Kresser31:31

       No.

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:31

       No?

   26. CKChris Kresser31:31

       Not correct. Dairy pr-... dairy is inversely associated with inflammation. So, uh, we can pull up a study there-

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:38

       But if... Okay. Inversely associated with inflammation. But if people are irritated by dairy, if they have an intolerance to dairy, and you said two-thirds of people-

   28. CKChris Kresser31:46

       Then, here's, here's what I would suspect there that if you... we, we segmented those people out and said, "Let's do a study, find out who's intolerant of dairy and find out who isn't," you would see even better results for dairy, because despite the fact that some people are lactose intolerant, we're still seeing in that meta-analyses that, you know, most peop-... there's no association in most cases and an inverse association in other cases. So, Jamie, hold on-

   29. JWJames Wilks32:13

       So, this, this, this-

   30. JRJoe Rogan32:13

       But this cancer thing-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   It's a little more…

   1. JWJames Wilks45:00

      s- some, uh, so if an animal food creates oxidative stress, you have it with the plant foods, and that would have the antioxidants and that would offset it. Is that basically...

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:08

      It's a little more complicated than that.

   3. CKChris Kresser45:09

      Yeah. I, I think it is more complicated than that, but as I've always-

   4. JWJames Wilks45:13

      But that's one mech- can be more mechanisms, right?

   5. CKChris Kresser45:13

      As I said last time and as, as I've always argued, I'm not a, a proponent of carn- the carnivore diet. I'm not a low-carb guy. I'm not a keto guy. I'm, my fundamental argument is just that the optimal human diet contains both plant and animal foods. And this focus on individual food components or macronutrients like protein or fat or carbohydrate, we've gotten too much, it's called nutritionism. It's just focusing on these individual elements and ignoring the overall pattern of diet quality which is the most important thing. And that's what a lot of the more recent studies are showing. When you look at the diet pattern and diet quality on, its on, you know, overall, that's what actually makes a difference in terms of health and lifespan. Not how much of this fat, how much of that fat, whether there's, you know, red meat or white meat or fish or whatever. It's the pattern that makes the difference. Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:11

      Let me pause you because this is, this is one of the primary misconceptions that people have about consuming meat. When they hear studies that say that meat is associated with mortality or high cholesterol or heart disease or all these different factors, we are talking about these kind of studies where people fill out a form, "Tell us what you eat."

   7. JWJames Wilks46:29

      Yeah, and-

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:30

      "How many days a week do you eat meat? How many days a week do you eat this?" What they don't take into account is whether or not these people are going to Wendy's, whether or not they're eating a grass-fed-

   9. JWJames Wilks46:40

      Totally.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:40

       ... steak and, and, and, you know, and broccoli. Something healthy. There's a giant difference between those two things, but they're lumped in together because this is meat consumption.

   11. JWJames Wilks46:49

       Yeah, the, the studies aren't perfect for sure. Um, but you were saying that, basically you're look- saying we should look at outcomes and not just look at individual markers, right? Is that basically...

   12. CKChris Kresser46:58

       No, I'm saying we should look at the diet quality, the overall diet pattern.

   13. JWJames Wilks47:04

       Right. I agree.

   14. CKChris Kresser47:04

       So for example, Christopher Gardner did a study at Stanford a, a couple years ago and he took two, instead of saying, you know, low fat, low carb, he took two groups and he advised them all to basically eat a healthy diet. And then one group ate a low fat healthy diet, and the other group ate a low carb healthy diet. They all lost weight-

   15. JWJames Wilks47:25

       Agree.

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:25

       Agree.

   17. CKChris Kresser47:25

       ... but it wasn't that big of a difference between the two.

   18. JWJames Wilks47:27

       I agree. I agree. So first of all, in terms of health, I, I would be pretty, my opinion would be, I'm pretty much, um, macronutrient agnostic. So I wouldn't like, I'm not advocating high carb or low carb. I think that people can do healthy and well. I think for athletes they need a lot more carbs-

   19. JRJoe Rogan47:42

       Yes.

   20. JWJames Wilks47:42

       ... which of course getting those from plants. I think there's certain athletes that can, uh, if, if it's slow and steady state where you're, you're getting more fat oxidation, um, I think that, you know, slow and steady state athletes can do. But like, an MMA fighter, a soccer player-

   21. JRJoe Rogan47:55

       Yes.

   22. JWJames Wilks47:55

       ... a basketball player-

   23. JRJoe Rogan47:55

       Agreed.

   24. CKChris Kresser47:56

       We all agree on that.

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:57

       Yeah, we all agree on that.

   26. JWJames Wilks47:57

       Okay. But, but you just said that you were, you were not low carb, right? You said you're not low carb.

   27. CKChris Kresser48:02

       I'm not. I'm not a low carb advocate. I've written articles called seven things, seven reasons you should be cautious. I'm not saying I'm not low, a low carb advocate. I don't believe everyone should be on a low carb diet.

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:15

       Right.

   29. CKChris Kresser48:15

       I've never, I've never believed that.

   30. JWJames Wilks48:17

       But the thing is, Chris has his own... He doesn't have the consensus, um, definitions of carbohydrate levels. You've made up your own definitions, right?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:06:09

   Yeah. …

   1. JWJames Wilks1:00:00

      the people in the, whoever wrote the, the write-up for the study made a mistake. There were statistically significant, 'cause 1.14 to 3 means that there was, like, a 14% to 300% increase in that one study of, uh, from the Netherlands, the Kerstin Klipstein-Grobush. And for people watching, they can go and look at the study and look at the conclusions.

   2. CKChris Kresser1:00:17

      Yeah.

   3. JWJames Wilks1:00:17

      There were three. Because his point was (clears throat) , what you try to infer from that was that the American diet that includes a bunch of junk food is different than the, the ones in Sweden and the Netherlands where they aren't eating so much junk food. But that actually was incorrect. So heme iron has been associated and is recognized that there seems to be-

   4. CKChris Kresser1:00:34

      Yes, it has been associated, and we still have the studies that eating fruits and vegetables attenuate the oxidative capacity from heme iron, reduce absorption of iron in the gut.

   5. JWJames Wilks1:00:44

      Agreed.

   6. CKChris Kresser1:00:44

      And now we're focusing on a single mechanism rather than looking at the outcomes.

   7. JWJames Wilks1:00:48

      Right, which I, again, I'm happy to look at the outcomes, but-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

      Do you agree with what he just said though?

   9. JWJames Wilks1:00:52

      I do. I think that-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:53

       That heme iron-

   11. JWJames Wilks1:00:53

       I think that plant foods offset the oxidation, offset in so- in some regard, the oxidation that you get from animal foods. However, if you work out ...... you have oxidative stress, okay? So if you, um, want to have a meal, do you want the plant foods in the meal to be dealing with the oxidative stress from the animal foods or do you want the plants to deal with the oxidative stress, allow you to recover faster and your next workout will be better?

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

       I don't think we know that's true.

   13. JWJames Wilks1:01:19

       No, we do know that is true. How do we-

   14. CKChris Kresser1:01:20

       We don't know that that's true. And it's not-

   15. JWJames Wilks1:01:21

       How do we know that that's true then?

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:22

       It doesn't have to be specific. No, no, no. It's very specific. He just read a-

   17. CKChris Kresser1:01:24

       And red and, this is the thing, this is, this is nutritionism because we are not focusing on the nutrients in red meat and the things that, and the highly bioavailable protein. It's not like-

   18. JWJames Wilks1:01:32

       We're gonna-

   19. CKChris Kresser1:01:32

       ... red meat is only there to cause o- is, is causing oxidative stress.

   20. JWJames Wilks1:01:37

       I agree.

   21. CKChris Kresser1:01:38

       And-

   22. JWJames Wilks1:01:38

       It's not the only thing. There are some nutrients in meat also that-

   23. CKChris Kresser1:01:40

       And so again, the question is, is there a place for animal foods in a diet-

   24. JWJames Wilks1:01:46

       Right. That is the question.

   25. CKChris Kresser1:01:46

       ... that is healthy overall?

   26. JWJames Wilks1:01:47

       Right.

   27. CKChris Kresser1:01:47

       Not, not whether, you know, you should eat plant foods.

   28. JWJames Wilks1:01:52

       Right. We both agree that you should probably be eating a lot of plant foods, right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:55

       Yes.

   30. JWJames Wilks1:01:55

       Which is my position. I think it would be difficult for me to argue 100% plants versus 50% plants. I don't think it's argued to, out of, like, argue, like, 90, 95% plants versus... I think the argument would take hours and hours and hours to convince you why I think 100% plants is better.

Episode duration: 3:42:18