Josh what number diet cook is that for you e how dare you judge me you come into here how many times you gotone to the bathroom in your life huh Josh you’ve like thrown eight cans in the recycling bin what’s wrong with you man I can stop anytime I want this is a hot dog is a sandwich ketchup is a smoothie yeah I put ice in my cereal so what that makes no sense hot dog is a sandwich a hot dog is a sandwich what Welcome to our podcast a hot dog is a sandwich the show we break down the world’s biggest food debates I’m your host Josh a and I’m your host Nicole an and today we have a very special guest joining us please welcome People magazine sexiest doctor alive 2015 and the reason my late Jewish grandmother once said to me see you could have been a YouTuber and a doctor Dr Mike varshavski welcome to the show wow what an introduction I hope my grandma you know God Rest her soul is sitting there thinking the same thing very proud of my YouTube viewers ship and medical Acumen I boy it is so hard to explain to uh 100 centenarian Jewish grandmothers what YouTube is but when she find out there was someone that was also a doctor that is when I immediately went down the totem pole but comparison is the thief of Joy uh Mike thanks for joining us thank you so much for being here yeah I’m really excited to chat what seems to be something that you have on full display there uh some Cokes and Diet Cokes and peppers and Dr diet pepper uh yeah correct did you go to medical school with Dr Pepper are you familiar with his work I believe that there was a Dr Lisa pepper in my class that’s man that’s tough and I’m not making that up there’s a Dr Pepper on mared at Married at First Sight really yeah best show ever huge huge huge today today Dr Mike we brought you on because Nicole and I are um I I don’t want to say Dumb Dumber than some I feel like I don’t think we’re dumb I think if we applied ourselves maybe we could have been doctors too so don’t cut yourself so short Josh what’s wrong with you I could not have been a doctor um but what I can do is yell about diet soda on the internet you can do that pretty well and that’s what we’re doing today Dr Mike we wanted to answer the question is diet soda actually bad for you and I know that is a very loaded question bad comes in quotation marks uh but I drink probably three Diet Cokes a day it used to be more I used to how many diet Red Bulls do you drink a day oh okay that’s another how many diet drinks how many diet drinks including your I would say your breakfast smoothie might also be a diet not might I drink I drink a bunch of aspartame at 6: in the morning with my pre-workout I’m drinking asame at 9:00 in the morning with my protein shake I’m drinking aspartame at 11: there is not a point in my day in which Aspartame is not coursing through my veins and many people online I feel like Nicole I’d lump you in there says uh this is terrible for you it’s going to kill you Mike what are your initial thoughts well the one thing that I can guarantee you is that life is going to kill you so y thinking about the individual ingredient like diet soda and the artificial sweeteners that are found in them is likely not what’s going to do you in we live in a world that is full of risk and the number of risks we face and the number of things that impact our day-to-day behaviors our chances of getting sick our chances of getting better really are astronomical and probably too much for the human brain to even wrap our heads around like if we even try and think what does a 100 trillion look like or count like or appear like we can’t imagine we can’t think in those numbers much in the same way we can’t think about risk so when we ask a question that’s very binary like are diet sodas bad we’re truly asking a question that has no answer it depends for whom it depends what we’re switching from what we’re having it in lie of how much are we having it and only until we get all those questions answered maybe we even come close to answering that question but I’m excited to discuss it because I think there’s fun in the discussion oh 100% And also diet soda is something that has rocketed in popularity in recent years and I think there’s a lot of different factors about it one thing is people’s General fear of sugar um my general thoughts on nutrition and I am certainly not an expert I’ve just been on a lot of bodybuilding.com forums no I I’m reading this fantastic book by it’s called food politics by Mary Nestle she is a longtime academic at UC Berkeley um but she said something that kind of stopped me in my tracks which is nutrition science has the advice from nutrition science has not changed since World War II it is eat less meat and eat more fresh fruits and vegetables every single thing past that is because the media operates in forms of headlines there needs to be novelization in this sensiz whatever exactly like there needs to be some sort of new information to report and people report it and aspartame uh is one of the ingredients that has been really pushed as like a potential single cause of I’ve seen Alzheimer’s Strokes cancer autism um and then autism people are saying that people I mean people on the internet will say everything that’s true true but this is one of those single ingredients that people like to single out um and one of the first studies uh was 2007 it was called the ramini foundation um they did a test where they were venly injecting Lab Rats with aspartame and that showed a link to bladder cancer and that was one of the first studies that really um influenced people to not drink asame or at least to fear it um but Mike I want to ask you what are the limitations on these studies where they’re not experimenting on humans because they can’t and they’re using things like labrats and they are say injecting things intravenously that you would normally consume orally like what are the correlations that you can draw from that yeah so basically when we do mechanistic research uh starting with a hypothesis we have a theory that if you consume product X you’re going to get outcome y like does Aspartame increase risk of a specific cancer we don’t rush to start testing that in humans we first start looking at the mechanisms in a Petri dish in a lab model just to see what happens and we start seeing a possible mechanism that can evolve then we raise that up and we start doing it in animal models sometimes that happens in rats sometimes it happens in The Recess Monkey and we start seeing the progression of it almost everything fails that initial hypothesis Theory before reaching human outcomes even like if you take big Pharma right who want to maximize their profit so they’re not doing research willy-nilly they’re doing research on things that they believe have a high chance of working and even with big Pharma when a medication starts in the hypothesis theory in those Petri dishes and animal models 999 out of a th000 do not make it to human trials and even when they make it to human trials passing the human safety and proving that it actually works 95% of those fail so imagine if these are companies that are have the most brilliant people in the world they’re trying to spend their money as efficiently as possible and even then they’re failing that goes to show that our knowledge isn’t as deep as we put it out to be especially when it comes with Petri dishes animal models it can show guidance to us as doctors as researchers in which way we can go forward where we can ask better questions but it certainly doesn’t tell us how we should live our lives because if we did that boy we’d have a different result uh on a different day depending on who authored the study and what finding they were looking for there’s actually a study that exists showing consuming any food they literally took dozens of foods and they saw that consuming any one of those Foods raises the risk of coloral cancer just to prove that if you really want to find that uh correlational link it doesn’t mean that it caused the cancer to happen so we have to be very careful when we’re looking at this research or even being presented with research how we let it affect our everyday lives yeah 100% and it seems like nutritional research specifically because there are so many different factors uh becomes incredibly hard to digest like um there was a recent 2023 the World Health Organization comes out and they say that Aspartame is quote possibly carcinogenic to humans and many many people sent me this distinction and said see aspartame carcinogenic World Health Organization a legit organization airgo I was right you were wrong diet soda is terrible for you and then if you even go a little bit deeper what they mean by possibly carcinogenic to humans is the findings of limited evidence of carcinog carcinogenicity in humans and animals and of limited mechanistic evidence of how carcinogenicity may occur underscore the need for more research to refine our understanding so basically they said we we don’t know none of the studies have then why write it why write it people why I went into YouTube because I watch my medical profession put out accurate information like what you just read M but their ability to make it userfriendly or understandable be complete poop and I can’t find a better word for it because it’s poop it’s misleading what is being said even when we do uh like statistical research and you’ll see um like news articles pop out and they say this medicine statistically significantly lowers rates of your blood pressure and you’re like oh well statistically significantly that sounds significant that sounds strong those are words statistically significantly just means that whatever outcome happened it was statistically strong that it happened but that outcome could be huge it could be clinically insignificant so just because something is statistically significant doesn’t mean it’s also clinically significant and how we show that to the world is what makes us good doctors I think otherwise then you’re going to get probably carcinogenic or possibly carcinogenic and then you’re scaring people as opposed to hey uh we saw some initial mechanisms but unproven as of yet whoa that’s a lot more reassuring than what they initially said I I just want to thank my AP Stats teacher that’s right I got a four on the exam but honestly that in fantasy football because like when you hear a stat like doubles your risk of say Alzheimer’s that was one of scary that as as to the untrained ear that sounds scary it is incredibly scary uh and then if you see that the risk what went from 0.1 to 0.2 that is not something that is actually going to affect anybody even on a mass population level and so like actually being able to dig into the statistics and understand where this is coming from also understanding I don’t expect every person in the general population to go into the meth methodology of every study you look this initial rat study out of the ramini foundation in the early 2000s and you found out that they were injecting them with the equivalent of a human drinking 1,200 Diet Cokes a day oh my gosh yeah poor babies so you see uh the links are really tough um I just want to get into the history of diet soda really quick because I lay it on me Josh let’s hear it well okay I’m GNA ask you to what do you think the first diet soda was in America tab tab I have no idea I’m an immigrant so I don’t know American history well what’s the first from from where from Russia did do they make you ever drink quas do they have Diet quas no it sound good I kind of want to try it it’s made from like fermented bread yeah I’m a big fan we’ll find some Diet clas uh but no it was actually a soda that predated tab by about 10 years and it was called nocal and noal was made with neither had I until was researching this um but it was primarily made for diabetic diabetic patients um and it was mainly sold and consumed in like medical facilities and it wasn’t until oh like in hos like if if you’re a diabetic in the hospital sweet treat and it was it was made using a sweetener called sodium cyclamate uh and sacarin so sacarin was the original sweetener found in tab sacran was actually banned in the United States in 1981 leading to the formation of Diet Coke using aspartame in 1982 if you’re tracking with the history uh the reason this is important is no Cal comes out with sodium cyclamate in 1952 that was six years before the FDA passed the food additives act which they introduced the crazy legislation that if you’re adding chemicals to food we should test them first before that you simply were not allowed to or you simply didn’t have to you were not obligated to and then there was a very similar study uh labrats showed bladder cancer with insan mainly high doses of sodium cyclamate it was a one study phenomenon that was never able to be reproduced whatsoever and we have now banned sodium cycl mate in the United States because of that study and it was not banned in Europe and so there’s this crazy sorted history where you know Europe banned sacarin before the United States did the United States banned sodium cyclamate before Europe did it’s still considered safe in Europe how can science is supposed to be about objective truth right and Shar the information around the world but how do we end up in a situation where one ingredient B in Europe one’s not in the US in my opinion it’s probably due to the bureaucracy of the matter you have a lot of people that are either elected or appointed into certain positions they’re in those positions for long periods of time they have their own intrinsic biases on what they think is right and as a result you have rules that don’t make a lot of sense like for for me as a primary care physician I find it strange that the FDA will only step in and regulate a supplement if it’s already raising red flags about causing harm and killing people yeah but otherwise I can right now bottle up whatever I want into a capsule on this table put it into a a little capsule and a bottle a pretty bottle say Mike’s ma Magic Mike’s formula to make you faster stronger better or whatever and I could legally do that and the fact that the FDA won’t check it is wild I think Channing Tatum has rights to that uh to that name so that’s your only legal battle there so check this out I could do that but my only concern is not that I just poured God knows what into the pill but that Channing Tatum might sue me that’s the only risk to doing this only risk that’s a problem that is a problem and uh Magic Mike should be public domain I think that’s what we learned from this no years I grew up in the the Golden Age of GNC where literally when I was in high school you could walk in and you could buy Tren you could buy legitimate steroid Tren balone uh I believe it was an anabolic steroid originally used in cattle production Mike forgive me if you know more about this than I do I I I don’t I’m not super familiar with h cattle hormones and and steroidal Med what are they teaching them in school no but no you could literally buy anabolic steroids there’s a product called Tren extreme the makers of it are now in prison because they were putting straight steroids in it and there was also another product that had straight up amphetamines in it uh because the supplement industry is not regulated and we had a bunch of cracked out there’s been so many instances of over-the-counter medications this this happens quite frequently as of late in gas station pills where like oh the yes exactly libido boosters and really the only ingredient in there is selenophilia so they’re selling a prescription medication within an over-the-counter medicine no one’s checking what’s actually in it that’s crazy you’re telling me it’s not it’s not the properties of honey and ashwag Ganda that are leading people to 4 hours gross well that’s the probably the question I get most is like which supplement should I take to boost XY and Z I’m like probably shouldn’t take anything unless there’s a medical reason as to why you’re taking it dark leafy greens dark AG well yeah those are great why not take my question is why people instead of eating dark leafy greens go for like some green powder just eat the dark leafy greens why make them into a powder chewing is awesome it’s a good time yeah no I me like to chew that is a hell of a question um when I I played Sports in college and I knew a lot of people who instead of eating any vegetables would only drink spirulina powder that was the big thing and they’re like I’m getting all the nutrients and I was like have you heard of a salad um but some people don’t got it in the bag I want to talk about the alternative to diet soda when we’re talking about people drinking diet soda um sparkling water well yeah I mean water is probably the I’m a pelo girl always let me tell you every time at Shabbat dinner my mother-in-law puts out all of the Cokes and then she gives me the pelo because she knows I only drink pelo I don’t like sodas honestly anymore like you don’t like the flavor you don’t like the sugary stuff okay well I mean when I was a kid I loved Coke I I mean I’m more of a Sprite Drinker than any of these things but um I don’t know what it is I think I think it’s too sweet and I hate despise disgusted with the taste of Diet Coke and zero and all these zero calorie stuff do I have it like if I’m like eating food and I need some indigestion help yes do I have a sip of Diet Coke of course because I feel like the fake sugar or the real sugar helps but I don’t drink like people just drink cans of soda yeah I can’t do that I think it depends on if P also has a softer bubble which is why I don’t like it I need the violence I need the violence of too Chico no 100% that’s why I don’t like I’m a soft delicate lady I like the soft bubbles too much bubbles it just ruins my day no but we have seen an explosion in I think part of it is the fear of full sugar sodas um the kind of carb phobia that we’ve been fed for our entire lives part of it is the fear of AST time the the unknown which is why we’ve seen things like lroy really explode on the market oh sure um but Dr Mike do you drink diet sodas do you do you consume artificial sweeteners no I’m a peligrino guy myself as well well done well done I’m proud of you or sparkling water in general I will say anything bubbly even even if it doesn’t have sugar there’s been some theoretical evidence as how it can influence weight um in fact some of the uh doctors that work in my metabolic Department in my hospital will frequently talk about what their patients who consume uh gasy Beverages and how it creates some bloating and expansion of the stomach which can then lead you to have a like more space in the stomach therefore you don’t feel as full if you have a smaller meal if you don’t have the sparkling water so it’s not something that’s incredibly proven but something that we take into consideration when we’re giving recommendations well this sucks no but no but I don’t want you to think this sucks there’s no see that’s the thing we can’t villainize and say something’s all bad or all good because if you’re swapping from a sugary soda and you’re looking to reduce the amount of added sugar you’re taking in which is probably useful in most cases but if you’re looking to do that switching to a sparkling water is a great alternative agreed but now if you’re drinking a lot of sparkling water and you’re having acid reflux symptoms and you’re already uh struggling to lose weight and you’ve kind of hit a plateau maybe it’s something else you can try but it doesn’t mean I’m signaling everyone to stop drinking sparkling water thank you I read a headline that said sugar is more addictive than cocaine Dr Mike should I switch from putting sugar in my coffee to putting cocaine in my coffee I hate those metaphors they’re so bad no please don’t do that I saw somewhere that said chees is same level of addiction as cocaine oh God so we’re just going to put cheese in our soda okay so when we’re talking about is diet soda bad for you we understand it is a clickbait title there is absolutely no answer but that’s what people are likely searching um that is what I have searched hundreds of times uh and I get on WebMD and then it says you have colon cancer and then I get freaked out um it seems to be there are two sides to this there’s what’s happening to you on the molecular level with diet soda which all the studies again the World Health Organization said possibly carcinogenic because the evidence isn’t really there um but the more interesting side of it to me is the behavioral side of it which when you drinking diet soda what is it doing to you psychologically you said that this tastes disgusting to you probably because yeah did you put your mouth on it I did yeah but I mean I have a clean slate for most things um but you give me a sip of regular soda you were you were not raised on drinking a bunch of sugary sugar I was not raised that way I used to drink a half gallon of cranberry cocktail not juice mind you cray Raz cocktail a day because I thought that there was fruit in it I did I wasn’t raised with a lot of like nutritional education I thought there was fruit in it that meant it was good for me so I would drink it with impunity but like that imbued my taste buds with just such a fortitude Nicole to withstand all of this taste combine that with my love of pre-workout uh and various uh nerds candies and I taste Diet Coke and it’s like shooting a BB gun at a tank to me like I need this flavor but can you just drink the regular D the regular Coke for a second and tell me how much better that tast oh my God it’s like the nectar of the so good but if I drink the equivalent if I drink the equivalent of say I drink four Diet Cokes a day I drink four of these that’s an additional quick math 640 calories that’s so much which you know is uh not it’s it runs Contra to my own personal like yeah to my own fitness and health goals you know so for me I’m like I need this but there’s been a fair amount of research out there that says if you drink diet soda because Aspartame is 30 times sweeter than sugar it is conditioning you and there’s been some really convincing research both on humans and fruit flies that were fed Splenda instead of sugar at 30% more food uh and they also found this with people when people uh consume diet soda and this is on a uh analyzing 10 years of data of people’s real lifestyle choices people who drank diet sodas uh ate about 30% more what they call discretionary calories which are fun little treat Foods so there does seem to at least be a CA like a not causal but correlational link correlation yeah between drinking diet soda and eating more sugary Foods outside of that wild yes and then when we look at the randomized control data which is kind of our gold standard of we do research and why dietary research usually is not randomized controlled because you have to like monitor what every person eats and then swap them and and randomize them to certain groups that’s very hard to do longterm and if we don’t have long-term data we end up using questionnaires and following people for a long period of time and all that stuff but what we found is yes in some instances we found that people have a prequisite for uh like a precursor for more sweet Foods if they consume a lot of uh these sweet and beverages and then in some randomized Control Data we found the exact opposite that when you compared people to uh these artificially sweetened beverages to water to regular sodas we found that people who drink artificial sweetener uh beverages actually got their sweet kick from those things and ended up eating less sweets and lost more weight sounds simple so sounds like science is all over which means that there is no clear answer yet so now I’m going to give you the Practical answer of how I practice in a field of uncertainty because being a good doctor especially a family medicine doctor means I have to work within the bounds of our current knowledge and many times our current knowledge is incomplete and yet I still have to give some kind of advice right I can’t just have a patient come in say because that’s not GNA be very valuable and my Yelp score is gonna probably drop really quickly so here’s what I say to patients if you are drinking water and you’re happy do not switch to diet soda there’s no benefit to doing so in fact there’s some potential risk potential risk we don’t even know that yet if you’re drinking sugary soda and that sugar is harming you whether in the form of having higher weight having high triglycerides you have diabetes switching to a diet soda is going to be smart because then those risks are going to be swapped for Less risk MH so again to who are you giving the advice what are they switching from that’s how we’re going to give practical feedback even in the areas of uncertainty Mike that makes such a terrible headline I feel like we should say diet soda kills you faster that you know what I mean I feel like we should Workshop no but I mean that that is you know the answer that um nobody wants to hear which is very yeah it’s it’s nuanced new on do would have thought and guess what you’re doing the the diet sodas you know four times a day I would say most people don’t fall into the category where they’re having multiple uh cans in a day uh most people who are looking to this are just having it sometimes uh barring certain outliers and if you’re having a Diet Coke or whatever beverage you want that’s artificially sweetened sometimes who cares like there’s the the people that then start isolating that or the cold plunges or or some other fad thing in a given moment it’s like you are so disconnected from the risks we face in everyday life how our mental health changes when someone breaks up with us whether or not we take too much of a prescription medication whether or not we’re over consuming calories whether or not we make it to the gym whether or not we sleep well those things have huge impacts of our health talking about the 4minute cold plunge protocol that you’re doing or whether or not you have one Coke can a week is so useless I cannot begin to explain to people how unimportant it is gut health Nicole the key here is gut health this comes in and it eviscerates your FL full of sour craut before every meal the fauna within my gut right now and the Flora within it bird there’s little pigeons and they’re pecking no no no the Flora is the flowers and the fauna or the little deer this guy he’s he’s on the paycheck for he’s on the payroll for bake farm right now we we have them on plunges Target Nicole they target your lip lipid libidus yeah yeah liida if it lasts for 4 hours see Dr Mike yeah sex Ling pills do you find it difficult to learn a new 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Coke that’s crazy head to spark.com and search best diet soda to find the full ranking number one is Diet coconut number one is Diet Coke not not all right Nicole and Mike we’ve heard what you and I have to say now it’s time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe it’s time for a segment we call opinions are like casserole he liked it does that mean nobody wants them he did a little dance uh well you don’t like casseres I don’t know I don’t to be honest this is I can’t believe I’m admitting this what’s a casserole that’s another entirely do you have another hour it’s funny because C is it that long so casseres were technically the the the first time the term was used in the modern American context in the mid 1700s I’m deadass serious it was in Vermont but that said like any it’s just any large amalgamation of foods that is baked inside one dish and meant to be eaten as such so it’s just like a one pot so they’ve existed throughout all of history it’s how most people ate stew kind of like a stew but stew is too wet stew is too wet okay have you ever had uh like my grandma’s I think there’s some stew out there that would have exception to that statement No but like uh have you had before cou is not a casserole yes it is it’s in a Cass if you do like a beef stew with a cougal top that’s a casserole the only person on planet Earth that has done that no Mike have you ever had a beef stew with a cougle top I don’t know what a coule top is know a not part of my medical education okay should we get into our first call it hot dish okay uh well my first opinion um Dr Mike we Nicole and I have both taken a very pr- leaching stance on this podcast PR leaching yeah just met leing and blood letting well cuz here’s the thing you have blood in you and it’s bad and you need to get it out what better creature than a leech why is the blood problematic Nicole my colleague asking me yeah you should ask this gu do you know we still do blood leting for very specific conditions I can name you one tell me we name us one poly polycythemia vera okay where you have an over production of red blood cells and as a result it actually you would go in and get some blood taken out yeah but you would do it like with the syringe and like oh yeah you would the leeches don’t take uh enough blood out you’re not just slicing someone open and like blood letting the leeches need jobs Nicole um actually I used to go to um I used to go to he was a chiropractor but he was also the USA weightlifting uh Olympic team’s doctor and so I went to do soft tissue work um but he also did some like kind of weird stuff and he did a practice called wet cuing my dad China my dad did that in China they they make uh little incisions and then they do the cupping and then it sucks the blood so I walked into this man’s office for the first time and there’s a person whose back was covered in blood and I freaked out my dad did that in China and he showed me pictures like look how cool this is and I’m like this is not cool don’t show me your bloody I’m saying could have been leeches uh Nicole you want to read the first opinion um sure I love to read all Mike so we asked our audience if they had any specific health or nutritional questions um and so Nicole is going to read them out to you you get first crack at your response to him sure so the first one we have is uh at pretzel emoji picky eaters are just a sign of weak parenting no can’t do it can’t coign that statement what is the cause of picky eating or I mean I’m sure there’s not one cause but yeah that’s the thing that’s so variable could you have contributed to the pickiness of your child with your parenting habits sure but does that mean it’s necessarily your fault I mean I can give you medical conditions of like hyperphagia syndromes where children eat so much so that their uh obesity cannot be caused by overfeeding alone it’s a hormonal issue so to say that all causes of it are that not true I think and now we get Nicole’s medical opinion as someone who could have been a doctor if she applied herself I do think some parents you know kind of like like if if my mom didn’t like a certain food like my mom doesn’t like the color purple she’s never been a fan of The Color Purple not the movie like The Color Purple she doesn’t like it do I now have a slight aversion to The Color Purple a little bit I don’t it’s not my favorite color sure do I think but there’s plenty of examples of people who like hear that from their parents and then love the color purple do the opposite okay but that’s because of the way you were raised like I always wanted to be like my mom so the uh 2008 study Rodriguez at Al coming out of University of Illinois or bana champagne where I I think what all right next opinion we got uh what do you mean you need to say something about this well I don’t I know nothing about parenting I’m just so afraid I really want children and I’m so afraid that I’m going to do all the things that I think are right and then they’re going to hate me and only eat french fries and just let them hang out with Auntie Nicole they’re going to be wh into shape don’t worry about um okay I’m going to correct the I’m going to correct the opinion the opin uh opinion will state this now um parenting can have an impact on the pickiness of your child eating habits I like that that’s good well done doc Nuance baby all right we got uh wait oh I had one that I like your drink is purple right now oh my drink is per it’s like pink it’s like fuchsia good you overcoming childhood trauma I’m proud of you uh at Greg bhaw says eating healthy doesn’t mean you can’t put seasoning in your food oh oh of course in fact seasoning in many ways is healthy and low to no calorie there’s so many ways to use spices where you’re not adding to the caloric intake and we’ve seen spices carry a correlation for healthier outcomes and notice I say spices aren’t necessarily perfectly healthy but they lean healthy yeah I um it’s so funny because my relationship with diet and nutrition I know this stuff is very nuanced and can frankly be triggering for a lot of people but for me all the people I grew up around I so I was a hammer thrower in college Nicole sick of hearing about this but my coach I love it don’t say that I love it my coach would threatened to take away my scholarship if I dropped underneath 250 lbs and we were working out constantly how old were you uh this is from like 18 to 22 in college uh and so I knew a lot of people who were equally likely to be trying to gain weight for their specific sport as they were trying to lose weight and so my relationship to this is like it’s all very neutral it is you use nutrition especially caloric or macronutrient intake to satisfy your personal goals whatever they may be I know a lot of powerlifters I know a lot of strong men and so my buddy who is uh gree’s National Record holder in the shop put shout out Nick scares can’t wait to go to your wedding on Samos buddy but anyways we were at an XFL game and I watched this man pull out a court container filled with white rice covered in mustard and I said buddy why the mustard and he’s like well I need 100 gr of carbs right now and mustard has zero calories and I would just started listing other things that also have zero calories tast soy sauce fish sauce ginger garlic cilantro lime Ju Just anything and I want to grab these giant hulking bodybuilders and just say you can put the spices in your food man I’ve never understood the B the Bland chicken white rice broccoli mentality whenever I understand that the I think I think it’s because the macros are consistent and they want they crave and desire consistency within their routine so I get that but like putting paprika on it isn’t going to completely screw it up and I wish I could just like like you said shake them and say you can have like red and green flakes on your food it might make you I don’t know find a little joy in eating some people they view food exclusively as fuel and I you know can’t empathize with them but I I understand I did watch a bodybuilder eat quote macro-friendly spaghetti bowling oh that’s cool well it was literally 10 ounces of lean ground beef and what I saw were six spaghetti noodles only six yeah and I was like but at that point you can just like make a chili yeah make a CH it’s not spaghetti anymore those like sh talk oh can you do a casserole with that or no absolutely I’m so glad you asked uh the state of Ohio has like six indigenous chili based casseres indigen just in Ohio they were all invented in Ohio so funny one more let’s do another one okay let’s see um hands okay at hands and shoe marer says chicken thighs are greater than chicken breasts not only can it be more FL flavorful but also more forgiving to cook still a ton of protein and fats are not evil I switch up the seasonings so I don’t get tired of the flavors chicken breast versus chicken thigh I’m I’m allowing space for their opinion I like chicken thighs I lean towards more chicken breasts I buy I buy in my home more chicken breast breast than I do chicken thighs people in America buy more boneless skinless chicken breast than any other meat product uh on the market makes sense and it sucks because 99% of people don’t know how to cook itly properly the the best advice I can give is right when you get your chicken breasts at home season them with salt that salt is going to permeate throughout the entire chicken you are curing your chicken um marinating with anything but salt does literally nothing things spices don’t see but salt does because it creates a reverse osmotic reaction within the protein structures of the flesh it makes your chicken 10 times juicier and you won’t hate what you’re eating true that said my one thing about diet my one rule is that I will never eat so clean that I have to eat chicken breast over a chicken thigh if you are if you are shvitzing about your decision between thigh and breast I think you’ve lost the plot on what it means to eat and enjoy food that’s what I believe that’s great that’s good Mike do you cook that’s fair um I don’t cook uh I occasionally dabble but I generally don’t cook what I did find the other day because my cholesterol levels came in unfavorably last time I checked I needed to decrease the amount of saturated fat I was consuming and there are still days of the week where I consume red meat and I was eating like a leaner cut of beef and then I found at Whole Foods they have uh bison tenderloin m which has on the label which means that it’s probably close to zero zero gram of saturated fat in a 4 round serving so I was like whoa that’s kind of awesome and I started eating that instead so we’ll see how the cholesterol numbers do now bison I’m a big bison fan it’s also just delicious um a bison steak beef adjacent Meats bison venison they are really great if you probably cook it love I also love beef adjacent stuff um can I just ask Mike personal nutrition questions now m cuz hear me out my cholesterol came back high too and I’m worried okay uh and I mean this is your podcast as much as it is mine go ahead ask him I I uh don’t cook any red meat in the home anymore unless it’s for something special we’re entertaining Julie and I exclusively eat chicken and fish but what I do eat is like over a pound of animal flesh a day because I’ve been raised with the idea that one gram of protein per pound of body weight and so I try and eat roughly 200 I don’t religiously track but 200 grams of protein per day mhm and I told my do my doctor this which Mike is my new uh primary care physician thank you so much for do you take Blue Shield uh only if the co-pay is 10x for the podcast yeah we can do that we can do that talk lat uh but no I I told my doctor I was like oh I I don’t eat red meat I only eat you know chicken and fish at home and they were like well you know that’s still just a lot of meat to eat that could be contributing to your cholesterol probably decrease that and I was like well have you seen this bodybuilding.com form article that I’ve printed out for you Dr lvi um and she did not uh seem to find that amusing um so in general cholesterol is driven by consumption of saturated fats which are found primarily in animal products so even if you’re not consuming red meat you’re likely consuming higher saturated fat diet than most so you you you’re consuming leaner sources of protein with fish and chicken and the the the fish has fat but it’s healthy fats so that that’s a good reason to keep fish in but I would maybe look to replacing some of your chicken protein with something like edamami Mug Bean pasta or the bonsa pasta that’s uh you’ll see in the supermarkets which have both fiber and protein which will help your cholesterol levels twofold because you’re getting less saturated fat but still getting your protein and second when you increase fiber we’ve actually seen decreases in cholesterol as well so that’s what I’m doing myself as well so we’re kind of on the same trajectory I’ll I’ll keep you updated with my LDL levels if you do the same man LDL is bad HDL is good it’s the marker yeah the marker of LDL is considered the bad Club Nicole ask you about ask him about seed oils oh do it okay uh Hey Dr Mike can you tell me a little bit about seed oils give me like a two-minute SP about seed oils and why you think they’re either good bad neutral or you just just what are they tell us about them I would say that they’re neutral and the hype around them and it’s neutral because we’re still lacking some data much in the same way that we can’t clarify as artificial sweeteners being all good or bad same thing with seed oils look if you’re having seed oils to excess it’s going to be bad but if you have water to excess it’ll be bad there’s medical conditions related to that where you throw off your electrolytes so bad you can go into a coma uh you eat enough carrots you turn orange but that doesn’t mean the carrots are unhealthy so much in the same way if I asked you a question that’s not MediCal like are hammers bad what would you say hammers it depends what you do with them oh look at that you’re bringing some Nuance into the conversation yeah I did it so yep the same way uh do we have any other if anybody could Le the room I have a rash that I was trying to oh I’m just saying now that we’re here I it’s probably fine I drink from your cup am I going to get it that’s not where the rash is oh good uh no I’m kidding Dr Mike thank you so much man uh this was absolutely incredible that you gave us very clear concise answers that have a one word takeaway um no I I’m really grateful to bring some Nuance into this conversation and hopefully our audience uh can take something away from that and from somebody that’s significantly smarter than both of usely I sure did every I think the biggest takeaway is to like use Nuance as a superpower a b not to villainize or be deathly afraid of one ingredient or nutrient uh and in general think of diet as part of your lifestyle and not just oh this food is bad this food is good this food is bad this because that creates a lot of unhealthy eating habits that usually even if they’re helping you for the short term long term it’s not going to be sustainable and valuable and here it’s about creating sustainable habits so beautifully said and don’t put cocaine in your coffee on that note thank you so much for listening to a hot dog is a sandwich we got new Audio Only episodes every Wednesday video version here on YouTube every Sunday and if you want to be featured on opinions or like casseroles give us a ring and leave a quick message at 833 dogod one and make sure to check out Dr Mike on his YouTube channel @ Dr Mike doc you got anything else to share as always stay happy and healthy that was AE brother I’ll see youall next time thanks again [Music] doc