1:54

were

2:00

perhaps really boring in the last

2:03

bunch of episodes that's going to drop next week. But

2:07

thus far, I've found it very enjoyable.

2:09

Yeah, yeah, I'm enjoying watching it.

2:11

But it's like, there's not really a couple

2:13

to root for this season. I

2:17

don't know about that. Okay, fair enough. Maybe

2:20

you're not as cynical as I am. I

2:22

mean, I like Izzy and Stacey. I think

2:25

they're cute. I

2:28

definitely think they're going

2:30

to have some issues to work out

2:33

related to them coming from different

2:35

class backgrounds. But we'll

2:38

see, we'll see. Yeah. Anyways,

2:41

let's move on to what people actually care about.

2:43

Fat Bear Week. Yes. As

2:45

you're listening to this, we

2:48

are in the midst of Fat Bear

2:50

Week. Let's

2:52

see, yeah. This will be dropping on Wednesday,

2:54

I believe. Voting

2:57

for Fat Bear Week is theoretically

3:00

supposed to start tomorrow

3:02

as we're recording this, October 3rd. And

3:07

a champion will be crowned on

3:09

October 10th. But currently,

3:12

I think some stuff is still up

3:14

in the air. Do you want to talk about that?

3:17

Well, whenever I was looking at the website

3:19

earlier, it did say that they were going

3:21

to have the bios

3:24

and announce the bears in the running

3:26

tonight.

3:26

Okay. So Monday,

3:29

October 2nd at 7 p.m.

3:31

Eastern time is what I saw.

3:33

So that has not occurred as

3:36

per this recording yet, but

3:38

it will have occurred. So we'll

3:40

see. We'll see if there are some of our faves

3:42

from the last years back up or

3:45

if we have some fresh meat in there.

3:48

I did look at the junior

3:51

cub that recently was crowned. Yes.

3:55

And he is stupendous, the good

3:57

bear. Yes. Spring Cub 806.

4:00

very good, he got very

4:02

fat and we're so happy for

4:04

him.

4:06

Just as some background, if this is

4:08

your first year listening to the Stronger by

4:10

Science podcast, this has become a bit of

4:12

a yearly tradition around these parts. The

4:15

Katmai National Park in

4:18

Alaska has

4:21

a competition every year

4:24

called Fat Bear Week that, you

4:26

know, I'm honestly not sure what purpose it serves,

4:29

maybe just to bring attention to

4:31

the park, maybe

4:33

sell some merch, whatever, but

4:36

it also brings awareness to a very

4:38

important issue in

4:41

the earth sign community, which

4:44

is that bears have to get very fat because they hibernate

4:46

and they need plenty of fuel

4:50

in their body to get them through the winter. And

4:52

so every year they run this

4:54

little competition, it's a bracket, anyone

4:57

can vote where you basically

5:00

just vote on which bear you think

5:02

got the fattest or just who,

5:05

which bear's bulking

5:08

journey you enjoy the most

5:12

and they crown a winner. So

5:15

yeah, that's going to go

5:17

on. It almost got either

5:19

canceled or postponed due to

5:22

the government shutdown that I think

5:25

is going to be averted. I believe so. But

5:28

yeah, like it's a national park, so it's federally

5:30

funded. All of the

5:32

employees' salaries, including

5:35

the people who would be doing all of the Fat Bear stuff

5:37

on the website, comes from

5:39

federal money. So if the government

5:41

would have been shut down, those people would

5:43

have been furloughed and

5:46

yeah, the competition would have been postponed

5:49

or canceled this year. But

5:51

yeah, that isn't going to happen, but

5:54

I do think they're a little bit behind as a result because

5:56

all of that was up in the air for a while. So

6:00

yeah, Lyn's just from just

6:03

from like history or memory. Do

6:05

you have any any bears that you're pulling

6:07

for this year, even though they haven't announced

6:09

all of the contestants? Well 747

6:10

won last year, right?

6:14

And I was looking back at his before

6:17

and after from last year, and honestly,

6:21

incredible work by him. Yeah.

6:24

So I'm looking forward to seeing

6:26

an update. But you know, I would love to see

6:28

some new bears

6:28

in the mix. Yeah, I'm

6:30

a big fan of Grazer, as

6:33

we've talked about in previous

6:35

iterations of Fat Bear Week content. But

6:38

I also think if you're a betting person,

6:41

it's hard to pick against 480

6:44

Otis. Yeah,

6:46

another reigning champ. Yeah, he's

6:48

won four times. And

6:51

you know, I won't pretend like

6:54

I'm a year round Fat Bear

6:56

fan. Like there are cameras

6:58

in the park that you can just like watch

7:00

a live stream of. That's not

7:02

me. Like I'm not that dedicated to the cause. Now

7:04

I did find a YouTube channel that curates

7:07

the best from those live

7:08

cams. Because I wanted to check out 806

7:11

spring hub

7:13

and see a bit more of his journey. And

7:16

yeah, there's people out here doing

7:17

the Lord's work of watching the bear

7:20

cam and clipping and

7:22

giving you like four minute videos on YouTube,

7:25

if you are interested in that. Honestly

7:27

send that to me. I will. Also,

7:29

can you post that in the show notes? I will. Yeah.

7:32

Hell yeah. But yeah, what I

7:35

was gonna say is like, I feel like 480 Otis

7:37

for a casual Fat Bear fan like me.

7:40

Yeah. It's kind of like being an NBA

7:42

fan in the 90s, where it's just like, yeah,

7:45

you don't follow the off season. You don't know what moves

7:47

were made, but like going into the year,

7:49

it's like, I assume the Bulls will be

7:51

good again. That's, that's how I feel

7:53

about Otis. Yeah. But

7:56

yeah, yeah, we'll see. We'll see. It

7:58

should be another. exciting

8:00

week and another great fadbear season.

8:03

Yes, very exciting. Okay,

8:06

so we are about to

8:08

get into the plugs and start the episode,

8:11

but before we get rolling I just want to make

8:13

one quick note, and that

8:15

is that next episode we

8:18

were aiming for it to be a crowd

8:20

pleaser. So

8:23

this is the third part of our micronutrient

8:25

series, and we realized

8:27

that that is not the topic

8:30

that everyone is the most

8:32

interested in. I

8:35

think it's cool. I think it's been some good content.

8:37

I've learned a lot, yeah. But yeah,

8:39

like the listener numbers are down, like

8:41

I can take that on the chin. Honestly, I kind of

8:43

expected it. So

8:46

next episode we want it to be stuff

8:49

that you are very interested in

8:51

and very invested in, so we are going

8:53

with an all Q&A episode. So the

8:56

episode will

8:58

be as interesting to you as your

9:01

desire to submit a question that you want

9:03

an answer to. So ask

9:05

good questions and it'll be a good episode. If

9:08

you have a question that you'd like us to

9:10

address on the podcast, it could be about anything.

9:14

Record a voice

9:16

memo 30 to 60 seconds

9:18

and email it to podcast at strongerbyscience.com,

9:23

and if we like your question

9:25

we'll answer it all in the next episode. So

9:29

yeah, I think that's it for

9:31

housekeeping notes. Let's

9:33

get into our plugs.

9:34

Yeah, so if you're enjoying the show,

9:37

please like, rate, subscribe,

9:39

and tell your friends. It really helps

9:41

us out and helps people find the podcast.

9:44

If you're interested in hiring a virtual coach

9:46

to help you with your training and or your

9:49

nutrition, Stronger by Science has

9:51

a team of excellent coaches that can help you. You

9:53

can learn more at strongerbyscience.com slash

9:55

coaching. If you want to purchase supplements

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from a reliable source, and support

10:00

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code SBSPOD to get a 5% discount.

10:09

And other than supporting our team of

10:11

coaches, the main product Greg and I focus

10:13

on these days is MacroFactor,

10:15

our premium macro tracking and diet coaching

10:18

app. We both use it and love it. It

10:20

recently celebrated

10:22

its second birthday. It's been out in the world for

10:24

over two years now.

10:26

Which is 14 in dog years.

10:29

Okay, I don't know how that translates

10:31

to app years. I don't know if it's more or less. Okay,

10:34

thank you for that input though. No problem.

10:36

But if you would like to try MacroFactor,

10:39

you could do it for free for 14 days by

10:41

using the code SBS during sign up. It's

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available on the App Store and Google

10:46

Play. Or if you wanna learn more

10:48

about the app before you sign up for that free

10:50

trial, check out our website, macrofactorapp.com.

10:55

Absolutely, and if you would

10:57

like to stay up to date on

11:01

exciting new research coming out, there

11:03

are two things you could do. You

11:05

could check out our newsletter,

11:08

which you can find at strongerbyscience.com

11:12

slash newsletter. We

11:14

send research breakdowns

11:16

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11:19

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11:21

not just a bunch of promotions. We won't spam

11:23

you. Like almost everything

11:26

you get if you sign up for the newsletter is

11:28

just going to be the type of content

11:30

that you're interested in. We're assuming

11:33

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11:36

if you would like to take that a step

11:38

further, you could subscribe

11:40

to the Mass Research Review that

11:42

stands for Monthly Applications and Strength Support.

11:46

Great group of folks run it. They

11:49

go through all of the studies published

11:52

for anyone who's

11:54

interested in getting stronger, getting

11:56

more jacked, getting leaner, whatever. If

11:59

you wanna keep up. day with the research mass

12:02

I think is the best way to do

12:04

it. And if

12:06

you would like to get a little

12:08

bit more into the Stronger by Science

12:11

content universe, you

12:14

should join our Facebook group and

12:16

subreddit. The Facebook group is Stronger

12:18

by Science Community. The subreddit

12:21

is just

12:23

r slash Stronger by Science. That

12:27

is the best place to go. Either

12:30

of those places is the best place to go if

12:32

you'd like to stay abreast of all of

12:35

the things going on, especially related

12:37

to the podcast. So we

12:39

are, for instance, going to be answering

12:42

your micronutrient related questions

12:44

at the end of this episode. And

12:46

the way that you would have known that we were going

12:49

to do that and to submit questions on

12:51

that particular topic would have

12:53

been to join the Facebook group and subreddit. That's

12:55

where we put out the call. So, yeah, those

12:57

are those are good places. You should check them

13:00

out. And then finally, just kind

13:02

of I already mentioned this, but just standard

13:05

plug here at the end. If you have

13:07

questions for the podcast, record

13:10

a 30 to 60 second voice memo.

13:13

Don't exceed 60 seconds. We will not listen

13:15

to it. 30 to 60 seconds,

13:17

though, that's that's a sweet spot. Under 30

13:19

seconds would also be fine. Yeah,

13:21

but like no one actually does that. No

13:25

one's concise. Yeah, I'm a Stronger

13:27

by Science fan. I can't

13:30

judge anyone for that. I know. But

13:32

yeah, yeah. Record a voice clip and email

13:34

them to podcast at Stronger by Science

13:37

dot com. All right. Let's let's

13:39

get into it.

13:40

Yeah. Like you mentioned today, we are

13:42

wrapping up the three episode

13:44

micronutrient series.

13:46

So the first episode we published covered

13:49

micronutrients themselves, what they

13:51

are in their history. The second episode

13:54

discussed nutrient targets, where

13:56

those targets come from and what they mean.

13:59

And this episode. we want to get a little bit

14:01

more practical and discuss which

14:03

micro-dutrients are most worth monitoring

14:06

if you want to do that and

14:08

why you shouldn't allow a focus on micro-dutrients

14:11

specifically to detract from the pursuit

14:13

of a generally healthy diet. Absolutely,

14:16

and just so you know, all of the

14:18

things I'm about to mention will be linked in the

14:20

show notes, but there is a five-part

14:24

article series on micro-nutrients on

14:26

the macro-factor website, the

14:29

kind of landing page for all of those articles

14:31

will be linked in the show notes, and this

14:33

article or this episode in particular

14:37

mostly covers content from the

14:39

last two articles in that series,

14:41

which will also be linked in the show notes. And

14:44

lastly, if you would like

14:46

to read more about each

14:49

particular micro nutrient, we

14:52

have just a page

14:54

of content on

14:57

each of those micro nutrients

14:59

in the macro-factor knowledge base and kind

15:02

of the the landing page for that will be linked in

15:04

the show notes as well. So if you want

15:06

to know kind of how easy

15:09

or difficult it is to track a particular nutrient,

15:12

the general likelihood that

15:14

you might be consuming too much or too little

15:16

of that nutrient, good dietary

15:18

sources of nutrients, etc. Those

15:22

are the sorts of things on each of those micro

15:24

nutrient pages and yeah,

15:26

kind of the the homepage

15:28

for all of those will

15:30

also be linked in the show notes. Yeah, that's such an excellent

15:32

resource that you put together. Thank you. And it's

15:34

not just for macro-factor users, obviously

15:37

the Strong by Science audience could

15:39

get a lot out of that as well.

15:41

I hope so. So yeah,

15:44

today we're gonna talk about micro

15:46

nutrients that are most worth monitoring.

15:49

So I think to set us up for answering

15:51

that question,

15:52

Greg, will you tell us what

15:55

the difference is between an insufficient

15:57

intake and a deficient intake?

15:59

I feel like this is something that probably

16:02

is going to seem obvious once people learn

16:05

it, but it's not always

16:07

in the conversation when you hear

16:09

about micro-dutrients. Yes. I

16:12

think I touched on this in the last

16:14

episode, but just to make

16:16

this more explicit at the start

16:18

of this episode and to kind of frame

16:21

everything we're about to talk about next, I

16:24

think that it is... I

16:27

think terminology matters in this discussion

16:30

and very frequently when

16:33

people talk about consuming a

16:35

little bit less of a particular nutrient

16:37

than the RDA or the EAR or the AI or

16:42

whatever, there's

16:44

a tendency for folks to use the term

16:47

deficiency, like you're not consuming

16:49

quite enough, therefore you're deficient in this nutrient.

16:52

But that is not the best term

16:55

to use most of the time. Generally

16:59

insufficient or inadequate intake

17:01

is how you would see that

17:03

described in the research and by public health

17:05

bodies. And the reason for that is there

17:08

is a big difference between

17:11

insufficient intake and deficient intake

17:13

or having a nutrient deficiency.

17:19

Just in general, if you have a

17:21

micronutrient deficiency, there

17:24

will generally be something

17:27

extremely wrong that's very

17:29

noticeable. The example I gave

17:32

in the last episode is with calcium.

17:34

If you have a calcium deficiency,

17:39

oftentimes one of the first things that'll happen is there

17:42

will be errors and kind of

17:44

the rhythmicity or signaling in

17:46

your heart and they can cause heart failure.

17:51

If you have insufficient calcium

17:53

intake, it's still not ideal, but

17:55

the normal consequence of that is you

17:58

might have a slightly higher risk of osteoarthritis. over

18:01

your lifespan. So

18:03

two very, very different things. And

18:06

at least in most developed

18:08

countries, micronutrient

18:11

deficiencies are very rare,

18:14

but insufficiencies are considerably

18:17

more common. And so in this

18:19

episode, we're going to talk about the

18:25

nutrients that people over-consume,

18:27

but then also under-consume.

18:29

And when we're talking about risks or rates

18:32

of under-consumption of those nutrients, we

18:34

are talking about insufficient

18:37

intake, not deficient intake.

18:40

An analogy that I think is

18:42

helpful here is if you think about it in

18:44

terms of a car, consuming adequate

18:47

amounts of a nutrient is

18:49

like taking extremely good care

18:51

of a car. You're getting top-of-the-line oil,

18:54

the best tires, the best

18:57

brakes you can get, always putting in

19:00

high-octane fuel, getting really consistent

19:02

tune-ups, etc. And so, you

19:05

know, like

19:08

going, like doing really, really good.

19:13

Insufficient intake, it's kind of like taking

19:17

what I would often consider to be like

19:19

normal care of a car, but... It depends

19:21

on someone's definition, probably. I

19:24

like how a teenager would take

19:26

care of their car. Or

19:28

just like people of maybe lower

19:30

socioeconomic status. That's kind of

19:32

my context. So,

19:36

you know, you're still taking it in for an oil

19:38

change every 5,000 miles, but maybe

19:40

sometimes you push that to 6,000 or 7,000, you're

19:44

getting the tires changed, but maybe they're getting

19:46

worn down a little bit too much occasionally.

19:50

And so, like, the consequence there

19:52

is the car probably won't run quite

19:54

as well as it would if you took really,

19:56

really good care of it, and it might break down...

19:59

Little bit like it might need to be serviced

20:02

a little more often it might end up breaking

20:04

down a little bit sooner but like Generally,

20:06

it's still going to have a pretty good life Like

20:09

things are going to work pretty well most of the time

20:11

and then like Deficiency

20:13

is kind of like just never changing the oil which

20:16

like the car will putter along for a while But eventually

20:19

like something is going to break very badly

20:22

and it's gonna be fucking obvious So

20:25

yeah, like that's I think

20:27

not a terrible analogy. I like that.

20:29

I mean, thank you. That's a perfect So

20:32

yeah, like I'm like we're talking about Insufficient

20:35

intake here. We're not talking about deficiencies

20:40

so for everything we're

20:43

about to talk about we're just

20:45

kind of gonna kind of go down a list of Things

20:48

that people might consume a bit too much of

20:51

maybe not quite enough of But

20:53

everything we're about to cover here I made

20:56

a handy table for that will

20:58

be linked in the show notes if you want to refer back

21:02

And you know, like I don't know how long this episode

21:04

is going to be hopefully it's last it's shorter

21:06

than the last two but It's

21:09

probably we don't have a great track record. That's

21:11

true Like it's probably still gonna be at least like 90

21:13

to 120 minutes of content And

21:17

so yeah If you'd like a resource

21:19

that you can glance back at for 30 seconds

21:22

instead of needing to relist into like an hour of content

21:25

a Table that will

21:27

like summarize all of this

21:29

will be linked in the show notes So,

21:33

yeah, let's uh

21:35

Let's get into it. Yeah so

21:37

we're gonna talk about three groups of micronutrients

21:40

to pay close attention to Nutrients

21:43

that are often over consumed nutrients

21:45

that are often under consumed and nutrients

21:48

that vegans in particular

21:49

May want to pay close attention to so

21:52

Greg. Let's

21:52

start with those that

21:54

are over consumed. Yeah,

21:56

so Just like one

21:58

like very small group correction

22:00

there. Some of these

22:02

that are often over-consumed are

22:04

just like kind of general nutrients,

22:07

like not specifically micronutrients, which

22:10

like very, very small correction. But

22:13

I don't want anyone writing in and being like, Greg

22:15

said saturated fat was a micronutrient.

22:19

Anyway, we understand the distinction. But

22:22

yeah, so in kind of the standard

22:25

Western diet, there are a handful

22:27

of nutrients that are often over-consumed.

22:30

And there are a couple that I think

22:33

a lot of people believe are frequently

22:35

over-consumed, but maybe

22:37

aren't so much. And I'm

22:39

going to touch on those as well. But

22:42

the first on this list is added sugar.

22:46

The recommended intake differs

22:48

depending on what source you look at, but

22:50

the USDA here in the US

22:53

recommends added sugar to comprise less

22:55

than 10% of total energy intake.

22:58

The American Heart Association recommends less

23:00

than 5% of total energy intake.

23:04

Actually, I don't think that was their exact

23:07

recommendation. I think they recommended a

23:09

number of grams per day to stay

23:12

below, but it was consistent with a 2,000 calorie

23:15

diet for women, 2,500 calorie diet for men, and

23:18

it would be less than 5% of energy in those

23:20

two diets. So just kind of like

23:22

abstracting at less than 5% of total

23:24

energy. And the British NHS

23:27

recommends to keep it below 30 grams per

23:29

day. So don't

23:32

consume a ton of added sugar. That's the

23:34

basic takeaway. An

23:36

average intake in most of the developed

23:39

world, it differs country to country, but it's

23:41

somewhere around 8% to 15%. So

23:45

some countries in Europe are down closer

23:48

to 8%, 9%, which would kind of come

23:50

in under that recommendation from

23:52

the USDA, but would still exceed the

23:55

American Heart Association and the NHS's

23:57

recommendation, 15%. is,

24:00

that's like quite a lot, like 15% doesn't

24:02

sound like a big number, but that's basically

24:05

like a sixth of your total energy intake

24:07

from added sugar. Also,

24:10

I think that there is

24:13

the general perception

24:15

that added sugar intake is increasing

24:18

over time and that that's like

24:21

driving a lot of disease

24:23

burden and whatnot. And like added sugar

24:25

intake is generally still too high, but it

24:27

is, it's actually trending down. It

24:30

peaked in the early to mid 2000s and

24:33

as there has been more awareness about,

24:35

hey, maybe don't consume

24:38

that much sugar, it is like gradually

24:40

trending down, but on average,

24:42

a lot of people are still consuming too

24:45

much of it. Moving on, saturated

24:47

fat. The

24:49

recommended intake from most health bodies is

24:51

to keep saturated fat intake as low as possible,

24:55

but to definitely try to keep it below 10% of

24:57

total energy intake. The

25:01

average intake in both the US and EU

25:04

is higher than that. And in

25:06

America specifically, only about a third

25:08

of Americans meet that recommendation

25:11

to keep it below 10%.

25:14

And

25:15

I'll note about this, like this

25:18

recommendation is more

25:21

controversial than I think it should be like

25:24

there is in kind

25:27

of like the online fitness and

25:29

nutrition space, a relatively large

25:33

group of folks who are who tried

25:35

to push the idea that all of

25:38

that is bullshit and saturated

25:40

fat is totally fine. Doesn't

25:42

increase your risk of cardiovascular disease

25:46

might increase your LDL cholesterol, but like

25:48

that's irrelevant. And

25:53

like, this isn't like, I'm

25:55

probably not the person to do

25:57

like an in depth episode on

25:59

this. And like this definitely isn't the podcast

26:02

episode to get super in-depth on this topic,

26:04

but like that's just fucking wrong.

26:07

Yeah like So

26:10

kind of starting with epidemiological research

26:12

and like the stuff I'm about to reference

26:14

will be linked in the show notes Higher

26:17

intakes of saturated fat are associated

26:19

with greater risks of cardiovascular

26:22

disease greater

26:24

intakes of saturated fat Like

26:27

directly increase LDL cholesterol

26:30

and there's also like pretty strong meta

26:32

analytic evidence that lowering LDL cholesterol

26:36

reduces rates of cardiovascular

26:39

disease in a predictable

26:42

Way with like a strong dose response

26:44

relationship, which like Very

26:48

very very strongly suggests

26:50

that we're dealing with a causal relationship

26:52

here So yeah,

26:55

like limiting saturated fat intake

26:57

is a good thing and

27:00

Yeah, more more people should probably pay

27:02

a bit of mind to that because

27:04

most people do seem to overconsume it moving

27:08

on another one that might be like somewhat

27:11

controversial and I Understand

27:14

the controversy around this one a bit

27:16

more and that is sodium. Mm-hmm So

27:19

like different public health bodies have different recommendations

27:22

for sodium but most of them

27:24

suggest That sodium intake

27:26

should be somewhere around like two

27:29

two and two and a half grams per day So

27:32

like 2,000 to 2,500 milligrams per day. Like

27:34

it's it's usually expressed in milligrams An

27:38

average intake in most developed countries

27:40

is like way way higher than that. Yeah

27:43

for understandable reasons like Well

27:45

seasoned food is delicious. Yeah Better.

27:49

Yeah, so one

27:51

perspective on this is that

27:53

that recommendation is Too

27:58

low or at least should be the

28:01

kind of like circumscribed

28:03

a bit more and like given like

28:05

more

28:07

kind of like context around it. So

28:10

some folks will make the case that

28:12

the only reason that you should

28:15

worry about sodium intake is

28:17

if you have high blood pressure and

28:19

like sodium sensitive hypertension in

28:21

particular. And a lot

28:24

of people have hypertension, but not every

28:27

hypertensive person has

28:29

like sodium sensitive hypertension. And

28:32

so they would suggest

28:34

that like most people are fine

28:37

to consume a lot of sodium, but

28:39

like consuming a lot of sodium has like

28:42

excess deleterious effects

28:44

specifically for, like

28:47

specifically for sodium sensitive hypertensives.

28:50

Yeah. So that's

28:53

one way to look at it. And that is,

28:55

I don't know, until about

28:57

a year ago, I think kind of the camp

28:59

that I was in. And I'm

29:01

still sympathetic to

29:04

that way of viewing things. But you left

29:06

the camp. Are you trekking to a new

29:08

camp? I don't know. Like I'm, I

29:10

don't think I have a strong take on it anymore.

29:13

Okay. So there was a meta

29:15

analysis that came out like, last

29:18

year, two years ago, like relatively recently

29:22

that suggests that

29:24

high sodium intake

29:27

is related to like stroke

29:29

risk. And there's

29:31

also like quite a bit

29:33

of animal research that's being done, finding

29:38

that high salt intake is

29:40

like mechanistically linked

29:42

to like disease mechanisms

29:45

related to the kidneys, brain, vascular

29:47

and immune systems. And

29:50

so like that stuff will be linked in the show notes

29:52

as well. And so like, you

29:54

don't wanna draw like too straight of a line

29:56

between animal research and human

29:58

health outcomes. And the

30:01

stuff with stroke risk,

30:03

it could be similar to the sodium

30:05

sensitive hypertension thing where hypertension

30:09

is a risk factor for having strokes. So

30:11

it could just be that people who consume a lot of sodium,

30:14

most of them are fine. They're not actually elevating

30:16

their individual stroke risk, but kind of on a

30:18

population level, you're

30:21

consuming more salt. Some of those people

30:23

will be more sodium sensitive and

30:25

they have an individual

30:27

large elevation and stroke risk and so you

30:30

get kind of those epidemiological trends.

30:32

Like that is certainly a possibility or

30:35

some more of like the animal mechanistic

30:37

stuff could be at play here and there is

30:40

like a driving causal

30:42

factor beyond simply potential

30:45

effects on blood pressure.

30:47

So yeah, like I'm

30:49

sort of in the middle of those

30:51

two perspectives right now. Like it's

30:53

something that to have a strong

30:55

take, I feel like I would need to dig much

30:58

deeper into the research than I have

31:00

to this point had time to dig. Have

31:03

you changed your sodium intake or your

31:06

personal habits? No.

31:10

Yeah, I'm not concerned enough

31:13

to modify my own salt intake. But

31:17

that may be one of the reasons, like just being completely

31:19

transparent. That may be one of the reasons I haven't

31:21

dug into this more because I

31:24

like salty food and I don't

31:26

want to be worried every

31:28

time I eat salty food. So yeah,

31:30

whatever. I don't know. Yeah. But

31:33

yeah, just in general, like given

31:35

the public health guidelines related to sodium,

31:38

like most people do over consume it. So

31:41

those are the three that

31:45

are where overconsumption is like

31:47

very common. There

31:49

are two nutrients

31:51

here that I suspect a lot

31:53

of listeners would have expected me to

31:56

include on this list that I did not. And

31:58

the first potential. The potentially controversial exclusion

32:01

is omega-6s. And

32:05

the reason I say that's potentially controversial

32:08

is there's currently

32:10

a lot of panic about seed oils. And

32:15

omega-6 fats, like linoleic acid

32:17

in particular, is the dominant

32:19

fat in seed oils. And

32:23

this is also not the episode to

32:25

get super, super into

32:27

seed oils. But

32:29

yeah, so the reasons that people are concerned

32:33

about it is I think that there's

32:36

the general perception that

32:40

high intake of omega-6 fats directly

32:43

causes an increase in inflammation, which

32:46

is not necessarily the case. It's

32:49

considerably more complex than that. And

32:53

I think the way, so a

32:56

lot of research, like back in the

32:58

day, maybe like 10, 15 years ago, was

33:01

looking at omega-3 to omega-6

33:03

intake ratios and finding a higher

33:06

ratio of omega-6 to omega-3

33:08

intake was associated with

33:10

higher levels of inflammation. And

33:13

I think the way that that research is kind

33:16

of leaning now is that when

33:19

you're dealing with ratios, you have both a numerator

33:21

and a denominator. Like you're

33:24

dealing with two numbers. So

33:26

you could have a high omega-6 to omega-3

33:28

ratio if you're consuming a lot of omega-6s or

33:31

if you're just not consuming that many omega-3s. And

33:34

I think the way that things tend to be leaning

33:36

now is that under-consuming

33:39

omega-3s was

33:42

the primary driver of those research

33:44

findings. Like if you consume a lot of

33:46

omega-6s but also a lot of omega-3s,

33:49

that's fine. And

33:51

if you don't consume that many omega-6s but you

33:53

also don't consume many omega-3s, that's

33:56

also not great.

33:59

So yeah.

33:59

That's the first thing. The

34:03

reasons that people are concerned related

34:05

to inflammation, I think, was largely

34:07

based on the omega-6 to omega-3

34:10

ratio stuff. It's

34:13

just an area where the bulk

34:15

of the research kind of looks

34:18

at it with a more updated, nuanced

34:20

lens, where it seems to be more about

34:23

total omega-3 intake instead of that ratio.

34:26

And then the other

34:29

thing is there are some kind of, there

34:33

are some animal studies that look very scary

34:37

and there are some small cohort studies

34:40

that some people get concerned

34:42

about. But when you zoom out and

34:45

look at just the totality

34:47

of the human research, there

34:50

are a lot of people consuming a lot of omega-6s

34:52

out there and when we look to

34:54

see what their actual chronic disease

34:57

burden looks like or what their mortality outcomes

34:59

look like, generally

35:02

consuming a lot of omega-6s are

35:05

associated with pretty neutral effects on

35:08

health and mortality outcomes. Or in

35:12

the case of some outcomes, like maybe small

35:14

positive effects, there was a

35:16

Cochran review on that in 2018 which

35:19

will be linked in the show notes. And like I said,

35:22

this really isn't the episode to get super,

35:24

super in depth on this. But

35:27

if you would like

35:29

a very in-depth treatment on

35:32

the kind of like con case

35:35

for, if like

35:37

the pro cases, omega-6s are

35:40

dangerous and people over consume seed oils

35:42

and that's killing everyone. The

35:44

like, the anti-case for

35:47

that, there's a

35:49

really good article on thenutrivor.com

35:52

about this and

35:55

I follow that guy on Twitter, Nick Hebert,

35:58

and he has been. One just like,

36:02

so a lot of the anti-seed oil

36:05

folks are just like, hmm, it's

36:07

crazy. No one will debate us

36:09

on this topic from kind of the

36:11

establishment, the people that hold the view that

36:14

seed oils are fine. He

36:16

responds to all of them. I

36:19

discovered him because I

36:22

followed some of those quacks that are super

36:24

anti-seed oil. He just

36:27

kept popping up in the responses. I was like,

36:29

oh, this guy seems like really annoying

36:31

to people that I find very

36:33

annoying. So like, let me just follow him,

36:36

like see what he's about. And

36:38

yeah, so he, everyone who's like, oh, why will

36:41

no one debate me? He's like, I'll fucking debate you and

36:44

all of them turn him down. Anyway,

36:47

it's just kind of fun. And he has a really good article

36:49

on his website about seed oils that

36:52

will be linked in the show notes. The

36:55

other potentially controversial

36:57

exclusion for nutrients

37:00

that are over-consumed is trans fats. Not

37:04

because just consuming

37:06

a bunch of industrially

37:09

produced trans fats is good, but

37:11

because most people don't actually consume like

37:13

many, if any industrially

37:16

produced trans fats anymore. This

37:19

was a fun thing I learned when I

37:21

was just like doing reading

37:24

for the micronutrient

37:26

pages in the macro factor knowledge base.

37:31

Most industrialized countries have

37:33

completely phased out trans fats

37:36

in foods. So

37:39

like food manufacturers

37:42

used to like trans fats because they were cheap to

37:44

produce and they increased the shelf stability

37:46

of foods. And they also like just

37:49

had, they improved like texture and

37:51

mouth feel and whatnot. There's

37:53

some research showing that like, yeah, they're not good. They

37:55

increase inflammation, they increase heart disease

37:57

risk, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And

38:00

for once, the United States actually

38:03

led the charge on a consumer

38:05

protection issue and

38:08

passed legislation, I think in like 2017, 2018, saying

38:10

they need to be phased out. And

38:13

they did, I think, grant an

38:15

extension. I think they were supposed to be phased

38:18

out in 2020, but they ended up being phased

38:20

out in 2021. They

38:22

were like, we need the CRISCO during COVID. I

38:24

guess so. No, I think it

38:26

was just like, yeah, supply chains are fucked up,

38:28

whatever. We'll give you a bit more leniency.

38:32

But yeah, the EU followed suit soon

38:34

thereafter, Canada,

38:36

and I think Australia did

38:39

as well and

38:42

wrapped up their phase out like earlier

38:44

this year.

38:46

So yeah, like trans fats just like aren't really

38:49

much of a thing anymore in most products.

38:53

Now there is a new like

38:56

industrial process that has replaced

38:58

the process of partial hydrogenation which

39:00

was what made the trans fats before, which

39:04

is I think biochemically quite interesting.

39:06

It's called inter esterification. So

39:09

basically,

39:11

instead of making solid

39:13

fats with a relatively lower saturated

39:16

fat, like that

39:18

was another benefit of trans fats. So

39:21

trans fats are technically unsaturated

39:24

fats, like they're structurally

39:26

and functionally similar to saturated fats. But

39:30

they are like, they

39:32

must be unsaturated. Like

39:37

that's like definitionally what it means. Like you

39:39

have a

39:42

trans configuration of a double bond instead of

39:44

a cis configuration of a double bond. They're

39:47

unsaturated fats like consumers had been taught

39:49

to be fearful of saturated fats. So

39:52

they gave food manufacturers like a way

39:55

to put fats in foods that

39:58

had the same like functional out there. comes

40:00

as saturated fats like improved shelf stability

40:02

blah blah blah whatever but consumers

40:05

wouldn't see saturated fat on the food label

40:07

because they weren't saturated

40:10

so inter esterification is like

40:12

a new process that food manufacturers are

40:14

using to accomplish the same thing where

40:18

essentially like so triglycerides

40:20

which is how most fats are kind of

40:22

like stored functionally is

40:25

a glycerol backbone with three fatty

40:28

acids attached to it and

40:30

if you have I think one

40:33

saturated fat in the middle

40:35

of that glycerol backbone and then two

40:37

unsaturated fats like one on either side

40:40

so like within

40:42

the triglyceride you do have a saturated

40:45

fat molecule in it it'll

40:47

still wind up being solid at room temperature

40:50

and like behaving as if it was a saturated

40:52

fat even though like two thirds

40:55

of the actual fatty acids are unsaturated

40:58

so that's that's the process they're using now

41:01

to kind of create the trans

41:03

fat like effect without

41:05

trans fats

41:07

and like

41:08

I don't know like it biochemically

41:10

I can't think of a reason that it would

41:12

be scary and bad

41:14

like trans fats were but who

41:16

knows like in 10 years we might find out yeah

41:18

that's bad too yeah but yeah so

41:21

that that's how they were able to phase

41:23

out trans fats while still

41:25

having like another relatively cheap like

41:28

functional way of accomplishing the same thing

41:30

so foods that previously had

41:32

trans fats if you're like I think I think

41:34

these fuckers are lying like like Crisco

41:37

still seems like Crisco yeah it

41:39

must still have trans fats in it like no

41:41

like now it's just using interest erified

41:43

fat yeah I thought

41:46

that was cool

41:47

you still see like I still see trans

41:49

fats on some food labels

41:51

a very small amount like 0.5

41:56

grams or something why is that is

41:58

it yogurt I'm

42:01

trying to think of things you eat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:03

Dairy stuff. So there

42:06

are naturally occurring trans fats

42:10

that are mostly... Hmm,

42:13

I don't want to overstate it. I think

42:15

they entirely come from ruminants, but

42:17

it might just be mostly from ruminants. But

42:21

yeah, so in

42:23

the fermentation process, like

42:25

in the kind guts of ruminants

42:28

like cattle, sheep, goats, whatever, some

42:30

of those bacteria create some

42:33

trans fats that

42:36

the research currently suggests they're

42:38

fine, they're not... The primary

42:41

trans fat... Oh man, I'm

42:43

doing this from memory. I might be about to fuck it up.

42:46

But the primary trans fat that was industrially

42:48

produced and used in a lot of stuff was

42:50

called, I think, oleic acid,

42:53

which was basically the trans version

42:56

of the cis fat oleic

42:58

acid, which is the primary monounsaturated

43:00

fat in olive oil. And

43:03

so when you look at the epidemiological research

43:07

related to intake of

43:09

ruminant trans fats versus oleic

43:11

acid in the industrially produced trans

43:13

fats, you don't see the

43:15

same associations with heart disease

43:18

from high intake of dairy products

43:20

or beef products or whatever. The foods

43:22

that do have a little bit of those naturally occurring

43:25

trans fats in them. But

43:28

yeah, so dairy hasn't been outlawed.

43:31

The industrially produced trans

43:33

fats are what has been done

43:36

away with. But

43:38

yeah, dairy products do have some trans

43:40

fats in them, but they're biochemically

43:43

different. And

43:46

so far, the research doesn't suggest that they

43:48

have the same deleterious health effects.

43:51

That's helpful to know. So that if you see

43:53

that on a label, you're not like, oh

43:55

no. Yes. This

43:57

company is breaking the law.

43:58

Yeah. Yeah. just a dairy

44:00

product. Yeah.

44:03

Okay so those

44:05

are the nutrients that are overconsumed

44:08

and the nutrients that aren't probably

44:10

overconsumed but a lot of people think they still

44:13

are. So now let's get into

44:15

the nutrients that are often

44:18

underconsumed and just as

44:20

kind of a note to frame

44:22

this, these

44:25

are based on based on research looking

44:28

at intakes relative to typically

44:31

like EARs. So like how many

44:35

people are consuming less of a nutrient than

44:38

the average need for the nutrient in that

44:40

population. And

44:43

these are all nutrients that at least 20%

44:45

of people seem to have

44:47

insufficient intake of. Again insufficient

44:50

not deficient big difference but

44:53

also don't be

44:56

like that spooked by it because

44:59

if you refer back to the last episode due

45:01

to the way that like EARs work it

45:04

is entirely possible for 20% of

45:07

people to consume less of a nutrient

45:09

than the EAR but all individuals

45:11

to actually still be consuming as much

45:13

as they need because kind of definitionally

45:16

about half of people can

45:18

consume less than the EAR and that is sufficient

45:20

for them. So

45:23

yeah like I just wanted to make that

45:25

point like I don't

45:27

want to overmake that point because it is also

45:29

like extremely likely that

45:31

a lot of people do actually

45:34

have like insufficient intake of these

45:37

but yeah

45:39

all of which is to say these

45:41

are the nutrients that people probably could

45:43

stand to consume a bit more of but

45:46

when you hear like oh there are like

45:50

how long is this like 12-13 nutrients

45:52

that like at least 20% of people

45:54

under consume a that

45:57

doesn't mean 20% of people are deficient in

46:00

them. And B, that doesn't even mean

46:02

that 20% of people aren't consuming as

46:04

much as they need. And

46:07

it certainly doesn't mean that you are deficient

46:10

or even insufficient in all of these things,

46:12

just kind of standard caveats on the

46:14

front end. But these are the ones that

46:17

if you wanted to track your micronutrient

46:21

intake in an app, like for example,

46:23

maybe Macro Factor, who knows, they

46:26

would be good ones to keep an eye on. The

46:29

basic problem we're trying to solve here is

46:32

there are, in

46:34

apps with full robust micronutrient

46:36

reporting, there are close to 60 nutrients

46:39

that you could keep an eye on, which is a long

46:46

list. Yeah. There's no way

46:48

you can focus on all of those.

46:51

It would be a very poor use of time to closely

46:53

monitor your intake for all of these every

46:56

day. Yeah. And

46:58

so we're trying to kind of help cut it down to

47:00

a slightly shorter list of if you want

47:03

to track your micronutrients and

47:05

focus on them, these might be the ones

47:08

worth paying like a little bit closer attention

47:10

to, just to kind of help narrow

47:12

that focus. Yeah. So how

47:15

I'm going to go through these is just

47:17

to give the nutrients and

47:19

then to just give some good

47:20

sources of that nutrient.

47:23

And again, the

47:25

resource that Greg put together for the Macro

47:28

Factor Knowledge Base has all of this information

47:30

for each nutrient. So

47:33

that's a good thing to reference back

47:35

to if you don't want to be like furiously

47:38

taking notes about foods

47:40

for each of these nutrients. Let's

47:42

start with fiber. I feel like that's

47:45

one of the ones that we hear about

47:47

the most. A lot of people want to track fiber

47:49

alongside the

47:51

main macronutrients. So

47:53

actually, can I just make one more tiny note?

47:56

Of course. Okay. So

47:58

these lists of like good food. sources

48:00

for each of these nutrients. Where that came

48:02

from is in

48:05

Macro Factor, the main source

48:08

we have for foods with

48:10

full robust micronutrient reporting

48:13

is the NCCDB,

48:16

which is a research-grade

48:19

food database maintained by

48:21

the University of Minnesota,

48:23

I believe. I think that's right. Yeah, it's kind

48:27

of like the gold standard database for

48:30

foods with full micronutrient reporting. And

48:33

so where this came from is we have the

48:35

CSV file for that. And

48:39

A, don't ask me to share it with you, I will

48:41

not. We are contractually

48:44

not allowed to. But

48:46

B, what I did is essentially

48:48

just normalize

48:51

everything per hundred calories and

48:53

then just sorted the

48:56

CSV by these.

48:58

Yeah, that would be by descending. So

49:01

it's just kind of like, it's

49:03

not every food in existence, but it's most

49:06

whole foods that exist. And it's just

49:08

kind of like the foods that have

49:10

the highest density of these nutrients

49:13

per hundred calories of total intake.

49:15

So if for instance you're trying to increase

49:18

your intake of one of these, but you don't want

49:21

to just consume like a

49:23

ton of calories in the process, like for

49:26

instance, fatty beef has some

49:28

zinc in it and you can get

49:31

plenty of zinc intake from beef. But

49:33

yeah, you might have to consume like 700 calories

49:36

of beef or whatever, whereas there are foods

49:38

that are considerably

49:40

more energy

49:43

sparse that have higher densities

49:46

of this. And that's important

49:48

context to give mostly

49:50

because as you're listening to this, you

49:52

will notice that

49:54

things like nuts and seeds, which

49:57

are really good sources of a lot of of

50:00

micronutrients won't show up on

50:02

these lists. And that's just because

50:04

they're also relatively energy dense.

50:08

So yeah,

50:10

just to note the methodology,

50:13

because if there are some foods that are excluded

50:16

that you would expect, like, oh, hey, I know such

50:18

and such is a good source of vitamin E. Why was it not

50:20

on the list? It's typically

50:22

because it's just relatively energy dense.

50:25

And so this is both micronutrient

50:28

density, but also energy sparsity.

50:30

Those are the two things that are accounted

50:33

for with the methodology I used.

50:35

Yeah, that's important to note.

50:37

OK, so for fiber, per 100

50:39

calories, some

50:41

of the best sources of dietary

50:43

fiber are artichoke,

50:46

which has 20.9 grams per 100 calories, which

50:49

is a lot. That's a ton. Rhubarb

50:52

has 20 grams. Turnip

50:54

greens, 17 and 1.5. And

50:57

then just a couple more that

51:00

are below that, but above 10 grams

51:02

per 100 calories. Sauerkraut, yikama,

51:05

banana peppers, raspberries

51:08

and blackberries, lettuce,

51:09

and collard greens. Hell yeah.

51:12

So good stuff for some vegetables.

51:15

Omega 3s is the next one, in

51:17

particular, EPA and DHA. So

51:20

you mentioned

51:21

omega 3s just a minute ago when we were talking

51:23

about omega 6s.

51:24

But some good sources of omega 3s are

51:28

caviar and other fish eggs and seal

51:30

fat. Those are at the top of the list with

51:32

more than two grams of combined EPA and

51:34

DHA per 100 calories. But

51:37

that's not exactly super

51:39

actionable for a lot of people. I don't know anyone

51:42

who's like, oh yeah, I'll just consume more seal

51:44

fat, easy. So a fun thing

51:46

to note as I was putting together

51:49

the micronutrient content for the Knowledge

51:51

Base, I edited most of these out,

51:55

but for a lot of nutrients, the

51:58

best sources were... either

52:00

the meat or fat from bearded

52:03

seals or like

52:06

whale meat or whale blubber, which

52:09

like those

52:11

aren't like accessible nutrients for most people.

52:14

Like especially for like when

52:16

I was going through the individual amino acids,

52:19

dude like bearded

52:22

seal and like whale meat are

52:24

like super good sources

52:27

of most essential amino acids but I also

52:29

think they're illegal to hunt. So like I'm

52:31

not sure why they were in the database in the first

52:33

place, but yeah,

52:35

they seem to be nutrient powerhouses,

52:38

which was interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

52:41

Cod

52:41

liver oil is a classic

52:44

EPA and DHA powerhouse. But

52:46

in terms of more readily accessible

52:47

foods, it's

52:50

just a lot of seafood. So salmon, mackerel,

52:52

sardines, anchovies,

52:54

Pacific oysters, fatty

52:57

tuna are all particularly

52:59

high in EPA and DHA with 0.8 to 1.3

53:02

grams of combined EPA

53:04

and

53:06

DHA per 100 calories. Yeah.

53:09

Just most like cold water fatty fish. Yeah.

53:12

Yeah.

53:13

Okay. We're going to go through some vitamins

53:15

next. So vitamin

53:17

A, liver has by far the highest vitamin

53:20

A concentrations as we talked

53:22

a little bit about last episode Greg

53:25

went on his rant about bears, but

53:27

fatty fish, eel, yogurt and dairy

53:29

products are also great sources of vitamin

53:32

A. Vegan sources of vitamin

53:34

A are generally rich in carotenoids.

53:37

That's how you say that, right? Yeah. Awesome.

53:40

Rather than retinol. So that's like lettuces,

53:42

peppers, sweet potatoes,

53:45

spinach and other leafy greens, pumpkin

53:47

and

53:48

carrots.

53:50

Vitamin B6. Peppers,

53:53

liver, cabbage, watercress.

53:55

Watercress is one that

53:56

showed up a lot in your research. Like

53:58

that is like.

53:59

I don't like the term superfood,

54:00

but if we wanna

54:03

be calling out superfoods, it's watercress.

54:05

Yeah, I also

54:07

removed it from some of the lists for some

54:10

of the nutrients. Yeah, because

54:11

you're just like, God damn it, it's for all of them. Well,

54:13

yeah, I was

54:13

like, if people are looking through this, I don't

54:15

want them to think that I'm telling

54:17

them they need to eat this little microgreen,

54:20

like I'm some little fancy boy. You're sponsored

54:22

by Big Watercress. Yeah, but Watercress

54:24

is astoundingly nutrient

54:27

dense. But again, this

54:29

is per 100 calories and it's also very energy

54:32

sparse. Right. So that's relevant.

54:34

Yeah, because it's just a green. Yeah.

54:37

So other basics,

54:37

zucchini,

54:39

other leafy greens, okra, garlic,

54:42

tuna, cauliflower, mushrooms, turkey

54:45

and salmon.

54:47

Next up is folate. So

54:50

great sources of folate include green

54:52

leafies. Once again, get your green

54:54

leafies, spinach,

54:55

lettuce, turnip greens, arugula,

54:57

collards, mustard greens, asparagus,

55:02

yeast products,

55:04

Chinese cabbage, specifically Chinese

55:06

cabbage, kelp and

55:08

seaweed, nori.

55:10

So nori is another one that showed up a

55:12

lot for you, right? Yes. That's another

55:14

quote, superfood. Yeah, yeah,

55:17

it showed up all the time. Yeah,

55:20

I mean, it's the bottom, I

55:22

mean, seaweeds

55:25

and algaes are kind of like the

55:27

base of the marine ecosystem. We

55:31

talked about bioaccumulation in the last

55:33

episode as well and when

55:36

people say like, ah, seafood is good for

55:39

you generally, folks who aren't super informed

55:42

about nutrition, oftentimes do

55:44

generally have the idea that seafood

55:46

is good. Right. And

55:49

a lot of that just has to do with the fact that the

55:52

base of the marine ecosystem, like

55:54

it's mostly seaweeds and algaes, whereas

55:57

the base of the terrestrial ecosystem

56:00

to be like leaves and grasses. Yeah. And

56:04

when you compare the two, like seaweeds

56:06

and algaes are just like generally

56:08

more nutrient dense than like leaves and grasses

56:10

are. Yeah. But yeah, it's good stuff. Should

56:13

start

56:13

feeding all of the land mammals

56:16

or like the land animals

56:17

that we eat watercress. See what

56:19

happens. Maybe. I don't

56:22

think that would be very like economically

56:25

efficient. I know.

56:28

Maybe an experiment someone can run if they just

56:30

have like

56:31

a couple farm

56:32

animals they keep. That would be fun.

56:34

Yeah. A

56:36

couple more for folate I'll give here. Liver,

56:39

once again, okra, peppers, beets and

56:41

cauliflower. Vitamin

56:45

C. I

56:45

don't know

56:48

what type of cherries are these,

56:50

I would pronounce that

56:52

acerola or acerola.

56:54

How

56:54

do you know how that's different than

56:57

regular cherries? Is that what

56:59

regular cherries are? Let's

57:02

see. No, no, they aren't. They aren't. They

57:07

are, I think not actually even

57:09

cherries. Oh, wow. I'm glad

57:11

I asked. I could be wrong. Yes,

57:13

yes. It's a fruit similar to a cherry

57:16

that

57:16

is not botanically

57:18

speaking actually a cherry, but

57:21

they're sometimes referred to as Barbados

57:23

cherries or West Indian cherries.

57:27

Yeah, I think they're just like little fruits that

57:29

grow in what

57:35

ocean is that? The Caribbean. Like

57:38

islands in the Caribbean. But

57:40

yeah, they were the most

57:42

vitamin C dense food

57:45

in the database.

57:47

All right. So those

57:50

peppers, watercress, again,

57:53

guava, most berries high

57:56

in vitamin C, citrus

57:58

fruits, kiwis,

57:59

and cruciferous vegetables, all

58:02

great sources of vitamin C.

58:04

Vitamin D is next.

58:06

Again, this is especially important for people

58:09

with darker skin and higher latitudes,

58:11

which is something we've discussed on the

58:13

prior episodes.

58:15

Good sources of vitamin D include mushrooms,

58:17

fatty fish, dairy products,

58:20

many of which

58:20

are also fortified with vitamin D. Yeah,

58:22

like, the dairy itself isn't

58:25

particularly rich in vitamin D, but just in terms

58:27

of like, yeah, foods you would buy in the store,

58:29

most dairy products are vitamin D-enriched,

58:32

so they become good sources

58:34

of vitamin D. Nice.

58:36

Eggs, plant-based dairy

58:39

replacements that have also been

58:41

fortified with vitamin D. Same reason,

58:43

yeah. Yeah, yeah. And pork products.

58:46

Most food sources of vitamin D are

58:48

animal products, so many

58:50

vegans, especially vegans who

58:52

don't consume a lot of mushrooms,

58:53

benefit from vitamin D supplementation.

58:56

Yeah, mushrooms also come

58:58

in clutch. Like, you've been calling some stuff

59:01

out as we go along.

59:04

But yeah, like, mushrooms are

59:07

full of a lot of just like, weird nutrients that

59:09

people often don't think about. And

59:12

particularly if you don't consume animal products,

59:16

mushrooms tend to have

59:18

a lot of the stuff that might be more

59:21

challenging to consume in a

59:23

vegan diet.

59:25

Mushrooms are great.

59:26

If you're vegan and you're not eating mushrooms, that's

59:28

sad. Or if you're an omnivore

59:30

and you're not eating mushrooms. Also sad. They're delicious. Yeah.

59:32

And so versatile.

59:34

And another

59:35

thing I'll add, if you're not a good cook,

59:38

mushrooms are a great thing to cook

59:40

to kind of get your feet wet, because

59:43

it's so hard to fuck up mushrooms. Because

59:45

like, with

59:48

animal products, for instance, like meat, if

59:50

you overcook it, it just like, gets really dry

59:53

and it's disgusting. Vegetables,

59:55

you overcook them, they get like, really mushy.

59:58

Also kind of disgusting. Mushrooms

1:00:01

since like like due

1:00:03

to the way that like their protein structure

1:00:05

is If

1:00:07

you cooked them for like days eventually

1:00:10

it would break down and they'd go mushy But

1:00:14

it's very hard to overcook them and

1:00:16

dry them out like meat and it's it's

1:00:18

also like tremendously difficult

1:00:20

to overcook them and make them go mushy like

1:00:23

they They just have like a very robust

1:00:25

protein structure that is extremely

1:00:28

resilient to undercooking

1:00:30

overcooking whatever So yeah,

1:00:32

like they're they're a good food to like just

1:00:35

practice cooking Because

1:00:37

you have you have so much leeway like

1:00:39

it's so hard to fuck up mushrooms Yeah,

1:00:42

I feel like they're really good at absorbing flavor too,

1:00:44

which is another reason they would be good to practice

1:00:46

cooking Yeah, like they're little sponges. Yeah,

1:00:48

see how flavor combinations were. Yeah

1:00:51

Okay, next one

1:00:53

is vitamin E though.

1:00:56

Greg says he's not totally sold on that one So we're

1:00:58

gonna kick it over to him in just a second But some

1:01:00

good sources of vitamin E are

1:01:02

nuts seeds peppers green

1:01:05

leaf green leafy vegetables tomatoes

1:01:07

and wheat germ

1:01:09

Many oils are also fortified with

1:01:11

vitamin E to prevent degradation

1:01:13

during cooking. Yes. So

1:01:16

like you mentioned I am skeptical

1:01:18

about vitamin E Thank

1:01:21

you. Actually to one of the

1:01:23

macro factor developers Corey for bringing

1:01:26

this to my attention because

1:01:28

when Like when when

1:01:30

he was working on the micronutrient features

1:01:32

and macro factor and he started

1:01:35

monitoring his intake more closely He

1:01:37

realized that he was like

1:01:40

most people Under consuming

1:01:42

vitamin E like given the the

1:01:45

intake targets that public health bodies proposed

1:01:48

for vitamin E and he also

1:01:50

looked around he's like It seemed

1:01:52

like none of the foods I or most

1:01:55

people eat are that rich

1:01:57

in vitamin E Like the things you

1:01:59

listed here like none nuts, seeds, peppers, green leafies,

1:02:01

whatever, they do have some vitamin E

1:02:03

in them, but the fact that

1:02:05

nuts and seeds are at the top, in

1:02:08

spite of being quite energy dense, should

1:02:10

suggest that it's pretty difficult to consume

1:02:13

a lot of vitamin E in your diet without

1:02:15

just eating 1,400 calories of nuts a

1:02:17

day, which most people aren't doing. So

1:02:21

it's like, hey, what gives? And

1:02:24

so, yeah, he asked me

1:02:26

about that. I'm like, oh, that's an interesting

1:02:28

question. I'll look into it more. And

1:02:31

I came across a publication from

1:02:33

the EFSA, which is

1:02:35

like the European body that

1:02:38

sets their micronutrient targets, the European

1:02:40

Food and Safety Authority. And

1:02:44

here is a quote

1:02:47

from their publication where

1:02:49

they set

1:02:52

their AIs for vitamin E. So

1:02:56

here's the quote. The classification of

1:02:58

vitamin E as an essential nutrient is

1:03:00

based on animal studies and primary and secondary

1:03:03

alpha tocopherol deficiency in humans.

1:03:05

The need for alpha tocopherol, which is like the

1:03:08

primary source, like this is not

1:03:10

from the quote anymore. Alpha tocopherol

1:03:12

is kind of like the scientific name for,

1:03:16

there are like multiple chemical

1:03:18

compounds that fall under the umbrella of vitamin

1:03:21

E, but like alpha tocopherol is like the

1:03:23

main one. Okay. Just so people

1:03:25

listening will know what they're talking about. The

1:03:27

need for alpha tocopherol in order to

1:03:29

prevent fetal reabsorption in pregnant

1:03:32

rats fed large containing diets

1:03:34

is the origin of the discovery of the vitamin.

1:03:37

The chemical name tocopherol derives

1:03:40

from its essentiality for

1:03:43

normal reproduction in animals, even

1:03:46

though the essentiality for this function has

1:03:48

never been demonstrated in humans. Symptomatic

1:03:51

alpha tocopherol deficiency

1:03:53

in individuals without any disease and who

1:03:55

consume diets low in alpha tocopherol

1:03:58

has never been reported.

1:03:59

So here's my

1:04:02

very hot, here's maybe my hottest

1:04:04

micronutrient cake. Oh wow. I kind

1:04:06

of think that vitamin E should be considered a

1:04:08

conditionally essential nutrient. Yeah. So

1:04:11

yeah, like basically to break that

1:04:14

down and just provide a little more context, like

1:04:17

it is definitely like something

1:04:19

you need. So like people

1:04:21

who have like genetic

1:04:23

conditions that create

1:04:26

like errors in vitamin E metabolism or

1:04:28

people who have like intestinal disorders

1:04:32

or like conditions that inhibit

1:04:34

or completely prevent the absorption of vitamin

1:04:36

E do suffer health consequences

1:04:39

as a result of like

1:04:42

not having enough vitamin E in their

1:04:44

body. But for people who are

1:04:46

generally healthy, don't have those genetic conditions

1:04:49

that interfere with vitamin E metabolism, don't

1:04:51

have any like a gastrointestinal issues

1:04:54

that prevent the absorption of vitamin E. Even

1:04:58

when people like consume extremely

1:05:01

low amounts of vitamin E in their diet,

1:05:03

like they seem fine.

1:05:07

So yeah, it seems like most people don't need to

1:05:09

worry about vitamin E intake. In

1:05:12

spite of the fact that like as alluded

1:05:14

to at the start of the story, the like

1:05:17

AI, like

1:05:19

the adequate intake value for vitamin

1:05:21

E is quite high.

1:05:24

So like I'm not totally sure where that disconnect

1:05:27

comes from,

1:05:28

but

1:05:29

basically like vitamin E is on the

1:05:31

list of nutrients that according

1:05:34

to the intake targets that public health bodies propose,

1:05:36

it seems like the vast majority of people under

1:05:38

consume. But I'm actually not so

1:05:41

sure that most or like hardly

1:05:43

anyone actually under consumes it. Cause like,

1:05:46

It sounds

1:05:46

like it might not even be essential. No,

1:05:49

like

1:05:49

it is essential. Like if you fed

1:05:51

someone a completely vitamin E

1:05:54

deficient diet, like no vitamin

1:05:56

E whatsoever, like bad things would happen. But

1:05:58

like there's a little bit of vitamin E. and like a lot

1:06:01

of stuff. It seems like if you consume a

1:06:03

little bit of vitamin E, like you're fine.

1:06:06

Anyway, so yeah, like it

1:06:09

is on this list because I applied the same methodology

1:06:11

to everything. Like there's research

1:06:14

on like rates of insufficient

1:06:16

consumption of various essential nutrients

1:06:18

and like vitamin E shows up on those lists, but

1:06:21

I just wanted to voice my skepticism

1:06:23

about whether it should be on that

1:06:25

list and whether it should even be considered like

1:06:27

an essential nutrient for everyone in the first place.

1:06:30

Most people don't need to worry about that. That's

1:06:32

what I was saying when I said not essential.

1:06:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay,

1:06:37

let's move on to the next vitamin, which is vitamin

1:06:41

K, sometimes referred to as K1 and K2. Those

1:06:45

are the two types. They have similar

1:06:47

biological functions. Green leafy

1:06:49

vegetables are by far the

1:06:52

best source of vitamin

1:06:54

K1 and some

1:06:56

fermented foods, most notably natto,

1:06:59

which is a Japanese fermented soybean

1:07:01

product. Those

1:07:04

fermented

1:07:04

foods are the best sources of vitamin K2.

1:07:07

Next up is choline. So

1:07:10

egg yolks, fish, liver,

1:07:13

and shellfish are all particularly

1:07:15

good sources of choline. Legumes

1:07:18

in general and soybeans in particular

1:07:20

are good vegan sources of choline.

1:07:24

So those are our vitamins.

1:07:26

And now we are on to minerals. First

1:07:29

up is magnesium. Good sources of magnesium

1:07:31

include green leafy vegetables like chard

1:07:33

and spinach, rhubarb, okra,

1:07:36

soy products, whole grain products, and

1:07:39

many nuts and

1:07:39

seeds.

1:07:41

Potassium is next. So

1:07:44

once again, green leafy vegetables, eat

1:07:46

your green leafies. Mushrooms, root

1:07:48

vegetables like potatoes and peeps. Tomatoes,

1:07:52

various squashes, including pumpkin,

1:07:54

summer squash, acorn squash, and zucchini.

1:07:57

Asparagus, peppers, okra,

1:07:59

cruciferous vegetables, beans,

1:08:02

and most fruits

1:08:03

are great sources of potassium. That's a lot of

1:08:05

things for potassium. Yeah, like it's basically

1:08:08

most plants. Yeah, just like most plant products.

1:08:11

Yeah.

1:08:11

With the exception

1:08:13

of nuts, seeds, and grains, most plant

1:08:15

products are pretty good sources of potassium.

1:08:19

And last up is zinc.

1:08:22

So shellfish, mushrooms, liver,

1:08:25

dried seaweed once again, nori, beef, green

1:08:30

leafy vegetables, whole grain products,

1:08:33

particularly the bran, and some

1:08:36

seeds, all good sources of zinc.

1:08:38

Absolutely.

1:08:39

And so that was our second category

1:08:42

of things that are often under-consumed.

1:08:46

Now we're moving on to our third. The

1:08:48

last category is vegans,

1:08:51

the nutrients that vegans in particular

1:08:53

may want to pay close attention to. Yes.

1:08:56

So just at the start of this, I

1:08:58

will acknowledge that we

1:09:00

on this podcast are both omnivores. And

1:09:03

I know a lot of vegans

1:09:06

are sensitive to omnivores

1:09:10

who are trying

1:09:12

to be well-meaning, lecturing

1:09:14

them about, like, don't go

1:09:16

vegan, like, it's so hard to consume

1:09:18

a nutritionally complete diet. Where's

1:09:21

the protein coming from? Blah, blah, blah, whatever.

1:09:25

We're not on that tip. Like,

1:09:28

we have absolutely no

1:09:30

issue with people being vegan, and

1:09:32

certainly not trying to harangue anyone

1:09:35

about that. But

1:09:37

it is also true that

1:09:39

certain nutrients do predominantly

1:09:43

come from animal products. And

1:09:45

so, like, yeah, it's absolutely

1:09:48

possible to consume

1:09:50

a very healthy and nutritionally complete

1:09:53

vegan diet. But, like, certain nutrients, it

1:09:55

might take a little bit more planning. And

1:09:58

when you look at the research... on

1:10:02

rates of insufficient intake for particular

1:10:04

nutrients. There are some where rates of insufficient

1:10:06

intake are quite a bit higher for

1:10:08

vegans than for omnivores. So

1:10:11

yeah, that's what we're gonna talk about. So

1:10:14

the first is EPA

1:10:17

and DHA, like the two kind of most

1:10:19

important omega-3s. Because

1:10:22

again, like most of the best sources of

1:10:24

EPA and DHA are like

1:10:27

cold water, fatty fish. But

1:10:30

if you're not going to consume them and

1:10:33

you also don't want to consume

1:10:35

fish oil because you're very strict

1:10:37

about your veganism, totally understandable,

1:10:40

it's probably not a bad idea to

1:10:42

look into an algae oil supplement.

1:10:45

Again, going back to the idea of bioaccumulation,

1:10:48

most of the omega-3s that would show up in a

1:10:50

salmon in the first place did start

1:10:52

in an algae. So

1:10:54

yeah, it's I think a little bit less

1:10:57

efficient to produce algae

1:10:59

oil, and therefore it's a little bit more expensive

1:11:02

than fish oil would be. It contains

1:11:04

the same EPA and DHA, probably

1:11:07

a decent thing to look into. The

1:11:12

next one, which I'm sure

1:11:14

some eyes will be rolling when I mention this, I'm

1:11:16

not going to harp on it, is

1:11:19

maybe some individual essential

1:11:21

amino acids. Although I will note,

1:11:25

the vast majority of the time, this

1:11:27

is not something most vegans

1:11:29

need to worry about. If you

1:11:31

consume a varied diet or if you

1:11:34

consume plant-based

1:11:36

products that do have

1:11:39

a full essential amino

1:11:41

acid profile, so

1:11:43

if you consume soy, if you consume

1:11:46

plenty of mushrooms,

1:11:48

although I know they're not a plant, fungi,

1:11:51

different kingdom of life, but yeah,

1:11:53

fungi and soy, they have the full

1:11:55

complement of essential amino acids. You

1:11:57

consume some of those, like you're definitely good. Or

1:12:00

if you don't but you consume a generally varied

1:12:02

diet, you will also be good. But

1:12:05

like if you're kind of lazy

1:12:08

about your intake

1:12:10

and like don't have that varied of a diet,

1:12:14

you might be under

1:12:16

consuming some essential amino acids. So like

1:12:19

for instance, if you have an

1:12:21

extremely grain-based diet,

1:12:24

you might wanna keep an eye out for lysine

1:12:26

and maybe like make a point of

1:12:29

consuming some vegan protein sources

1:12:31

that have some lysine in them. Or

1:12:34

if you just have like a

1:12:36

very legume rich diet

1:12:39

and not much else, you

1:12:41

might be like you might have difficulty

1:12:44

consuming enough methionine. But

1:12:46

like that's why the combination of rice

1:12:48

and beans is like the classic poverty

1:12:50

food because rice, like it's

1:12:52

a cereal grain, beans,

1:12:55

legumes obviously, legumes,

1:12:58

not much methionine, plenty of lysine, vice

1:13:00

versa for rice. So

1:13:02

yeah, like if you consume some soy products

1:13:05

or mushrooms or just like don't

1:13:07

only eat like one food, like you probably

1:13:09

don't need to worry about it, but like that is technically

1:13:12

a higher risk with a vegan diet than an

1:13:14

omnivorous diet. Moving

1:13:17

on to vitamins, really the

1:13:20

biggest one to pay mine to is vitamin

1:13:22

B12. Like we

1:13:24

mentioned in the last episode, virtually

1:13:28

all of the B12 that's out there comes from

1:13:30

ruminants. Like

1:13:33

the bacteria in the hindgut of

1:13:35

ruminants are really the only

1:13:37

things that at scale produce

1:13:41

vitamin B12. Essentially

1:13:45

vitamin B12 is just kind of like a normal vitamin

1:13:47

structure with like some cobalt

1:13:49

in the mix. And there just aren't that many

1:13:52

like enzymes on this earth

1:13:54

that can fix cobalt in that vitamin

1:13:56

structure to make vitamin B12. to

1:14:00

the stuff that does do it, like lives

1:14:02

in the guts of cows or like sheep

1:14:04

or goats or whatever. So

1:14:06

yeah, like may not be a terrible idea

1:14:08

to look at a vegan B12 supplement. And

1:14:12

then there are a handful of minerals

1:14:15

that it might be worth paying a bit of attention

1:14:18

to. Those would be calcium,

1:14:21

iron, zinc, and selenium.

1:14:24

And calcium, iron, and zinc are kind of grouped together

1:14:27

with calcium. It's

1:14:32

mostly a matter of the fact that like, there

1:14:34

aren't that many plant-based products

1:14:37

that are rich in calcium and most of

1:14:39

the ones that are. Like

1:14:42

most calcium in the human diet comes from

1:14:44

dairy products. And

1:14:46

most of the plant-based foods that are rich

1:14:48

in calcium are also relatively rich

1:14:51

in oxalates and phytates, which inhibit

1:14:54

the absorption of calcium. Similar

1:14:58

with iron as well. So

1:15:00

most iron-rich plant-based

1:15:02

foods are also rich in oxalates and phytates.

1:15:05

Same thing, like chelates the iron, like

1:15:08

inhibits the absorption. And

1:15:11

just like plant,

1:15:14

like heme-bound iron tends to

1:15:16

be more like orally bioavailable.

1:15:20

And similar with zinc as

1:15:22

well. The

1:15:24

other mineral that's kind of like

1:15:27

affected by the same set

1:15:30

of circumstances where foods

1:15:32

that are rich in it also tend to be rich in phytates

1:15:34

and oxalates is magnesium. But

1:15:37

like vegans don't need to worry about magnesium

1:15:40

and take more than anyone else does.

1:15:42

And the main reason for that is like, basically

1:15:44

every magnesium-rich food is like a plant

1:15:47

food in the first place. Right. But

1:15:50

yeah, so calcium,

1:15:53

iron, zinc might be worth paying attention

1:15:55

to, like a lot of the richest

1:15:58

sources of those minerals. are

1:16:00

animal products and a lot of the plant

1:16:02

products like the nutrients themselves

1:16:05

might be slightly less bioavailable.

1:16:08

And then the last one, for

1:16:10

reasons that I'm totally not, I'm not

1:16:12

totally sure of is selenium. Like most

1:16:15

good sources of selenium are also plant

1:16:17

products but research

1:16:20

on just kind of like blood biomarkers

1:16:24

of micronutrient status tends to find

1:16:26

that vegans have like lower selenium levels than

1:16:29

omnivores do. So

1:16:31

yeah, those are the ones to look out for.

1:16:35

But with most of them, like

1:16:38

mushrooms and soy products

1:16:40

help

1:16:44

a lot and for selenium specifically,

1:16:47

just like eat a couple of Brazil nuts from time

1:16:49

to time, most nuts are very poor

1:16:51

in selenium. Brazil nuts are

1:16:54

like extremely rich in selenium, not

1:16:56

totally sure why, but do you know

1:16:58

what Brazil nuts are, Linz? The big ones.

1:17:01

Yes, I love Brazil nuts.

1:17:03

They're pretty good. I always used to pick those

1:17:05

out of like the nut mixes that my parents would

1:17:07

get. They're good. Yeah,

1:17:10

did they have a shell on or shell off?

1:17:13

Off. Okay, so we

1:17:15

got the shell on nut mix around

1:17:17

like Christmas time every year. Oh my gosh, that's

1:17:20

so much work. Well, so

1:17:24

like we started getting them and I was like a

1:17:26

little guy, like little, little. And

1:17:28

so like I remember, so

1:17:31

I've always been kind of like weirdly

1:17:34

obsessed with like testing how strong

1:17:36

I was. Like it's not a mistake

1:17:38

that I found powerlifting. And so

1:17:40

like we have these little nut crackers and

1:17:43

every year I was like interested to see

1:17:46

like, ooh, can I crack more nuts now than

1:17:48

I could last year? Oh my gosh. Cause like

1:17:50

the easiest ones were like walnuts. Like they're big,

1:17:53

but like they have relatively thin shells. There's

1:17:55

a lot of air in them. So like the crack

1:17:57

walnuts pretty easy, but then like almonds

1:17:59

hurt. more difficult and like Brazil nuts

1:18:02

were kind of my white whale. No. Because

1:18:05

they had the thickest shells that were the hardest to crack. That

1:18:07

makes sense. And I remember, and

1:18:10

I also kind of had it in my mind as a little guy

1:18:12

that like the bigger nuts

1:18:15

were just like more annoying. I think just because

1:18:17

like walnuts, like

1:18:20

they were the biggest other than the Brazil nuts.

1:18:22

Like they were comparable in size. But

1:18:24

like instead of just having like a single

1:18:27

thing in there that you could like grab and like

1:18:30

most of the stuff inside was edible. Like

1:18:34

almonds for instance, like smaller but like you crack

1:18:36

it and the interior is just the almond.

1:18:39

Like the walnut

1:18:41

was kind of like, you know, there

1:18:43

was like really bitter kind of like pith

1:18:46

like holding it together and like the nut

1:18:48

was in like multiple parts. I was like, it's kind

1:18:50

of annoying. Like I assumed the Brazil

1:18:53

nut would be as well. But then when I cracked

1:18:55

it and it was just like a big fucking

1:18:57

guy that was like fully

1:19:01

like filling out the shells. I

1:19:03

was so happy. Yeah. And

1:19:05

it was delicious. And so like they are to this day

1:19:07

my favorite nut. How

1:19:09

old were you when you could crack open

1:19:12

the Brazil nut? I don't remember. I

1:19:14

don't remember. Like so pretty small probably.

1:19:17

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:19:20

I mean, it wasn't like 14. I was probably five

1:19:22

or six. But

1:19:25

yeah, yeah, it was fun.

1:19:26

A lot of snack for less effort

1:19:28

once you can do it. And a

1:19:30

very good source of selenium. Of

1:19:32

course, that was really important too as a five year old.

1:19:34

Yes. No, I had no idea. It

1:19:39

will shock you to work. Okay, let's

1:19:41

move on. So just

1:19:44

kind of zooming out, we provided

1:19:47

this list. But yeah,

1:19:49

if you're going to track your micronutrient intake,

1:19:51

just kind of use this list as a starting point

1:19:55

because what you

1:19:58

as an individual need to pay attention to. attention to will

1:20:00

depend like pretty heavily on your own dietary

1:20:03

patterns. So like those are the

1:20:05

nutrients that like on average

1:20:07

tend to be under consumed in like

1:20:10

more developed nations. But you

1:20:12

know, your your diet may not closely

1:20:15

resemble the average diet of wherever you live.

1:20:19

And so like, for example, if you don't eat a particularly

1:20:22

varied diet, like if you're listening to this, and

1:20:24

you're like an old school bodybuilder, and your

1:20:26

diet is 90% just like chicken breast

1:20:28

rice and broccoli, there

1:20:31

might be a lot of micronutrients that you're consuming.

1:20:34

Yeah. Like, yeah,

1:20:36

they're leaving out a lot of food. Yeah, like

1:20:38

the macros of your diet are good. But like, there

1:20:40

might be some pretty big gaps there. Or

1:20:43

just like if you consume a lot of like quote

1:20:45

unquote, empty calories, like a lot

1:20:47

of soda, a lot of like fried food,

1:20:50

whatever, the list might

1:20:52

be considerably longer for you or

1:20:54

just if you have food choices that

1:20:56

are like way different than the average person,

1:20:58

your list might be the same length but different.

1:21:02

Or like if you tend to consume

1:21:04

a lot of like minimally

1:21:07

processed whole foods ingredients, like

1:21:09

plenty of mushrooms, plenty of fruits, plenty of

1:21:11

vegetables, you might be consuming like

1:21:14

there's a very good chance you're consuming sufficient

1:21:16

amounts of like basically every micronutrient

1:21:18

and there might be like one or two that you

1:21:20

might want to keep an eye on. All

1:21:23

of which is to say just kind of use this list

1:21:25

as a starting point. But what we wanted to do

1:21:27

with it is

1:21:30

of like the 50 or 60 individual

1:21:32

nutrients you could track in an app like Macro

1:21:34

Factor, you don't

1:21:37

want to pay attention to all of them. So like this kind

1:21:39

of is the initial process of

1:21:42

helping you narrow that list down a little bit.

1:21:45

Yeah,

1:21:46

I think that's it for

1:21:48

this part of the episode.

1:21:51

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1:23:18

So this whole series

1:23:22

has been about micronutrients,

1:23:24

and to put a bow on it, I want

1:23:26

to take a step back and recommend not

1:23:29

getting too fixated on micronutrients

1:23:31

and to not fall for the trap of

1:23:34

what I like to term micronutrient reductionism.

1:23:38

So like humans have a tendency

1:23:41

to like numerical targets, or

1:23:43

maybe that's not humans, maybe it's just me

1:23:45

and people that listen to this podcast, but

1:23:48

yeah like I like numerical targets

1:23:50

and it can be easy to treat something

1:23:53

that you can quantify numerically as

1:23:56

a as like the

1:23:58

outcome that matters. to you instead of

1:24:01

a proxy for the actual outcome that

1:24:03

matters to you. In this case,

1:24:05

I think that there's a tendency

1:24:07

for people to want to consume a healthy diet.

1:24:10

They're like, okay, well, how can I quantify

1:24:13

the healthiness of my diet? It's

1:24:16

hard to put a number on that, but it is easy

1:24:18

to put numbers on how much of each

1:24:20

micronutrient am I consuming. You

1:24:24

operationally define healthy diet

1:24:26

as a diet that contains the recommended

1:24:29

amount of all essential nutrients. In

1:24:32

a vacuum, that's fine,

1:24:34

but

1:24:37

if you wanted to

1:24:39

approach it from the perspective of, I

1:24:41

want to eat enough micronutrients and I'm going to do

1:24:44

it

1:24:46

by attempting to conform to what's

1:24:49

generally recommended as healthy dietary

1:24:52

practices, eating a diverse

1:24:55

array of minimally processed foods to

1:24:57

help you meet those nutrient targets, I

1:24:59

think you would have a very hard time not

1:25:02

consuming a relatively healthy diet, but

1:25:06

it can become problematic when the targets

1:25:09

themselves become like

1:25:12

you start treating them as your actual

1:25:14

goal and metric for success instead of

1:25:16

just a proxy for what you're actually pursuing.

1:25:19

In other words, you might run into problems when

1:25:21

a proxy for your goal replaces

1:25:24

the actual goal itself. In other words, the proxy

1:25:26

is meeting your micronutrient targets and

1:25:29

the actual goal is eating a diet

1:25:31

that generally promotes good health. Yeah,

1:25:33

that makes a lot of sense. We

1:25:37

see this in so many other domains.

1:25:40

Whenever you and I were talking about this before

1:25:42

the episode, it reminds

1:25:46

us of people learning

1:25:48

that training volume is important for

1:25:50

hypertrophy and then fixating

1:25:53

on getting as much volume and

1:25:56

that being the outcome rather than

1:25:58

focusing on the outcome

1:26:00

of the training volume itself. Or

1:26:03

like in a business, getting fixated

1:26:06

on a proxy measure of success like your

1:26:09

Instagram following, your TikTok following,

1:26:11

and that leading you to do things

1:26:14

like buying followers or like putting

1:26:17

out content you're not proud of to optimize

1:26:19

for follower count rather

1:26:21

than actual business growth. Like

1:26:23

just kind of

1:26:26

forgetting the forest and

1:26:28

focusing on the trees, forgetting

1:26:31

what

1:26:31

outcome actually mattered to you at the beginning

1:26:33

and kind of fixating on a proxy. 100%. So

1:26:38

yeah, like when you go

1:26:41

down this road and you start and

1:26:43

your focus shifts excessively towards

1:26:45

numerical targets, you might

1:26:47

start making choices that are optimized

1:26:50

for the pursuit of those targets instead of

1:26:52

the pursuit of the actual goal. So

1:26:54

like for instance, you

1:26:57

might learn and like this is true,

1:27:00

that your body can like absorb

1:27:02

and utilize pre-formed vitamin A

1:27:04

like retinol more efficiently

1:27:07

than it can carotenoids, which are

1:27:09

like pro vitamin A like you

1:27:12

absorb them and your body kind of does

1:27:14

some metabolic stuff and converts them to vitamin A

1:27:16

but like that's slightly less efficient.

1:27:20

And so you might like quote unquote realize

1:27:22

that hey, like vitamin A that's

1:27:24

a fat soluble vitamin, you don't need to consume

1:27:27

it every day. There's a shitload

1:27:29

of pre-formed vitamin A in liver, just

1:27:31

eat one serving of liver per week.

1:27:34

And now you don't need to worry about vitamin A intake.

1:27:38

You don't need to worry about consuming anything with

1:27:40

carotenoids like you're good, your vitamin

1:27:42

A is taken care of. And so

1:27:44

you're like, okay, like I don't need to eat like carotenoid

1:27:47

rich fruits or vegetables anymore, which

1:27:50

in terms of like vitamin A intake

1:27:53

in a vacuum, you're 100% right. But

1:27:56

there are like plenty

1:27:58

of health benefits and just like other beneficial

1:28:00

bioactive chemicals in carotenoid

1:28:03

rich fruits and vegetables that aren't

1:28:05

present in liver. And so, you know,

1:28:07

you're ultimately reaching your target,

1:28:09

but you're moving further away from theoretically

1:28:12

what your goal is, which is trying to eat a healthy

1:28:14

diet.

1:28:15

Or like

1:28:17

for a more extreme

1:28:19

example of the same concept. And

1:28:22

this is related to a question that we were asked

1:28:24

a bunch in the groups as we were like putting

1:28:27

out the series, and we're

1:28:29

going to address it in the

1:28:31

context of like a Q&A question at the end of this

1:28:33

episode. But multivitamins,

1:28:36

like you might start

1:28:39

by thinking, hey, I'm going to

1:28:41

try to eat a healthy diet that has all

1:28:43

of my micronutrients, but then you start getting more

1:28:46

like hyper fixated on the micronutrients

1:28:48

instead of the healthy diet. And then you realize like,

1:28:51

wait a second, I could just have a

1:28:53

diet of like french fries and chicken tendies

1:28:56

and just like take a multivitamin every

1:28:58

day. I'm good. Like

1:29:00

the exact example I was going to give. Yeah,

1:29:02

like it starts getting warped in that direction.

1:29:05

Like once you start interpreting

1:29:07

healthy diet as just micronutrient complete

1:29:09

diet, you can eat fucking anything and just take

1:29:11

a multivitamin and like you're

1:29:14

meeting that goal.

1:29:16

But

1:29:17

like, and

1:29:19

we'll talk about this more later, the

1:29:22

research on multivitamins

1:29:24

isn't like all that promising. And

1:29:28

also kind of going back to the carotenoid

1:29:30

liver example, there's

1:29:33

a ton of healthy stuff and like fruits and vegetables

1:29:35

that you're not going to get from tendies and fries, that

1:29:38

you would just be missing out on if you went that

1:29:41

route. And so like just to give two

1:29:43

examples, because like it's easy

1:29:45

to say like, yeah, there's a lot of healthy stuff in

1:29:47

fruits and vegetables other than the micronutrients. But

1:29:51

like, I think people tend to like concrete

1:29:53

examples. So I'll provide a couple concrete

1:29:55

examples. So starting

1:29:58

with, yeah.

1:29:59

Yeah,

1:30:00

more so fruits, but there's some of these

1:30:02

in vegetables as well. Polyphenols.

1:30:06

Polyphenols fucking rock. I'll

1:30:08

link a research review in the show

1:30:10

notes for anyone who wants to check it out. It's

1:30:14

free full text, easy to read.

1:30:18

Polyphenols have positive effects

1:30:21

on reducing your risk of neurodegenerative

1:30:23

disease, reducing inflammation

1:30:25

levels, reducing cancer risk,

1:30:29

helping improve cardiovascular health, type

1:30:32

two diabetes risk and management. They

1:30:38

might also reduce obesity risk,

1:30:41

both from helping your body

1:30:43

partition nutrients better and also affecting

1:30:46

hunger in a positive way. They

1:30:49

do a lot of good shit through a very

1:30:52

surprisingly wide array of mechanisms.

1:30:57

They're not micronutrients. They're

1:30:59

good for you. Going back to the first episode

1:31:01

in this series, what

1:31:05

micronutrients are, essential nutrients are

1:31:07

things that if you

1:31:09

don't consume them, you will die

1:31:12

or suffer very deleterious health consequences.

1:31:16

Polyphenols aren't essential nutrients. If you never

1:31:18

ate a blueberry in your life, you'd be fucking fine.

1:31:21

Most people throughout human history never ate a blueberry,

1:31:23

believe it or not. It's

1:31:27

still good for you. You know what I mean?

1:31:30

I like that you're mentioning this as

1:31:32

well because whenever we are going

1:31:35

through the list of micronutrients

1:31:39

that people might want to pay attention to, a lot

1:31:41

of those were just vegetables. There

1:31:43

weren't as many fruits and berries and stuff

1:31:45

in there. Whenever

1:31:48

you and I were first talking about this, that

1:31:50

was surprising to me because I always thought,

1:31:53

oh, blackberries and raspberries and stuff,

1:31:55

that's super good for you.

1:31:59

They do

1:32:00

have micronutrients in them, but it's also like,

1:32:02

it's for this reason that they are

1:32:05

really, really beneficial. Yeah. And

1:32:07

if you were just focusing on, oh, what's

1:32:09

the most bang for my buck I can get with

1:32:12

micronutrient related foods, like

1:32:14

you might skip out on some of these benefits. Yeah,

1:32:17

for sure. Like

1:32:19

just fruits in general, but like berries

1:32:22

and like cherries in particular,

1:32:26

do have like a ton of beneficial

1:32:28

bioactive compounds that aren't like

1:32:30

classified as micronutrients. And

1:32:33

so yeah, if you were approaching

1:32:35

your diet from the very narrow focus

1:32:37

of like only just trying to maximize

1:32:40

micronutrient intake, even if you're not going

1:32:42

the multivitamin route, like even if you are

1:32:45

trying to go like the whole

1:32:47

minimally processed food route, like

1:32:51

there wouldn't be a great reason to

1:32:53

consume berries because like they

1:32:56

tend to be like decent sources of

1:32:58

like vitamin K and manganese.

1:33:02

And they tend to be like decent sources of vitamin C,

1:33:04

but like

1:33:05

not

1:33:06

so much compared to other foods. Like

1:33:09

there are like way, there are foods that are way

1:33:11

richer than like vitamin K, manganese and vitamin

1:33:13

C. So yeah, like

1:33:15

you'd look at them and be like, yeah, that's

1:33:18

not a micronutrient powerhouse. Like why

1:33:20

bother? But like it's the

1:33:22

other stuff in them that like aren't

1:33:25

micronutrients. They tend to make them like particularly

1:33:27

beneficial. Now

1:33:30

moving over to vegetables, like

1:33:34

oftentimes like some of the

1:33:36

more like

1:33:39

the vegetables that people tend to make like the most health

1:33:41

claims about like that people

1:33:44

tend to term like super foods, which yeah,

1:33:46

I don't know. That's all everyone ever

1:33:49

talks about. Yeah, like I don't really

1:33:51

like that term, but like I see where people are

1:33:53

coming from. And like cruciferous

1:33:55

vegetables are the ones that people tend to

1:33:57

bring up the most. So you know, Brock.

1:34:00

broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage,

1:34:02

Brussels sprouts, etc. Lots

1:34:05

of brassicas. Yeah. Oh,

1:34:08

man. Is that a...

1:34:10

Is that a...

1:34:11

That's a circle square

1:34:13

situation, but I forget which one. It's

1:34:16

either all brassicas are cruciferous vegetables,

1:34:18

but not all cruciferous vegetables are brassicas

1:34:21

or the other way around. It's

1:34:23

the first one. It's the circle square, rectangle

1:34:25

square. Rectangle square, rectangle square. My

1:34:27

bad. Yes. Yes. So

1:34:30

all brassicas are cruciferous vegetables, but

1:34:32

not all cruciferous vegetables That's

1:34:34

right. Yeah. Both. Yes.

1:34:37

I only know that because of gardening. Yes. But

1:34:40

yeah, so they're like they're good for you

1:34:42

and they're like a little more micronutrient

1:34:45

rich than like berries and cherries

1:34:47

are. They're decent sources of vitamins

1:34:49

C and K. And

1:34:52

in particular, like the the

1:34:54

like green leafy brassicas like

1:34:57

kale, for instance, are

1:35:00

like very micronutrient rich and

1:35:03

energy sparse. But, you

1:35:05

know, stuff like as we were

1:35:07

going through the list of like good sources

1:35:10

for like a lot of those nutrients, I don't

1:35:12

think like broccoli showed up once, for instance,

1:35:14

or if it did, like maybe it only showed up once.

1:35:17

Right. Or Brussels sprouts. Or

1:35:19

Brussels sprouts. Yeah. Or

1:35:21

regular cabbage, only Chinese cabbage. Right.

1:35:24

And yeah, like they do

1:35:26

have like some micronutrients, but

1:35:29

they're like particularly beneficial

1:35:31

due to a class of compounds called isothiocyanates,

1:35:37

which are in like I'll

1:35:39

link some some research related to this as

1:35:41

well. But like they have like antioxidant,

1:35:43

anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer

1:35:46

and antibacterial properties.

1:35:48

All the antes you want. Yeah. And

1:35:52

you know, like their their benefits are born out both

1:35:55

from like epidemiological

1:35:58

research, but also like mechanistic style. Like

1:36:01

it doesn't seem to be like fully just a correlation

1:36:03

causation issue But

1:36:06

yeah, like if if you were being

1:36:08

like really really intentional about Micronutrient

1:36:11

intake Yeah, you might still

1:36:14

end up eating some cruciferous vegetables But

1:36:16

like not the full range of them because

1:36:18

like only a handful of them would show up on

1:36:20

kind of a list of micronutrient Powerhouses,

1:36:23

but they all have like plenty of isothiocyanates

1:36:26

and like they're all good for you for reasons

1:36:29

beyond just their micronutrient content

1:36:34

So, yeah like

1:36:35

The the basic takeaway

1:36:37

here is that you can't reduce the overall like quote-unquote

1:36:40

healthiness of a diet to its micronutrient

1:36:43

content If you could again

1:36:45

like a multivitamin would be a wonder drug,

1:36:47

but it's not like

1:36:50

I think it's I think it's helpful to look at

1:36:52

it through kind of the

1:36:55

Yeah

1:36:57

the lens of like necessary versus

1:36:59

sufficient Like eating

1:37:01

plenty of micronutrients is necessary

1:37:03

for a healthy diet But it's not sufficient

1:37:06

for your diet to be as healthy as it could be and

1:37:09

I think that it's easy to Miss

1:37:12

that if you become like to target

1:37:14

focused.

1:37:15

I think it's easier to

1:37:17

like

1:37:19

To just focus on eating

1:37:21

a wide variety of foods

1:37:24

and not necessarily

1:37:24

like

1:37:26

Fixating on a specific micronutrient

1:37:28

target. Yeah, you know like it That's

1:37:32

also

1:37:32

a reason to do it. It's like it's just like

1:37:34

gonna be better for your mental health as

1:37:36

well as your physical health Yeah

1:37:40

Um,

1:37:41

yeah, so that's just kind of like the note that

1:37:43

I wanted to end this series on like it has

1:37:45

been about micronutrients There's a

1:37:47

lot of good stuff related to micronutrients There

1:37:49

are a lot of people who maybe like should

1:37:52

pay a little bit more attention to their micronutrient

1:37:54

intake is like if you Don't eat

1:37:57

a diverse minimally

1:37:59

processed

1:37:59

processed

1:38:01

diet, whatever. Like there's a non-trivial

1:38:04

chance that you probably could consume

1:38:06

a bit more of some micronutrients and that could

1:38:09

have some benefits for you. But like if

1:38:11

you go that route, basically what I'm saying

1:38:13

is don't miss the forest for the trees. Don't

1:38:15

reduce the idea

1:38:18

of like eating a healthy diet to just

1:38:20

a micronutrient complete diet. Like it

1:38:23

absolutely goes beyond that. So

1:38:26

yeah, like just kind of, I

1:38:29

think you can distill a lot of it

1:38:31

down to some general

1:38:33

rules or guidelines

1:38:36

that most people are probably aware of

1:38:38

already. Like eat your protein, eat

1:38:40

your fiber, don't go overboard

1:38:43

on added oils and sugars, make

1:38:45

sure you're consuming a variety of fruits and

1:38:47

vegetables, and I would also add seaweeds

1:38:50

and mushrooms in there if you would like. And

1:38:53

yeah, like a healthy diet will generally be a micronutrient

1:38:56

rich diet, but don't just assume

1:38:59

that a micronutrient complete diet will

1:39:01

be the healthiest diet possible. Like don't

1:39:03

just fully conflate those two things.

1:39:06

Right. Yeah,

1:39:07

good stuff.

1:39:08

Should we get into some

1:39:10

of these questions from the audience?

1:39:12

Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So

1:39:15

we have I think four or five questions

1:39:17

to round out this episode. Again,

1:39:20

these were questions solicited via

1:39:22

the Facebook group and subreddit.

1:39:25

So if you want to make sure you're

1:39:27

aware of like the next time

1:39:29

we ask for questions on a particular topic

1:39:32

and therefore increase the probability that your

1:39:34

question will be answered on the show, make

1:39:37

sure to join the Facebook group and subreddit. And

1:39:39

as always, if you have questions you want to

1:39:41

ask, record a voice memo,

1:39:44

less than 60 seconds and email it to podcast

1:39:47

at stronger by science dot com.

1:39:49

So, yeah, let's let's get into these questions.

1:39:52

All right. Here's our first question from

1:39:54

Ali Shah.

1:39:56

Hey, so my question was.

1:40:00

multivitamins super overrated

1:40:02

or is there actually any use of them? Because

1:40:04

I see a lot of people that you know to kind of even

1:40:07

if they do consume an habit could

1:40:09

take different vegetables or if they don't they

1:40:12

say hey you should take a multivitamin anyway just

1:40:14

to you know cover your bases. Now I was

1:40:16

wondering if there's any actual issues to that or

1:40:18

is that completely overrated not necessary

1:40:21

you do not even need a multivitamin at all and

1:40:23

if you do do you have any recommendations?

1:40:26

Alright thank you for that question and

1:40:29

I say thanks both on behalf of myself and

1:40:31

everyone in the audience because like I

1:40:33

mentioned that was far and away the most

1:40:35

common question we got throughout this series.

1:40:38

So yeah essentially

1:40:40

like are my are multivitamins overrated?

1:40:44

So yeah I

1:40:48

kind of think so but there's

1:40:51

I think I think a fair bit of

1:40:53

nuance in answering this so

1:40:56

a lot of

1:40:57

the so most of the history

1:40:59

of multivitamins was marked by

1:41:02

very little skepticism towards them because

1:41:04

like intuitively it makes a lot of sense right

1:41:07

like you might not eat

1:41:09

a nutritionally complete diet and if

1:41:11

you can just take one little pill a day that

1:41:14

kind of serves as an insurance policy

1:41:16

it feels like a no-brainer and

1:41:19

since you

1:41:21

know a lot of people do under consume a lot of

1:41:23

micronutrients and since

1:41:25

under consumption of micronutrients is implicated

1:41:28

in a wide array of disease

1:41:30

states like it seems like a no-brainer

1:41:32

that taking a multivitamin should have at

1:41:34

worst the neutral effect on like health

1:41:37

and mortality outcomes and more

1:41:39

more likely than not a positive effect but

1:41:42

I think that that started changing

1:41:44

in 2013 when

1:41:48

a meta-analysis was published that

1:41:52

first started like throwing light on this and I

1:41:54

mean the fact that there was a meta suggests that like well

1:41:57

tells you that there were like individual

1:41:59

studies published before this but I

1:42:01

think I think people previous to

1:42:03

this meta just kind of looked at it like individual

1:42:06

studies can it might be underpowered

1:42:08

so you're gonna get some null results that

1:42:10

like aren't real yeah this 2013 meta

1:42:13

was is highly

1:42:16

cited and I think was very influential

1:42:18

for kind of cluing people into

1:42:20

the idea that maybe

1:42:23

multivitamins aren't actually

1:42:25

all that good like not bad for

1:42:27

you but like probably aren't going to do anything

1:42:31

all that great for you so the

1:42:33

title of this meta was multivitamin

1:42:35

multimineral supplementation and mortality

1:42:37

a meta analysis of randomized controlled

1:42:39

trials by McPherson

1:42:42

and colleagues published in the

1:42:44

prestigious American Journal of Clinical

1:42:46

Nutrition and yeah

1:42:49

so it it collated

1:42:52

all of the studies looking at the impact

1:42:55

of multivitamin supplementation

1:42:58

on mortality outcomes it basically

1:43:00

found like nothing so there was no

1:43:02

effect on all-calls mortality there

1:43:06

was not quite a

1:43:09

significant effect in

1:43:13

primary prevention trials like it it

1:43:15

was kind of like scratching statistical significance

1:43:17

but like yeah the the risk ratio is like

1:43:20

0.94 so like even if there was an effect there we're talking

1:43:22

like 6% like not not big

1:43:26

no effect on mortality due to vascular

1:43:28

causes no effect on mortality from cancer

1:43:33

and no statistical evidence of heterogeneity

1:43:36

or publication bias so like that's

1:43:38

brutal yeah like

1:43:40

it threw a lot of cold water on the idea

1:43:42

and

1:43:43

in

1:43:44

sense

1:43:45

then I mean that was 2013 and 10 years

1:43:47

later now and there's

1:43:49

now more like individual

1:43:52

research studies there there are more meta

1:43:54

analyses on the topic there

1:43:56

was a really good narrative review

1:43:59

from the BM

1:43:59

J in 2020 that I'll link

1:44:02

in the show notes. Overall, leading up

1:44:04

to 2013 and now since 2013, there's just not all that much promising

1:44:06

research

1:44:13

on multivitamin use. It doesn't

1:44:16

seem to

1:44:18

reduce risk of most

1:44:20

diseases, doesn't really seem to affect mortality

1:44:23

outcomes, or if it does, the effect

1:44:25

is pretty small and heterogeneous. It

1:44:28

just doesn't seem all that exciting.

1:44:32

So kind of the anti-case

1:44:35

here is that

1:44:39

for a lot of multivitamins, there might be some

1:44:42

issues with the types of vitamins or

1:44:44

minerals included. So

1:44:47

for instance, we talked about this on the

1:44:49

last episode, the

1:44:52

difference between using magnesium oxide

1:44:54

or magnesium citrate could

1:44:56

be the difference between 40% oral body and bioavailability

1:44:59

and 2%, and a lot

1:45:01

of them use oxide. Vitamin

1:45:04

D and a lot of multivitamins, they use D2

1:45:06

instead of D3, and D3 is

1:45:09

quite a bit more bioactive. So

1:45:12

it could be that maybe

1:45:14

multivitamins could be good, but

1:45:16

a lot of times they like manufacturers

1:45:18

kind of cut some corners, use cheaper ingredients,

1:45:21

whatever. So it could

1:45:23

be that.

1:45:26

Another kind of anti-multivitamin

1:45:29

argument that I've seen

1:45:31

that I'm also

1:45:33

quite sympathetic to is kind of along the lines

1:45:35

of what I was talking about at the end of the episode.

1:45:38

It might promote a bit of laziness in your diet.

1:45:40

Like, hey, I'm taking a multivitamin. I don't

1:45:43

need to worry that much about eating my fruits

1:45:45

and veggies. And so

1:45:47

you might miss out on other benefits of

1:45:50

micronutrient-rich foods. And

1:45:53

then the biggest thing is, like

1:45:55

I mentioned, the data just isn't all that promising.

1:45:58

Like if multivitamins are good, then you're not going to get a lot of money. were

1:46:00

going to do good shit for you, like now we

1:46:02

have dozens of studies on collectively

1:46:05

like hundreds of thousands if not millions of

1:46:07

subjects, if it was gonna

1:46:09

reduce risk of like cancer or cardiovascular

1:46:12

disease or all-cause mortality

1:46:14

or whatever like it should

1:46:16

show up in the data by now but like it doesn't

1:46:19

really and

1:46:21

like sometimes when you do see

1:46:23

an effect like you know it's not like

1:46:26

everything is just completely nulls

1:46:28

across the board but

1:46:31

even like some of the effects that have been observed

1:46:33

are like very small so like yeah

1:46:39

so one of the metas that will be linked in the show notes 2022

1:46:41

meta published in JAMA

1:46:44

and yeah like there

1:46:47

it found like a lower incidence

1:46:49

of cancer in people that use multivitamins

1:46:52

but that was just based on four RCTs

1:46:55

so like it's a meta but like metas can also

1:46:57

not have like like

1:47:00

an extreme amount of precision if it's based on like

1:47:02

relatively little data so yeah

1:47:05

like it was based on less data than a lot

1:47:07

of the other outcomes and the odds ratio

1:47:09

is like 0.93 so again like if

1:47:12

if it is like causally reducing risk it's

1:47:14

not reducing it very much so

1:47:16

yeah like you're seeing mostly nulls

1:47:18

and like the positive effects you do see tend

1:47:20

to be quite small and so yeah

1:47:23

the basis of the anti-multivitamin case

1:47:25

is basically just a look at the data

1:47:27

like if you're an empiricist regardless

1:47:31

of how good you think multivitamins should be

1:47:33

they don't seem to be doing what you think they

1:47:35

should and then

1:47:38

the last thing is like any intervention

1:47:41

carries risk that is often

1:47:43

I think under accounted for

1:47:45

so like

1:47:47

the the classic example of this is like

1:47:50

you would think that like

1:47:52

for preventative medicine

1:47:54

just doing like all of the screening possible

1:47:56

for everyone all the time would be

1:47:59

good and lead to better or health outcomes, but it

1:48:01

often doesn't because you might get false positives

1:48:04

and then over-treat people for things that

1:48:06

don't actually need treatment. And so,

1:48:08

just risks coming from excess screening, excess

1:48:13

treatment, whatever. And that's kind

1:48:16