TPV Podcast, Episode 363: Latest Diet Fads

Posted on August 2, 2019

On this week’s episode, Stacy and Sarah dig into the research on the latest fad diets. What are phytonutrients? And do you need to be mindful of them when making dietary choices? Does the Paleo Green diet, the Keto Green diet, or the Pegan diet provide new aspects worth incorporating? All of this, the science, and more on episode 363. Enjoy!

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The Paleo View (TPV), Episode 363: Latest Diet Fads

- (0:41) Welcome
  - Welcome back listeners to episode 363 of The Paleo View!
    - Stacy is joining in from Austin, Texas will solid WiFi
      - Also known as rant quality WiFi
    - After taking a peek at the show outline, Stacy is feeling pretty excited about this week’s episode
  - Sarah had a great camping trip, but they were rained out the second night
    - What started as scattered thunderstorms quickly evolved into strong storms with a wind advisory and severe weather water
      - This was going to last 12 hours
      - So they decided to have dinner, pack up and head home at 9:00 p.m.
      - After traveling so late, Sarah had to spend an entire day resting up to offset the lack of sleep from the night before
    - The time that they did have to camp was wonderful
      - They hiked up to a mountain, down to a waterfall and they savored their time together in full-on nature mode
  - Stacy is grateful that she has never had to experience a major storm while camping
  - Matt, Stacy and the boys are excited to explore Austin and to eat at some of their favorite spots
    - They went from cool temperatures at their last stop in Santa Fe to warm temperatures in Texas
    - Before Santa Fe, they were able to visit the Petrified Forest and it was an incredible experience
      - Listeners, add this spot to your bucket list of places to visit
  - This week Stacy and Sarah will be talking about fad diets
    - The question that kicked this all off Stacy received from a friend and had to do with phytonutrients in vegetables as being problematic
      - This friend follows a ketogenic diet
      - Phytonutrients in vegetables are one of the ‘why’ points that people in the ketogenic community mention when defending their dietary choices
- (14:06) Phytonutrients
  - Sarah finds this ‘why’ point to be interesting
    - It is looking at things like phytates and oxalates as being somehow problematic when it comes to mineral and nutrient absorption
      - This isn’t true, they don’t stop you from absorbing nutrients and they don’t leach nutrients or minerals from your body
      - You have bacteria in your gut that actually processes oxalates and phytates and liberate the minerals that are bound
      - Having a healthy gut microbiome is key for being able to absorb the minerals that are bound with phytic acid and oxalic acid
    - There are plenty of other nutrients in even the highest phytate and highest oxalate vegetables that will be absorbed without our gut bacteria there to help
      - So you can’t say that you have poor gut health, so it is better for you to avoid these high phytate and oxalate vegetables
      - The way that you grow those bacteria that help to break those down is by eating those foods
      - High oxalate foods include organic radishes, turnips, spinach, and arugula
        
        We eat these foods raw and organic, and then we will expose our gut to basically nurture the colony
    - There is no science that would point to any kind of risk associated with eating these vegetables
    - This myth has been busted so many times, and yet it keeps coming back
      - There is a lot of confusion around Phyto versus anti
        
        Phytonutrients and antinutrients are not the same things
      - There is a huge body of scientific literature showing us that a high phytonutrient diet is one of the most important aspects of reducing cancer risks and cardiovascular disease risk
        
        Most phytonutrients are incredibly potent antioxidants
        
        They are anti-aging
        
        They are anti-inflammatory
        
        They stop DNA from mutating
        
        They can protect against depression and dementia
        
        The range of phytonutrients and their effects is spectacular
        
        We know that there are two things in vegetables that are responsible for all of the benefits that come with a high vegetable consumption diet
        
        One is fiber because fiber regulates our digestive system and feeds our gut microbiome
        
        And the second is phytonutrients because of the huge range of benefits that phytonutrients have
        
        Sure there is a very very tiny percent of phytonutrients that in isolation could have a negative effect
        
        However, they are packaged in this package with so very many more positive effects
        
        Vegetables are really really really important
  - Stacy is reminded that this is an exercise in being an educated consumer of information
    - Evaluate the sources of your information
    - Know where these sources are getting their information and look into those sources yourself
  - Sarah and Stacy strive when preparing The Paleo View to provide listeners with the base knowledge to evaluate whether or not something makes sense
  - Sarah has been working to educate people on how to evaluate science and how to value science
  - This podcast should be a place where listeners can ask questions when the information they are seeing is too confusing and to give you the base knowledge that you need to see something in all of the scientific research
- (29:53) Q & A
  - Jackie says, “what do you think of the Paleo Green diet, Keto Green diet, or the Pegan diet? I have heard Dr. Hyman and Dr. Perlmutter talk about them as it relates to keeping the microbiome healthy by getting tons of low-carb veggies & prebiotic fiber in the diet.
  - This is a few different variations of recognizing limitations within keto
  - Stacy and Sarah have talked about the problems with a keto diet in two previous podcast episodes (here and here)
  - There were two papers published in 2019 on the ketogenic diet that showed very undesirable shifts in the gut microbiome
    - Sarah has written blog posts on this research, which you can find using the links below:
  - Sarah has been talking about this for five or six years now, that her deep concern about keto is that it simply doesn’t provide enough fiber
    - It’s so low carb that it is extremely difficult to get sufficient fiber to support a healthy gut microbiome
    - It is also low fiber diversity
    - Yes, there is a therapeutic benefit to incorporate a ketogenic diet when treating a neurological and neurodegenerative disease
      - People in these situations are taking on a keto diet under medical supervision
    - When we discuss people using a keto diet to support weight loss, this is a different conversation
  - What is happening now that this research is out showing that keto has all these problems:
    - 1) Some people are dismissing every paper that shows that keto might not be great
    - 2) Other people are looking at the information and trying to figure out how to get the benefits of keto while mitigating the detriments
  - Dr. Anna Cabeca is one of the leaders of the Green Keto movement
    - This dietary approach basically combines keto with the alkaline diet
      - The alkaline diet is rich in veggies, low meat, which has also been well busted in the scientific literature
      - The idea is that by eating a lot of vegetables that it is healthy for the kidneys because the kidneys control the Ph of the body and the phytonutrients in vegetables provide the raw materials for the kidneys to effectively do their job
      - However, there is no scientific evidence supporting the low-meat part of this diet
        
        High meat consumption is not strenuous on the kidneys
    - Dr. Cabeca has combined that philosophy of consuming tons of vegetables (especially green vegetables to keep the carbs low) and has basically created a more plant-focused version of keto
      - She recommends using supplements to maintain ketosis on this plan
    - The thought process in this is overall good because you are getting a larger diversity of vegetables and you are getting a lot of fiber
    - However, there are still other concerns that Sarah has about why this dietary approach is not ideal
      - There are things that keto triggers in a low insulin environment
        
        We do need to make some insulin because it is important for thyroid health, muscle and bone health, hormone health, and memory
        
        There are a lot of things that this super hormone does in the body
      - Low carb diets have this fundamental flaw of not providing us with nutrient sufficiency and missing out on some nutrients that our body really needs
    - It’s an interesting thought to try to get the best of keto, but the best of keto is not great
      - There have been a couple of studies that have shown that when you lose weight on a ketogenic diet that you lose more muscle per pound of fat than you do when you are just counting calories
      - It is a fad diet that doesn’t live up to its promises
      - Even though Green Keto is a really good thought, it’s still not enough
  - Stacy feels that any lifestyle or diet that requires the purchasing of anything to add to your diet means you are missing something
    - If you are being told you need supplements or you need this thing to test your ketones, it means that it’s not complete in an of itself
    - It also means that it is not sustainable longterm
  - Both Stacy and Sarah choose to take supplements because they aren’t getting all that they need of certain nutrients (like vitamin D) from diet alone
    - But Stacy and Sarah are not here to tell people that they need to take certain supplements because it is missing from the lifestyle they advocate
  - Stacy pointed out the way in which fad diets tend to get hung up in labels
    - She loves the way Sarah describes the way she eats as a low-inflammatory, high nutrient-dense diet
    - It is super important for people to understand
      - This description is a nuance that doesn’t sell well as a fad diet book
      - However, it does really help health as it relates to a longterm lifestyle for people to figure out individually what works for them
- (44:20) The Pegan Diet
  - Jackie also asked about the Pegan Diet which is the terminology spearheaded by Dr. Hyman
    - Dr. Hyman saw limitations in both a vegan and Paleo approach
    - He wanted to take the best of both and combined them into a Pegan approach
    - It’s plant-based Paleo, but not in the way that Stacy and Sarah talk about it
  - Sarah wants to preface this part of the conversation about what Pegan is by talking a little bit about what her upcoming book, The Gut Microbiome is all about
    - It is not available for preorder just yet, but she is working really hard on it
    - This will not be a Paleo book
    - She is going through the gut microbiome research and writing about what the research says
    - There is no branded diet in it whatsoever
    - She is building the principles of a healthy diet from the ground up based on our microbiome health
    - When you build this diet from the ground up it looks like a very veggie-rich Paleo diet with that Mediterranean, olive oil type, healthy fat focus
      - Moderate fat
      - Moderate protein
      - High vegetable consumption, including fruit and root vegetables
        
        So it is moderate carbohydrate
      - There is room for non-Paleo foods that actually may be very beneficial for us
        
        This includes lentils, chickpeas, split peas, gluten-free oats, rice, and A2 dairy
    - This book has no diet dogma behind it and simply reflects the research
  - Dr. Hyman’s recommendations include:
    - No sugar
    - Nothing that has pesticides, hormones or GMOs
    - Nothing that is refined or manufactured
    - High vegetable consumption
    - Not too much fruit
    - Healthy fats
    - Limiting or avoiding dairy (goat or sheep instead of cow)
      - Always organic and grass-fed
    - 4 to 6 oz. serving of meat per meal
    - He has a strong focus on food quality
    - Recommends avoiding all gluten
    - Gluten-free whole grains sparingly
    - Lentils are the best
      - Only eat starchy beans every once in a while
    - Functional medicine is also another point that he highly recommends
  - Sarah thinks that this is the best of the trademarked version of a plant-based diet combined with Paleo
    - This might potentially still be a little carb phobic
    - However, it does increase Phyto content consumption
  - Overall Sarah thinks that there is a lot of confusion within the Paleo community, which is why she wrote the Paleo Approach
    - As new research emerges, there are no prominent figures within the community who shares on these findings
    - This means that there are people within the community who are not highly informed individuals who are making recommendations that are not based on scientific evidence
    - There are still people who are following a very high meat consumption version of Paleo
      - There is still a high level of people who follow Paleo as a meme instead of a way of life
    - Stacy and Sarah’s approach is to try to correct the record about what Paleo is so that people coming into the community understand the importance of vegetables, eating snout to tail, nutrient density, seafood, toxin concerns, etc.
    - They are trying to create an evidence-led robust scientific foundation for Paleo to stand on
      - So that people coming into the community are not adopting a fad version of Paleo where they are just eating a ton of meat and bacon and dark chocolate
      - Where people instead are eating a low-inflammatory, nutrient-density diet
  - Dr. Hyman has looked at those communication challenges within the Paleo community and has decided to rebrand and create a new thing with a new name that can fall under his umbrella
    - It’s a different solution to the challenges that Paleo has right now as it grows and absorbs different alternative health communities and the different priorities that different health communities bring to the Paleo community
  - The Pegan approach is interesting to Sarah because it’s basically giving up
    - Paleo has become this unmanageable giant thing, and its a ship now that is getting really hard to steer
    - Let’s just create a new thing and rebrand
  - In general, Sarah thinks that Pegan is standard Paleo with room for self-experimentation
  - This generally seems like a thing about branding
    - Sarah just isn’t sure what she thinks about that
    - She sees the Paleo community as this really amazing group of people who are really invested in their health and she doesn’t want to just jump ship on that to simply have a different framework to say the exact same thing
    - She would rather stay rooted and embedded in this community and help to continue to provide that scientific foundation for her choices and call out where influences from other alternative health communities come into Paleo are misled or nuanced
    - Sarah wants to make sure that this community is really well informed and understands why one food is great, why one food isn’t, and all the world of gray in between where foods can have pros and cons and might work for you and might not
      - To be able to approach Paleo in not just a balanced way, or a science-led way, but in a non-dogmatic, non-rule based way
  - Stacy says that it makes so much sense to live in a non-dogmatic way, but use principles
    - This is consistent with what Stacy and Sarah have been talking about on the show for years
    - If you look at the way the Paleo community has gone with Chris Kresser’s Paleo Code, Rob Wolff’s Wired to Eat, and The Perfect Health Diet, you can find countless resources that show the ways in which the Paleo template has evolved as science has evolved
    - Stacy thinks that it is a lot more difficult for people to wrap their mind around the idea of these are guiding rules about food
      - But they are guiding, and they are not hard and fast
      - You will have to figure out what works for you
    - For Stacy personally, she thinks about food and asks is this nourishing me? Or is it not?
      - And there is the additional factor of, is this detrimental to my health?
    - Stacy and Sarah both shared how they personalize based on the years of experimentation they have done
  - Stacy is baffled that we are still trying to put labels and rules around what everyone can or can’t eat
    - She feels like we are all individual people who come from different genetic backgrounds
    - And because of these differences, we tolerate different foods differently
    - It’s as simple as getting back to basics
      - Eating real food that supports health
    - The more that we really have this mantra with ourselves, “is it helping me get healthier?”
      - And if it’s not, is it harming my health?
        
        Am I using it in a way that develops social or emotional development for myself
      - It’s not just a vacuum
- (1:08:37) Closing Thoughts
  - Sarah has to share one really exciting thing before they wrap up with is week’s show
    - Next week is The Paleo View’s seven-year anniversary!
    - Stacy feels that seven years is a very long time
      - And yet it is interesting, that here they are revisiting the principles that brought them here, to begin with
      - It changed both Stacy’s and Sarah’s lives in terms of their energy, their health, their weight loss, and so much more
      - The science is still pointing to the guiding principles that got us there, to begin with
    - Sarah finds it amazing that even after recording for seven years, they are not running out of topics to discuss
      - Which is a testament to how important it is to approach diet and lifestyle as an education rather than a sound bite
  - Sarah is so grateful for not just this platform, but The Paleo View listeners
  - Stacy shared on the level of deep connection that she feels towards this community of listeners
  - Stacy would love to meet listeners at her final events
    - Be sure to check out the details here
  - Thank you so much listeners for being here for seven years
    - For showing up at events or each week to download and be with Stacy and Sarah
    - They adore you and hope to share something clever to celebrate the monumental milestone
  - Thank you again so much listeners – Stacy and Sarah will be back again next week!