Most Replayed Moment: Is Milk Healthy? The Truth About Dairy, Sugar, Fruit And Fasting

I got told the other day, which helped me understand myself, I got told that when we're hungry, especially when it's sort of like late at night, the logical center of our brain, like the prefrontal cortex is less active and the amygdala, this sort of emotional part of our brain that wants the dopamine is much more active. And it helped me to understand why maybe late at night, if I haven't planned my food, I'm much more susceptible to make a bad food choice that I then regret. I'm much more acceptable to lean in for sugar or something that's like super high in carbs, whatever. That really helped me. And this is why the planning thing makes a lot of sense because I can use my prefrontal cortex, my logic center of my brain to make the food choice in the morning so that I don't find myself making a mistake. It's so important, Steven, because people have to understand that willpower is not the answer. You cannot use willpower to control your food behavior. It's part of your ancestral evolutionary limbic reptile dinosaur brain. And so when your blood sugar drops, you're going to eat whatever in front of you with the venting machine, if it's a donut, if it's cookies, it doesn't matter. Even if you know better, and I've experienced this, you're just going to eat whatever because it's a life-threatening emergency. Your body doesn't know that there's grocery stores and restaurants. It means you're going to go out and try to hunt and gather and do something. It's like an emergency. So when you have that food emergency, and you don't have the right food on you, you're in trouble. I have that all the time. You have this constant fight with myself where this one voice is like, do the fucking right thing. And then this other part of my brain is like, just today, break the rule. And but obviously that voice is louder sometimes than others and typically late at night, it's louder. Sleep deprivation. Stress. Stress. Sleep deprivation. Appity. It increases cortisol. It increases grilling, which is a grilling, which is a hunger hormone. You know, you can take young, healthy kid college kids and sleep deprived of them, and they're going to crave carbs. They're going to crave sugar, and they're going to gain weight. So that's our rocket science. What about for someone that doesn't have any money at all, is so they can't, they don't have the ability to, a lot of the privileges that mean you have. What are some of the very basics that they should be thinking about in order to remain healthy in a world where every convenience store is trying to sell you something cheap and sugary? Yeah. Something really good, good question. You know, I think the economics of being healthy is a problem, and we know that there's a huge disparity in health, but it's not only economic, it's education. You know, I met with a woman who was the doctor at a clinic in Bedstivocin, which is in Brooklyn. It's a very underserved area, and in a very low socioeconomic status group, very unhealthy. And she said, you know, do you know the number one predictor of health? Is it money? No. It's education. So even people who are wealthy, but haven't been educated, still have issues. So for me, it was really about education, and so people can be educated to do the right thing, and it doesn't have to be expensive. When I was part of this film, 10 years ago, it was called Fedup, it looked to childhood obesity in our food system, and the advent of sugar, and marketing, and process foods, and we visited a lot of families, and I worked with a family in North Carolina, and easily to one of the poorest areas in America. It has a worst called the food desert. So one of the worst food deserts in America, basically, where there's not a lot of healthy options to choose from, and there's something called the retail food environment index. How many healthy grocery stores are there to fast food in convenience stores, and there was like 10 to 1, it was terrible. And his family, you know, lived on $1,000 a month for food, for a family of five. They lived in a trailer. They were in disability and food stamps. The mother was 100 plus pounds of her weight. The father was very, very weight, had type 2 diabetes, and it was already at 42 years old, was on dialysis for kidney failure, which is amazing, because you usually don't see that until later, that the sun was 16 years old, and 50 percent body fat guy should be 10 to 20, and it was about to be diabetic, was pre-diabetic. And rather than kind of, they were part of the movie, and I said, why do you want to do this? And they were like, well, in order for my dad to get the kidney transplant, he asked to just wait and we're trying, we don't know what to do, we're doing all this low fat stuff, and we're doing all these diets, stuff we have in the house, not working. So I went to their house, their trailer, and I rather than giving a lecture about what to do, and I said, let's cook a meal together. But at first, let's do an inspection of your kitchen, and let's see what's in here. And so we pull that everything from the freezer and the fridge and the cupboards, and everything was packaged box, processed. Everything was very high in high fructose corn syrup from the peanut butter to the salad dressing. Everything had trans fat, and it was just deadly. And a lot of it said diet this, and my basic rule is, if it has a health claim on the label, don't eat it. You know, gluten-free potato chips doesn't make it healthy, right? Coca-Cola is gluten-free, doesn't make it healthy. So I'd show them what they were doing, and then I said, let's just make a simple meal. Here's a guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget. How do you eat well for you, for the planet, and your wallet? And it's made by the environmental working group, you can get it on ewg.org, it's free. And it was like, how do you choose the cheaper cuts of meat, or the beans, or the grains, or the veggies? You know, like onions and carrots and celery are not expensive, you know, like a lot of veg in our expenses. So we made turkey chili. We made a salad from fresh ingredients, olive oil and vinegar dressing, not dressing those full of chemicals, and high fructose corn syrup, and refined oils. We, I showed them how to roast sweet potatoes. I showed them how to stir-fry vegetables. We had some asparagus. They never eaten anything fresh. They never cooked in the kitchen. The kids came out and were playing video games, they came running in the kitchen, like, what's that smell? I think it was like the roasting of the sweet potatoes. We had this beautiful dinner together, they love the food. And I was like, you know what? I don't know if it's going to work, but you don't, they didn't even have cutting boards. They didn't have knives, they literally had, like, we tried to cut the, you know, the onions and the sweet potatoes with a butter knife, because that's all they had with a butter knife. It was really hard. So I bought them on the way home. I bought them cutting boards on Amazon and on knives, and I sandwiched their house. Next week, the mom texted me, she says, Mark, we lost 18 pounds this week as a family. Another later, the father lost 45, got a new kidney. The month lost 100 pounds, the sun lost 132 pounds, and went to medical school. The first guy in his family to go to college, and he asked me for a letter of recommendation for medical school. And they lived in one of the worst food deserts. They didn't have much, you know, economically, and they were able to figure it out, because eating real food doesn't have to be expensive. You don't have to have a $70 Wagyu ribeye steak, right? You can eat real food, and it's just as simple as not eating the ultra-processed food. It's so bad for us, and it kills 11 million people a year. We know the state is so strong. It causes mental health issues, aggression, violence, depression, anxiety, gun violence. I mean, the studies are there. I just did a podcast on the doctor's pharmacy. My podcast about this, talking about how our food is affecting our mental health, not just obesity and diabetes, but our cognitive function at ADD and memory issues. I mean, it's all linked to what we're eating. So we have a, you know, like I said, the best of times, the worst of times. We know what to do, but we have the ability to do it. It's just a problem of education, a problem of a political will to change the policies that are driving us to do the wrong thing, and right now there's a bill being proposed in Congress that would limit, as a pilot, ultra-processed food for kids. With food stamps, which I think would be amazing. The food industry's fighting back tooth and nail, right? So we're fighting big forces. Food industry is the biggest industry on the planet. When I was growing up, and I was trying to be healthy, one of the things I used to do was chug milk, because I got told that it would make me tall like my brothers. So I used to drink milk like crazy, straight from the carton. Just as many gops as I could take from the fridge. Did you grow up? I have no idea. I'm still shorter than they are, so I guess not. That's one of the big myths that I think a lot of families still believe that milk is great for our bones and to help us grow. What's your thoughts on milk? Yeah, so it's a controversial topic as well. Yeah, I mean, yes. I mean, the dairy industry is big. Our current secretary of agriculture worked for the dairy industry. It's problematic, because the sciences in there, there was a paper called Milk and Health that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, top medical journal in the world, arguably, maybe the Lancet, if you're from the UK. But it basically was written by two Harvard scientists that dissected all of the scientific evidence around milk and whether the claims were right or not. And just maybe for the audience in Europe, you might not know this, but in the states who remember this, there were all these got milk ads. So there were famous people, celebrities, sports athletes, politicians, all wearing a white milk mustache. And they're like, got milk as a promotion. And in those ads, it would say it's going to build better bones. It's going to do this. It's going to do that. And the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, actually, or I think it was the Federal Trade, say, you can't do that because it's not true. Like, you have to take those ads out. So those ads went away. And it was the government promoting those ads with the dairy council. So there's something called checkout programs that the government has where it's supposed to support agriculture. Well, the government was paying in part for these ads with taxpayer dollars. And the science wasn't there. And the dietary guidelines for Americans says that the average American should have three glasses of milk a day and kids should have two glasses of milk a day to be healthy. You cannot get money in funding for school lunches in America without having milk on the menu. Now, there is no evidence to support this. In fact, there's opposite evidence that skim milk causes weight gain because it doesn't satisfy your appetite. That milk can cause cancer. That's the cancer. Cross day cancer. That it doesn't create strong bones. In fact, there's a higher risk of fracture with high milk drinkers. That it creates a lot of digestive issues for people. And it can create autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes. It has common allergies or school sensitivities that people get. And I remember I was in the emergency room once. And when I was working in the ER and this mother comes in with this kid with like, you know, had like this 10th ear infection. A few examples. I was like, what happened? Like when did this start? Oh, it started when he was like 12 months old. I said, what change will I stop breastfeeding? And I started giving him milk. And all of a sudden he started getting his ear infections. I'm like, oh, this is before I even knew about all this. We're just kind of an interesting footnote. But we really have to look at the data and be science driven. And the problem is we're we have corporate capture in America. Where the food industry has captured our food agencies, our political system from the FDA to the USDA. We they spend, for example, half a billion dollars just on the farm bill, which has, for example, food stamps and other food programs, child infant nutrition. So it's really unfortunate. But milk is not nature's perfect food. It's only nature's perfect food if you're a calf. Is that health benefits to milk? Yes. So that's the other side of it. Now, what milk should we be drinking, right? If we're drinking modern milk, modern milk is from hosting cows that are almost homogeneous and same, not homogenized milk, but homogenous breed. They have very few bowls inseminating them. They have like massive insemination program from a very few bowls that have a limited genetic stock. And they're what we call A1 cows. So most heirloom cows, most sort of historical dairy had something called A2 casing, which is less inflammatory, less likely to cause gut issues, less problematic for the body. So sheep and goat milk have A2. Certain cows like Jersey or Guernsey cows have A2 in them. And you can get A2 milk, you can get A2 ice cream now. And so this A1 casing is potentially very problematic. So I think the current dairy is not great. And then we pasteurize it and homogenize it. And we add growth hormone to the cows that goes in there. We have estrogen that we add into the cows. It's in the milk. We have 60 different hormones in the milk. Some of them naturally occurring, but we milk pregnant cows. And that milk has a lot more hormonal effects. So I think the current dairy is not something we should consume. Now if you have a chance to get sheep milk or goat milk or A2 milk from a cow, that may be okay. Yogurts may be okay. And depends on your genetics too. 75% the world's lactose intolerant. Many people have dairy sensitivities. But I think if it's from the right source, it's okay. For example, I use goat way as my morning protein shake. So goat way is from goats. Obviously, there's very little casing in it. But it's A2 casing if there's any. And I don't react to it. But if I have regular way, I do have a reaction. I get congested. I'll get pimples or I get regular stuff. So I don't think dairy is something we should be consuming in larger amounts. Unless it's certain kinds of dairy. What's your position on fruit? A lot of fruit. How much fruit? I think it depends, right? So if you're diabetic and you're metabolically completely out of whack and you don't have any metabolic resilience, eating a plum might be a problem for you. And now we have continuous glucose monitors. You can track your blood sugar and see. And I've had patients like this. Gee, I ate a plum and my sugar goes to the roof. So, but if I ate an apple, it doesn't. So I think different fruits had different effects on you. But for most, part fruit is full of phytochemicals, fiber, phytonutrients. It does have a little bit of sugar in it. I would say no fruit juice. I think fruit juice is definitely to obesity in kids and other things. But if you want to have an apple or a peach or a plum, it's fine. I think you shouldn't have it first thing in the morning. I think protein and fat in the morning is important because it activates your metabolism and your protein synthesis. If you eat sugar in the morning, which is essentially what we eat in the world today, cereal, pancakes, waffles, muffins, bagels, you know, sweetened yogurt, sweetened coffees. I mean, it's the worst possible thing we can do for our biology. It jacks up our blood sugar and insulin and ends up causing us to gain weight and be hungry and you know, be craving more stuff. So having, having fruit, for example, you have frozen berries in your, I had frozen cherries, for example, in my way protein. That's okay because there's protein in there and it mitigates the effect. What about eating times when to eat? Yeah. Have you got any thoughts around when we shouldn't shouldn't be to eat? Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, we had something called breakfast before, which was breaking the fast. And now people eat all night and they eat until they go to bed and they say they wake up to eat or have something sugary stuff in the morning to get sugary coffee. And they don't get themselves a window of fasting, which is critical for our biology. I wrote about this in my book, Young Forever, where we talked about how do we have our own repair, our renewal system kick in? Because the body, think about it, Steven, your body, when you cut yourself, heals the skin closes and heals. How does it not do that? It's so smart. It's got your bones break. It heals, right? I broke my arm for years ago. It does heal, right? What's going on? I'm not going, would you please heal in there? It knows what to do or recruit stem cells or recruit repair factors and growth factors and it knows what to do. So the body has this innate healing repair, renewal and regeneration system, and we need to learn how to activate it. And most of us do the opposite. We do everything in our power to deactivate it and that causes a disease. So food is the most important thing we do to interact with these regenerative, renewal repair systems. It's one of the things we call the hallmarks of aging. And there's one called deregulated nutrient sensing and it really relates to how our bodies relate to food, how our nutrient sensing systems are dysregulated by our highly processed diet, by high sugar and starch, and not enough of the right foods. So in the long answer to your question, it's important to give yourself a break of 12 hours. So if you eat at six at night, you can eat six in the morning, minimum. But best probably 14. So if you eat dinner at six, you breakfast at eight, that's okay. That's a 14 hour fast. And in that time, your body is doing when it's clean up or cycling repair. Is there an evolutionary story? For sure, absolutely. When we didn't have grocery stores, we didn't have whole foods, we didn't have restaurants, we didn't have takeout, we didn't have convenience stores. So we had to go out and find food. And I just came back from Tanzania and visited the hunter-gatherers there, the Kodza, which is one of the last few tribes that hunting gather. And we went hunting and gathering and was like, man, it's a lot of work to go dig up some roots and kill a bird in the tree. It was a project. We ran around for hours. And so we don't know where we're getting our next meal. And so the body has had to deal with periods of feast and famine before. So what it's got built into it is a system of conservation and repair when we don't eat. And so the system gets activated that improves our blood sugar control, that recruits pneumatic hydrogen, builds pneumatic hydrogen, that reduces inflammation, that activates cellular cleanup and repair processes. So you have all these old cells and damaged proteins. Your body has a little like digester, almost like a little vacuum cleaner that goes as success all up and then digest it and then uses the parts. It's almost like a recycling system in the body. We need to activate that. And so that fasting period is a time to do that. And we've seen even, for example, we know, for example, concentration camps survivors who live really long, like they live 90, 100 plus years old, many of them. And it's because they had this period of deep starvation that had an effect on their biology. And we know this, we know this from many animal studies that starvation and fasting will extend your life by a third. If you eat a third less calories, you'll live a third longer. Now it's not fun, right? But you don't have to do that. So timing of eating is important. So give yourself three hours before bed for no food and give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. How do we know in the animal studies? It wasn't just the calorie restriction that caused the sort of longevity effect. It was. It was the kind. It was. So what if I just restrict my calories instead of fasting? Well, you can do that. I met a guy who was from the calorie restriction society. There's a calorie restriction society. Yeah, but just based on these research and animals were, think about if you eat a third less, you'll live a third longer. So for a human, that would be 120 years old. And I said, what do you have for breakfast? He said, well, I had five pounds of celery. And I'm like, okay, you go do that. I'm going to figure out another way. So you have to eat enormous amounts of like low calorie food just to feel full, right? That's why I like food. So he was starving. And there are a lot of downsides starving. You lose muscle, which is necessary. There's certain things that go wrong. And so it's not really the optimal strategy. You want to do things in mimic starvation. So how do you mimic this period of starvation that causes something called autophagy, which basically means to eat yourself, to basically clean up yourself. It's like self-cleaning or self-repair, right? And so there's a lot of ways to hack that. You can do it by this longer term overnight fast. You can do it by certain supplements and certain medications. Like rapamycin is being studied for longevity, which is a drug that's used for cancer and for other immune-suppressing treatments. But it works on this pathway called mTOR, which essentially is the activation of cellular buildup. It causes muscle synthesis. So if you want to build muscle, you want to activate mTOR with protein, which is good. But you don't want to activate it all the time. So this drug inhibits mTOR, which is what happens when you starve yourself. So in mimic starvation, and then you get this kind of benefit. Or drugs like midformin are being studied, which is another drug that's looking at, how do we activate this longevity switch called AMPK, another pathway that's regulating your nutrient sensing. So when you have enough nutrients, this activates. But if we're running around eating, well, you can actually take this drug and it may have an effect. There's a large trial going on now. I'm still agnostic about it. I'm not their pro or against it. I think the data's not in it for me to start taking it, or my patients just start taking it. But it works on some of these sort of starvation mimicking hacks. Let's call them. So starvation is good for us. Yes, I mean, yes. I would say, be careful, because people go really to the extreme. I'm going to not activate mTOR, because activating mTOR causes me to age faster, and it prevents autophagy, and it builds cancer, and it's bad. So I'm going to become a vegan, and I'm going to eat less calories. And eventually, what happens is you lose muscle. So it's like Goldilocks. You need both mTOR activation and mTOR ambition. You need to take a breath in. You need to take a breath out. You need to be awake. And you need to go to sleep. Yeah, that's about it. Your heart needs to beat. And you need to relax. It's just how the body works. What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.