267: The Biggest Lies You've Been Told About Nutrition and Losing Weight | Kevin Bass

Most people, maybe between 50 and 80% of people.... if they eat more dietary cholesterol than what they're already eating as a normal part of a background omnivorous diet, they're not going to get higher cholesterol levels from eating more.

The microbiome, the bacteria in the gut, they process fiber and they turn it into often what's called a short-chain fatty acid—so, butyrate, acetate, propionate are the main ones ... Butyrate plays a really important role in gut health—in particular, prevention of inflammatory bowel diseases, like Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, but also in the prevention of colon cancer.

In order to maintain proper amounts of muscle mass in old age, you actually need a substantially higher amount of protein than, say, the dietary guidelines recommend. Well, guess what? Vegans are probably getting even less than omnivores, and omnivores probably aren't even getting enough.

I take, like, 2.5mg of Rosuvastatin a day ... My LDL cholesterol gets really low... like 60 mg/dL ... A lot of cardiologists will say below 50 mg/dL you're basically impervious to cardiovascular disease.

Higher fiber intake... I think even the recommendations are a little bit low, but maybe that's my, sort of, plant-based background bias. I think that going above 40 grams is good.... up to 80.

The gut, the colon, can create ketones as well, just like the liver can. And that generation of ketones from the butyrate, from the fiber, is actually a really, really important part of the health... benefits of fiber.

Vegans tend to eat more fruits and vegetables, and those are definitely really important for health, right? They definitely have an advantage there. Vegans probably have better lipid profiles.

Vegans have the rate of depression, like, double the amount of omnivores. It's like double the rate of depression!

I believe in the lipid hypothesis of cardiovascular disease. I believe that the evidence is so overwhelming and so crystal clear that— So then, personally, I take a low dose of a statin.

They're getting less protein... Many of the studies that we do have tend to point to plant-based eaters having less muscle.

Butter is probably a bad idea as far as cardiovascular disease risk is concerned. It really raises LDL cholesterol. The composition is not that great.

It's mostly a food intake issue which is causing obesity rather than a calorie output or calorie expenditure aspect ... Obesity is, overall, caused by elevated calorie intake rather than depressed calorie output.

So, definitely hormones and food quality and all those other things matter, but it's just not insulin by itself. It's so much more than insulin. And insulin is just really a modest part of the overall equation. I would say, maybe, like, 10% of the overall equation compared to all the other factors that are important.

What are the potential downsides for a plant-based diet? Well, I started looking in the literature—one thing is that plant-based eaters tend to eat substantially less protein.

The rate of iron deficiency in plant-based eater is much, much higher than it is in omnivores.

Personally, if I go vegan, I feel like crap. I feel just horrific. So, I want to help people not to feel that way.

When you look at the genetics of obesity, most of the genetics of obesity are not related to fat cell size or insulin ... I think something like 90% of genes related to obesity have to do with the brain.

If you lose weight too often and too much, you cycle, and then you're not also lifting, you can destroy your body composition, and you'll actually end up looking worse, because you won't have any muscle.

People are eating almost zero whole foods on average. It's incredible. It's really incredible.