Are plants actually trying to kill you? That is the claim some people are making. And today we're talking about a video that makes that very claim that plants are trying to kill you. I going to walk through it. Kind of show you how I analyze videos like this and give you the nuance that's probably missing. Let's get started. Today we're gonna do things. A little bit different. I'm going to be reacting to a video. So I somehow ran across this video online and wanted to check it out. And it has over a million views, so it's reached a huge audience. I'm going to go through and kind of talk about certain clips that I saw from this lecture. And I don't want to bore you with the full 30-minute video because you can watch that yourself. But I don't want to just be talking over that, right? Eventually, it turns into a two or three-hour video, and nobody has time for that. So, even on double speed. Which I'm told is impossible to do with me because I speak too fast. But that's what we're gonna go through. And I absolutely also wanna mention that I want to say I'm doing this with the utmost amount of respect for anybody who does this. Anybody who goes to an academic presentation, gives a presentation, and talks and puts themselves out there. I respect that immensely. And so, this is just more me working through this. I've had people say, Hey, Jordan, how do you interpret things? Like, how do you synthesize things? And that's really what this is. This is not necessarily a full Deep dive rebuttal on anything that they have to say, but it's more just me kind of walking through my thought process when I listen to a video or a lecture or read a paper, whatever. This is kind of what I think. And so that's what we going to dive into today. And the talk specifically we are going to talk about is titled Plant Are Trying to Kill You. It 's by Dr. Anthony Chaffee. He has a big social presence, and so we going to walk through that today. And so they have defenses just like any other living organism. And while animals can run away or fight back, plants can't. And so they use a lot of different things. But poison is one of their main deterrents. They use these defense chemicals to poison the animals that are trying to eat them. And they have hundreds of different ones geared towards different animals, insects, and pathogens. That are trying to eat them. And so, here is the main argument in his entire presentation. He says that plants all have defensive mechanisms to protect themselves. And although that is definitely true, that plants do have defensive mechanisms, the position he takes is that, therefore, because they have this, all of them must be bad and they are trying to kill you. And I will mention, you know, you'll hear me mention multiple times in this video: big claims require big evidence. And so I want to see what exactly he's talking about here in terms of the evidence that he shows for this. So, once again, not an attack on anything, just kind of how I think. When someone says, hey, Plants are trying to kill you, you should stop e plants. That is definitely counter, right? And so, when that something is going against mainstream idea, we have to think: okay, what is the evidence that supports that? So, let's take a look. The way I came to the way of eating that I do, which is really just meat and water, is twenty-two years ago when I was taking cancer biology at the University of Washington in Seattle. We went over how plants use defense chemicals in order to defend themselves, but we were looking at this from a cancer perspective. So we were looking at carcinogens. And we learned 20 years ago that Brussels sp alone had over 136 identified human carcinogens in them. And that just, you know, white cap. I'm telling you, this is why kids, no one likes Brussels sprout, right? You know? And that's why, right? You know, that bad taste, that bitter taste. Is your brain and your tongue, which are sophisticated machines, and they can tell you, like, hey, this is bad for you, spit it out. And that's what we would normally, naturally do. As a kid, so you give an infant a piece of broccoli, they will hate you for it. You give them a piece of bacon, you know, and their eyes light up. Okay, so Dr. Chaffee then goes on to make the claim that Brussels sprouts have an enormous amount of carcinogens, something to the effect of like 136 known carcinogens. I thought that was fascinating. I like, wow, that's, you, I'm not surprised there's some carcinogens in any sort of fruit, vegetable, whatever. I'm sure meat has them as well. But I couldn't specifically find that number anywhere. I kind of Google searched that and looked, and I couldn't see it. And I have no doubt that he received that number at one point in his class or something similar to that. So I not doubting that. I just couldn't very easily verify that and found that. So something that big. I think probably should be sourced when you say they have 136 carcinogens. He said his professor said it. To me, it's like, okay, where are we seeing that? I'd like to be able to confirm. Couldn't quite see it. But then next he mentions the kids, right? So that they're going to hate you if you give them broccoli, but their eyes light up if you give them bacon. I thought that was an interesting metaphor. And I didn't think it was a fair comparison. So I not saying, obviously, like, yeah, bacon's amazing. Like, bacon's delicious versus Brussels protein. That's probably going to happen. But essentially, he's comparing a very processed form of meat. To just a standard vegetable. And I don know if he's talking about a cooked or raw broccoli. It still stands. That's fine. But he's saying that a processed form of food is more palatable than an unprocessed form of another food. Just not a straight comparison there at all. So, what he could say is something like, I mean, or I could say something like, hey, I gave my child raw ground beef and they hated it. They spit it out. It was terrible. And then, you know, after that, I gave him a soft olive oil-soaked piece of broccoli with lots of salt and garlic, and they ate it up, and they loved it. Or you could say, like, hey, I gave my kid a candy bar and his eyes lit up and he loved it. It's like, well, yeah, like more palatable things kids are going to like. And so, what's missing here is the understanding that the vast majority of times, plants do need some sort of processing, right? Or to be cooked to have their most. Beneficial effects and decrease the bad things that come from them, right? And so, also, you've got to compare apples to apples, right? So, which is the final version of A plant versus final version of meat. And because most people I see on the carnivore aren eating raw meat, right? We process that. And so we pretend that, like, hey, these unprocessed vegetables, like, that's how everyone eats it. Versus meat, which is, you know, they cook it, right? So that's the thing. And bacon is just a super processed version of that. So it not even a fair comparison. You've got lots of salt, you've got additional things there. So, I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he could have listed stake because stake requires minimal processing, and that could have worked in that comparison. But I just wanted to say You know, a lot of times we hear, like, oh, vegetables are bad. Like, in their raw, they might have more of these bad things that he talks about. But when we process them, a lot of them aren't necessarily the same as they were before. And so, I always say we to compare apples to apples, but it's attention-grabbing, but I just want to mention that. We were quite taken aback by this, obviously. We were very, very shocked, as some of you may be right now. And I remember thinking in my head, well, but vegetables are still good for you, though, right? Our professor must have just read our minds. He looked at us like you guys aren't getting this. And he just said, I don't eat salads. I don't eat vegetables. I don't let my kids eat vegetables. Plants are trying to kill you. So I was like, right, forget plants. And I just stopped. So here he talks about his professor, and this is a very powerful story about not eating vegetables ever or letting his kids eat them as well. And it's a very powerful story, right? And I'm sure that if I had heard that in college, I would have been floored by it, right? I really respect my professors. And when they say something, when someone in a position of authority says something that is counter or against what you thought, your mind's kind of blown, right? You're like, oh my goodness, what happened there? And this really. Can be impactful, right? If you're in that situation, I have no doubt it was very, very impactful for him. But this is a classic appeal to authority, right? And so we just have to be aware of where. This lies in terms of evidence, which is basically zero, right? that's like by saying, me as a physician, I say something, therefore it must be true. But I could say something outside my realm of expertise or knowing and not necessarily sure. And I, you know, because I have an MD behind, say oh, I going to believe that. Once again, powerful story. I have no doubt that is impacting that. But yeah, you have to always remember that because I can guarantee you, some other college student. Has had almost the exact identical situation, except it was the opposite, right? Where a professor told them about eating a whole food, plant-based diet, how it changed their life. And that they don let their kids eat meat, and that was probably just as impactful as somewhere else. So you have to step back, right? That just happened to be the product of the position they were in and the timing they're in. So we have to understand: don't get too caught up with stories or anecdotes. We can use them, kind put them in the memory banks of okay, I've heard about that. What do I think about that and think more instead of just taking it at face value that, oh it hey, it must be true because this person of authority said it. And that's true for me as well, right? Don't believe everything I say. I'm sure I'm wrong. I'm a human and I'm sure I make mistakes. I'm reminded that every day I'm humbled every time I work with people and I'm always learning and understanding that. So, but don't take things at face value from anyone just because they're in a position of authority. So this is the study from Professor Bruce Ames from Berkeley. This was published in 1989, and he showed that just the natural plants and vegetables cont 10,000 times more naturally occurring pesticides by weight than the industrial pesticides that we were using on them, and that they were orders of magnitude times more likely to cause cancer. than the industrial pesticides, in this case, AL, which they were looking at specifically. They were trying to actually get it banned, and they were saying, we've got to get rid of this, this is poison, and it is. Spinach is worse. So now we're starting to get into the science here. So let's dig in. So he mentions Bruce Ames. He's a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Berkeley, or was. He has since passed, but he's a legend, did a lot of research on cancer immun, DNA repair, all that kind of stuff. And in the slide, he's referencing how he pioneered testing for toxic chemicals. And he mentions. That in this article he references, he talks about how there are a lot of known carcinogens inside our plants. And then Dr. Chaffee then takes that as support for his idea that plants are toxic. And I wanted to read this for myself, so I went on the internet and tried to find it. The link that is in his references didn't work. So I had to like dig there and go. And I was able to find an addition thing based off of the image of the slide, find that article. It was, yeah, it was a hard thing. And it wasn really a scientific article, it was more like a letter to the editor. So it wasn a peer-reviewed article, just more a letter editor. And in the letter, they're talking about this chemical called A, right? It produced some liver, tumor, and rats, and people were trying to get it canceled, saying, Hey, we shouldn have this as a preservative. They're talking about AL and you know, as a pesticide or whatnot. In the article, he talks about how we don't talk about the natural carcinogens, right? So we find in our everyday food. So he's saying, hey, everyone's freaking out about ALR. What about the regular carcinogens that we have every day in all the food? And what he was saying is that in general, we tend to accept these things as we understand that they are very, very low risk, right? I think, however, Dr. Chaffee read it that it was confirming that plants do indeed cause cancer. And for me, I feel like that was a little bit of a disconnect in the way I interpret it. Clearly, what the scientist was saying is: hey, we understand lab studies in rats are very different from human exposure, and there are many, many, many more things to think about in terms of diet. Lifestyle and how we interact with whole foods and not just isolated compounds in regards to cancer. So we're saying, hey, when you eat a food, you're eating more than just that single compound we've isolated, we're eating the whole food that has lots of other things as well. And he also goes on to mention how humans and animals can protect against toxins in their bodies through many layers of defenses. So they're saying, hey, it's not just like the plants have the upper hand. We also have these adaptive mechanisms. And so he goes into depth talking about how the dose really matters as well. And so, overall, he was actually reassuring in this paper saying. Hey, through none of these mechanistic studies are problematic in his eyes. You're saying that he's trying to reassure you, saying, Hey, A might have some issues potentially, but like we have to consider. The entire spectrum of things. So, although this was used as evidence saying that natural chemicals could cause cancer or are bad for you, the position that I read as this PhD was, Hey, actually. You could find this for anything. Like anything could, you could isolate it down and say it's bad for you, but in reality, is it bad for you on the whole? That's the most important thing. So, going into some of the specific categories, such as lectins, lectins are. Protein that exists in many, many, many different plants. They have a bunch of different functions. They actually have lectins in animal meat as well, but they don't seem to Cause any harm. All. So here we start to see a lot of really big claims, which is what I love. I want to see this, but I want to verify it. I started to do some digging. And first, let's talk about how he says: hey, lectins and meat, they don't matter. That they don't like they don't matter, but lectins and plants do. And I wish he would have expanded more on that. I didn't see any other sources for that saying, hey, like those lectins are fine, like take my word for it. So I would have loved to see that. And that's interesting. These are proteins that can bind to carbohydrates, and so they can bind to carbohydrates on the surface of your cells. And this is something that's been researched more and more. So, you, we talk about a lot of carbohydrates here, how that can affect insulin, how insulin, hyper can cause all sorts of different problems. But what we don't necessarily know about is that Certain lectins can actually bind to your insulin receptors and bind them more tightly than insulin and cause a greater insul effect. It can also bind to leptin receptors and leptins. So, this is Leptin is obviously a satiety signal. So it'll release from your adipose tissue and your stretch recept when your stomach is full, goes to your brain and says, hey, we're full. We're hungry, or we're not hungry, we don't need to eat, we have enough energy. So, you block that, you block that off, which ins will do as well. then you're not able to see your satiety signals and you end up overeating and you overeat and you overeat, and this is why we overeat. So this is another reason why people on a ketogenic diet Often reduce the amount that they will eat naturally, but sometimes you'll actually see that the lectins are also having an effect, and when you drop those, people will actually lose weight. as well. There was a study looking at people with isoc intake, and just one just removed lectins, and they all lost weight. And the others didn't, and it lost a significant amount of weight. From the satiety perspective, there's no reference to that study. I would love to see that. When we were talking about how they have isoc ones. In for lectin non-lectin, satiety, and weight loss. I didn 't see a source for that. I would love to see that. It's also implicated in things like Parkinson's disease. They actually found That lectins can actually track up the vagus nerve and get into the substantia nigra and damage your cells there and are implicated and thought to be part of Parkinson's, or at least a Contributing factor to Parkinson's demonstrating this. There was a study in 2015 out of Denmark where they looked at all the people who had a vagotomy, who had cut the vagus nerve between the 1970s and the 1990s, sort of mid-mid. And they found that in this population, there was a 67% reduction in Parkinson's rates. Interesting. Something I did notice I did want to mention as well, and I But I do want to give him credit that there were definitely some sources that were there. So, that Vegas Nerve talk he was talking about with the going up through the Vegas Nerve for Parkinson that actually did Link to academic papers, but there were some issues with those as well. So, one study was talking about the lectins tracking back vagus nerve was a reference to a paper that was talking about roundworms. And once again, No problem with mechanistic studies, not at all. But when we're saying, hey, it tracks back, we see it in the round. And then he talks about a paper about those who had the vag nerve cut off. That wasn humans. But to make that jump, saying, hey, it's all in round. Then we have this observational thing in humans. That's a big jump to say it causes that. Could it? It absolutely could, but we don't know. So the paper talking about cutting that vagus nerve was indeed humans, but. Was an associative observational study from people who had previously had it done and were comparing the risk of Parkinson's disease. So, no way can we know if this is causal or can we infer causality from it, right? Because there's lots of things. And this is a Very common thing that happens. You take ideas from studies, smaller studies, and then extrapolate them, saying, hey, they mechanistically make sense, so therefore they must be true. And once again, I'm not saying there's no academic validity to some of these ideas. I just want to be very cautious with people and let them know that the certainty in which we know things matters, right? So, if we just see a mechanistic study in roundworms and then see an observational study, you know, that would cut the vagus nerve, and then we to jump say it causes Parkinson's. That's not okay. And I'm not saying he necessarily said that. He didn say, he said it was kind of interesting. He like oh, it an interesting observation there. But we got to be careful because you can observe a lot of things. So that's just something you have to look up there. But if someone recommends something as an idea, saying, hey, maybe. You know, your sense of lect, and this could be a problem, or why you're having these issues, that's a reasonable. And I think supported by evidence from a mechanistic standpoint, I think that's a lot of the things here. A lot of these papers are mechanistic ideas, and that's fine. But on top of that, we know that every individual is different, right? And a lot of times, studies are geared towards population health, so not individualized health. So I do agree that we need to individualize health for people, but taking this blanket approach. Saying all plants are bad probably just isn't the case for a lot of people. However, I do think that if you're having problems like autoimmune conditions, gut problems, other things, then taking some things out may be reasonable. I'm totally fine with that. But once again, we just have to be cautious how we talk. I think people deserve to hear the truth and nuance because that's the whole picture, right? Not just one picture saying, Hey, I don want someone to be lied to, saying, Oh, like all plants are bad for you. Like, you don't know that. They don't know that. And it's never that simple, right? Because it's just not how we work as humans. And yeah, life is not black and white. And sometimes you need to talk to people about things, and you can have a grown-up conversation with people. You know, that's the biggest thing for me. My audience, I try to treat them like adults saying, Hey, it's now black and white. And that's okay, because that is health and medicine. But polarity is huge on the internet, right? If you say things with enough confidence, people will believe you, right? maybe I should be more confident and take a hard stance, but that's what it is. Going on with lectins, there wheat germ agglutin which I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with. This is another lectin. This combines to the carbohydrate surface antigens on your ent in your intestinal lining. And this can damage them, it can destroy them. It will also destroy these tight junctions where these cells are literally stuck together and giving barrier protection against things getting in your body that aren't supposed to get in your body. So when you damage those tight junctions, now bacteria and other chemicals that would normally not get into your system, like lectins, will now get into your system and cause all sorts of problems. Black bind insulin receptors. And then, on top of that, I did look at when he's talking about leaky gut and I to C, intestinal permeability is a big thing. People are talking about it all the time, talking about leaky gut. Talking about leptins binding to leptins, all those things were wonderful. And I clicked the link and it took me to a blog article from a functional medicine provider. Actually, it's like just the clinic itself, it's like the front page of this functional medicine clinic. Once again, I'm not saying that every source has to be academic. I don want to sit there on a pedestal saying, like, oh, it wasn't peer-reviewed. But when we're making claims, like, usually, or we're talking about a topic, it's ideal to have a. A peer-reviewed article there, or just some sort of reference that's static. You know, I couldn't actually see the reference there. So, and I have no doubt that there's a plethora of academic citations talking about leaky get. Or increased intestinal permeability or lectin binding to leptin or whatever. But I just include one of those, it's typically like good practice just so we have a standard thing that won't change in our own skin. I'm not discrediting this idea. It could still very much be correct, but it just makes it so much harder to fact check when we don't have things that are necessarily sourced well or correctly, or even things that work. And obviously, this is like a year ago, so maybe it worked at that time. I want to give them the benefit of that. But yeah, typically, if we're introducing something in an ac presentation, we want to have a link that will go to an ac paper. But I'm not saying that's a hard and fast rule, but I just couldn't verify the claims in there. And, but maybe that wasn't the goal of this talk, right? So, maybe it was more of an informal, conceptual type talk. I'm not quite sure where the low carb down under event is. Obviously, this is taking place at the low carb. It's a low-carb community. It seems to be a pseudos not pseudos in the sense that I think it's all discredited, but it seems to have like scientific talks. And so, usually, in that setting. You have a kind of a certain way of doing research and annotations and all that stuff. But either way, maybe that wasn the idea of this talk. Maybe it was just a conceptual talk. But yeah, when we're talking about hard science ideas, though, even just one or two references that are science-backed are really helpful, just to give people who are curious a place to jump off, right? I try to do that. Obviously, I not perfect by any means, and these talks. For YouTube, that I'm giving, don't necessarily, they're not necessarily for a strict academic audience. And so I'm not going through this like a pure academic thing, but I do try to include some specific references, right? So some selected references, and so that you can. If you are interested, you can jump off on that, right? Because that's the big thing. And certainly, my ratio of academic to non-academic sources is not wonderful, it's not perfect either. But here we have quite a few non-academic sources. And if you know, if this is an academic Talk, we tend to have more. But once again, not trying to gatekeep that, just saying from my perspective, when I see that, I say, okay, this is more maybe a generalized conceptual talk, not necessarily a hard science talk. But I did want to mention that. And he found that people could reverse it. People today are doing this all over the world. People may know of Jordan Peterson, his daughter, Mich Peterson, who had such severe juvenile rheumat arthritis that she had two joint replacements of her ankle and I believe her hip when she was 16 years old. She eliminated all she went keto first and eliminated out a lot of different toxins and nightshades in particular. and had had very, very good results. Then she dropped all the salads as well, just went to pure meat and water diet. Now she's off all medications and she's having kids and she's healthy. She has not had a single flare up. She had salad once. And that gave her a flare up. And she was like, right, never doing that again. Right. So that's, I think, very interesting as well. And then he talked about this powerful Mich Peterson story. Life-changing. And I'm so happy that she is feeling this way. I have no doubt that carnivore diet is a powerful elimination diet and have profound effects for many, many people. The problem I have, though, is extrapolating this one person's success to everybody, right? This is a very specific pathology that person had, and it's very true, pathologic, obviously. And she's doing better, so not discriminating that ever. And this is like the crux of the carnivore or keto or elimination or any sort of elimination diet: is like these people get better and they feel better and they're subjectively better. And yeah, we'll never have a study showing that necessarily because n equals one is hard to follow. But taking that and lumping everybody together, I don't think is appropriate, right? So if someone has otherwise, like, is otherwise healthy, has no issues, like Do we have to do this restrictive diet, right? That's the big thing. Are all plants terrible for them? Like, well, maybe they're not. Maybe they can tolerate that. Maybe other people who have pathology can't. And this is the right thing for them, but that's not always the case. And so I just wanted to mention that. And that's kind of where I have a problem. And what I don't have is a problem with people who radically change your life or fix things with an int el act. That is not at all. I think people who are doing what they need to do. To feel well and live the best life, and that is totally respectable and wonderful. However, this idea that universally we're all made to just eat meat or to just eat plants or to do X, Y, and Z. That's not compatible with the general human experience, right? And all the evidence we have. We have so many people living in diverse situations, eating diverse things, doing well and thriving. So, to say, like, you have to do this, I think that's kind of myopic and neuro. And that's kind of my approach. Once again, if I was more polarizing, it'd probably be better, and I'd probably have more views on YouTube, but that's okay. I sleep well at night. So you have these cyanogenic glycosides. And these exist in things like cassava root, which is a very important root, which we'll talk about, also almonds and bitter almonds. They respond to damage. And so if you once you're chewing an almond or a bitter almond or cassava, that will release this cyanide. So it's normally not in the tissue just when it's being damaged, right? So this is a defense mechanism. The cassava root, there's bitter and there's sweet. The sweet both of them combined account for the third most important source of calories in the tropics. And it is the primary source of calories for over 500 million people in the world. So, this is a very important source of calories, and it contains cyanide. The bitter cassava will kill you. If you eat it, the Mount of Sinai that it has in it, so it has to be specially processed. And they grow the bitter cassava because if they have a problem with herbivores coming around eating their crops, well, they're not going to eat this one because it'll kill them, right? And so that has to be specially processed. But it doesn't get rid of all the cyanide in it. And so long-term exposure to even low-grade cyanide Can cause serious thyroid and neurological damage quite seriously. And so, next, he talks about these compounds that have cyanide inside them, right? Including cassava root and things like almonds. So, he mentions that. Millions of people eat these, and he says that they can cause huge issues with thyroid, neurologic issues, and just moves on, right? That's a pretty big thing. He mentions that these populations are typically very poor, can't afford meat, and that's why they're eating them. But the question I have is. Are we seeing a massive amount of metabolic-associated diseases and autoimmune conditions in these third world countries that eat predominantly plants? I don't know. We're obviously not going to have Phenomenal medical records to know that in third world countries. But it's one of the comments that hey, they don't eat these things. And oh, by the way, autoimmune is going up. It like, well, is it going up in the exact same population? Like, are we seeing huge rises in third world? Issues that eat a very plant-based diet or because they can't eat meat. And are we seeing these modern conditions or not? And so, or are these mostly just modern diseases that predominantly are found in Western societies where they have an excess of food? And that's the important question we really have left unanswered, right? We don't necessarily know that. And yeah, it's kind of just an interesting perspective to think about: okay, are all these things the same? It sounds cool. It sounds like, yeah, it makes sense. But once again, it's very hard to tease apart these things that we just want to talk about. So we don't have that really as a staple here, but people do eat almonds, and people don't realize that 400 to 800 grams of almonds can be a lethal dose of cyanide in an adult. And yet, we give this stuff to kids and sell it in grocery stores, which I think is wild, right? And then there's bitter almonds, you know, which are just the inside of like a peach pit, or stone. You crack that open, it looks like a little shriveled-up almond. That's very bitter because there's a lot of cyanide in it. And one or two of those, chewed up, crushed up, will release that cyanide, can be a lethal dose of cyanide in an adult. And then actually talks more about almonds and in. Let me tell you, that's a big claim, Sam. Like, you eat en to kill yourself. So I did some digging, right? I was like, that's interesting. To me, that 's like. Wow, that's terrible. But I did some digging and found a case report of someone who did actually try to overdose with bitter almonds. But bitter almonds are typically different from sweet almonds. So, sweet almonds are typically the ones you see in grocery stores. And on average, sweet almonds have about 25 milligrams per kilogram of cyanide in them, whereas these bitter almonds have almost 1,000 milligrams per kilogram. So we talking a 40-time difference. And so I did find that one case report of bitter people trying to overdose with the bitter almond, but I could not find any case reports of anyone dying because of too many almonds. And I think The this is one of those things where truly the dose is the poison. I, to eat as many almonds as you need to to have a big enough exposure cyan, I think you just stop eating almonds because you'd be like, This is so uncomfortable, and I'm so full. I don't want this. So, yeah, like, could you theoretically do that? Yeah. You could also theoretically drink too much water and kill yourself. Like, that is a very well-known thing that can happen. And so, like most things, dose is probably in the poison, poison, but it was an interesting thing, and I learned that. that was kind of cool. Seed oils are just poison. As soon as the oil gets out of the plant, it becomes very unstable and is very pro and oxidative. And there is a direct correlation with the rise in seed oils and the rise in cardiovascular disease, sort of the opposite with animal fats. All right, and seed oils, man, I feel like I talk about seed oils all the time. It's a fun time. It's one of my hobbies. But he mentioned this study here where you see a direct correlation with seed oils and cardiovascular disease. But this is a bit of a trick. Not necessarily he's being. Deceitful in this, but this is a common, common tactic that can be used saying, hey, this makes intuitive sense. It sounds plausible, right? But let's dig it a little deeper, right? So he's saying, as C deals go up, so does heart disease. But I really want to see the study first of all. It wasn linked there, he just mentioned it and kind of See what it talked about. And I'm not saying it was intentional, but this is what we think about when we see. I can pretty much guarantee you that I could find an increased rate of heart disease with a number of things. Like literally, I don't know, I'm just making it off the top of my head, but I bet you could find an association with the number of cars on the road. Because those have increased over time, as heart disease probably has. The number of televisions purchased, those probably went up. The use of personal electronics, as those went up, we probably increased heart disease. So we're saying, hey, Are those the cause? Or literally anything else that has increased with time as heart disease is also increasing? If anything's going in there, could it be? Like, that's the thing. Like, these observational studies, it's just interesting. Commonly, folks who point to this data will use in their favor, right? They say, hey, look at that, seed oils, heart disease, that's bad. But if you were to present very similar data showing LDL going up or LDL risk with cardiovascular disease, They would rightfully point out that you can't prove anything from the data, right? So, this is one of those things where, if you show someone an observational study saying, Hey, like, this seems to be linked with LDL and cardiovascular disease, they'll immediately be, No, no, no, like, that, no, you can't say that, like, that's not right. And because that is correct, you can't understand causality from an observational study. But when you do the same thing with seed oils, that's kind of the idea, right? So it almost like the idea of: hey, rules for thee, but not for me. This is bad data because I don't agree with it, but then this bad data I agree with, so it's actually fine. And they're kind of using the data to fit their narrative. And once again, I'm not saying that's what he's doing. That's just a common tactic I see online. I wanted to talk about that. And so I have lots of information on seed oils and whatnot. And that could be a whole nother can of worms and podcasts, but I just wanted to mention that. Phot is quite interesting. This is, there's different furanoc. That I mentioned before, especially in the citrus and carrot family. And so, things like limes, just the juice of limes, have these sty cur in them. And then, when they get on your skin, they react with light and they are activated by light. And they will bind to proteins and DNA and cause permanent damage. And there are cases of kids who have had second-degree burns just from squeezing limes in the sun. Then you have celery and parsnips. These also have these pharyn which will make you photos. And celery itself is there's actually an ailment called celery dermatitis, where celery pickers and handlers that are picking a bunch of celery all the time, they actually get very photosensitive to get these horrible burns like you see here. In photosensitivity here, this is actually really cool to learn. I didn't necessarily know it. It looks very painful, and I definitely don't want that to happen to me. But I just, my initial thoughts was kind of interesting: what if we just removed the lime juice and celery and talked about the sun? And if you get too much sun, you can also get a burn, right? A sunburn, a classic normal sunburn, and that's bad. But we don't go around saying the sun is bad and trying to kill you. We understand that the dose is the issue here. We don't go around saying, hey, sun is our enemy. It's trying to kill you. You should avoid it at all, all costs. And so that's the. The idea when you are all or nothing, it seems to me you can be all or nothing for one thing, but selectively not for other things. It's not consistent. And so, for, that's kind of a big thing. Obviously, it's not a direct one-to-one comparison, but for me, you're saying, hey, like this thing can cause damage, so therefore, we should not absolutely have it. And pretty much everyone will agree: hey, getting some sunlight vitamin, probably a good thing for you. Does it have anything, any vital essential nutrients that you have to have that you cannot get from meat? Well, no, it doesn't. And we have endless examples of this. Going back through antiquity, but even current examples today, you know, the Maasai, the Inuit, the Ninet, and all of our ancestors have lived through. Previous ice ages and things like that, where we didn't have access to all these different sorts of plants and they really relied on a meat-based diet. They did fine. I've been doing fine. I've been doing this for literally decades, you know, and there are other people who have been doing it far longer than I have, coming from a Western European background. In this claim here, he mentions that there's absolutely nothing you can't get through meat in terms of your daily allowance of everything that you need. And if you look online, you can find certain meat to get you pretty much everything you need, but it takes a considerable amount of effort. To get there. So, for any diet, doing that. So, even more so for meat. So, let's take, just take, for example, folate. So, folate is critical. It's really important for lots of things. It's important for. Red blood cells for neural development, all these important things in life. 400 milligrams or sorry, micrograms per day are recommended. In a plant diet, that would be more like four cups of broccoli or one, you know, and one cup of lentils. So, nothing, it's obviously four cups of broccoli is a decent amount. Spread it out throughout the day, you know, you could get it through four cups of broccoli or about one cup of lentils has it in and of itself. Whereas, meat, the way to get that would be beef liver. You'd have to like six ounces, which is a pretty hefty serving or beef liver or 177 ounces of ground beef. That's a lot of ground beef. So, you know, a lot of people say, Hey, I eat nothing but beef. Like on the corner, I ate beef. That's all I eat, beep, beep, beep, beef. Well, if that's the came, if that's The case they're eating like ground beef, are you eating beef liver? And a lot of people aren't because it just doesn't taste good. I remember the first time I ever tried that, I like, Well, that was terrible. Um So, people probably aren't getting that. Next, let's move on to vitamin C. So, vitamin C, about 90 milligrams per day recommended. Plants that come out to like one cup of strawberries, one and a half oranges, or half a cup of red bell peppers, and you've hit your vitamin C. There's a reason that limes are really important on old pirates and ocean voyages because you just need a little bit to get that vitamin C. For meat, it has to be a lot more. So, about Three and a half ounces of beef liver has about 1. 3 milligrams of vitamin C. As I mentioned before, 90 is our goal. So three and a half ounces gets you 1. 3, not a lot. Beef kidney offers about 9. 4 milligrams in every 100 grams. Chicken liver is probably one of the best sources that I found. It's about 17. 9 milligrams in 100 grams serving. Sple probably even higher, a little bit 45.5 per 100 grams, equivalent to what, 51% of the value there. But so it's not a That's common, right? So you have to really be conscious about this. And so meat becomes a lot trickier. And people who only eat beef are probably going be in trouble and really need to think hard about this. And so this is something to think about, right? This is the same thing for me. Completely plant-based diet, you need to add in things like B12. Like, how do you supplement that? How do you get that? And I'm not saying, once again, it's not untenable, but to say meat is everything you need. For most people who hear that, they think, cool, rock on. Like, I just eat ribe and ground beef and I'm good. And they probably aren't getting everything they need from an optimal perspective. And so, I do want to talk about this idea of horm for a second. So, hormesis is the idea that there's kind of a dual-phase response to something. So, like low levels of stress lead to adaptation in your body and get you stronger and better, whereas too much can be an issue. Essentially, it's like all things we do in life. Like a little exposure gets you better. You think about exercise and working out, like that is essentially what hormes is. It 's a lower dose can be good, and you can robustly respond to that and get used to it and get better and make improvements. And the same thing could be said for certain exposures to plants and vegetables. Hey, this low level, this thing might actually create a beneficial net effect. Like if it's low enough. If we've processed it well, if we've cooked it, you know, and then you eliminate the bigger burden and it's just a lower burden, and you can respond well and you get the benefits from them. That's a very possible idea. And I wanted to mention this because I know that people in, you know, who are watching this understand the idea of working out, right? Like working out guy, Dr. Chaffee, he's jacked. He's a strong dude, and understand that he understands horm and that, hey, if he exercises, he makes responses. I can guarantee you our ancestors didn't waste their time exercising because they were just like, hey, I need to survive. So we talk about all this ancestral eating, like, hey, this is our ancestors. Hey, this is perfect. This is perfect. Well, like. They didn't work out because they didn't have the energy or calories to do to, and carrying on too much mass is metabolically expensive. And so, making the comparison of like what used to happen is perfect, that's a natural fallacy, right? Because we understand things today that they didn't, or we have luxury today where we can do things they didn't. We understand that you can get bigger, faster, stronger by having gradual loads on things. We understand that, hey, we can become accustomed to these loads and get there. And that's kind of the whole idea behind the talk: Horm is that there might be a kind of Perfect range of, hey, a little bit gets you the adaptations you want, but too much might be an issue. And that's kind of what we're looking at here: hey, maybe if you eat this much, it's a problem for you. You can't handle it. But if you eat a little bit, that can be beneficial. It's a concept that I've seen. On the internet, lots and lots of times. I just wanted to at least mention it saying, Hey, this is what I've seen. This is a concept we could be talking about that wasn addressed here that I wish it was. And finally, takeaway points here. First of all, I don't care how you eat. I don mean that in a mean way, saying like, I't care about you. I do care about you. If you're listening to this, I really appreciate it. And then know that, hey, I care about you and I want what's best for you. But at the end of the day, you are an autonomous adult. You can do whatever you want. The main thing that I care about is that you're informed, right? If you say, Hey, Jordan, I've listened to all your podcasts, I've heard the stories, and I understand the risks, and I want to do this. Great. That's all I can ask for: is that you know this, you've walked through this systematically, you understand the risks, and you're going for it. That's fine. And that's okay. That's all I really, really care about. Like, I don't, I will, I will still like you if you eat a plant-based diet, if you eat a carnivore diet, if eat keto. Look, I don care what you do, how you eat. I think you are. Inherently a worthwhile person, and I will like you and I will give you respect, and you deserve that. And I think we lose that a lot today on the internet. But I think for most people, this is probably a bit extreme. For some, though, it might be necessary, and that's okay, right? Some people get life-changing results on a strict, you know, autoimmune protocol or elimination diet, and that's amazing. I'm good with that. But then you just have to think about other big rocks, right? So, if we're having these, what are we missing? Are we missing certain nutrients? Does it increase our risk for other risk factors? And we won't go into cardiovascular disease and all that stuff, a bunch of other talks on that. So, it's just one of those things where I am not personally saying, hey, you can't do this. I am very, very pro people feeling good and living their life and not being on medications. Like, I'm very pro that. But just understand most people, this is probably not tenable just because they realistically don't enjoy it. They can't, it's not palatable, it can't stay this way for a long time. And so. If you're a person like me who can just be regimented, like, yep I doing the same thing over and over and over and over, and this works for you. That's fine. I'm there for you. I'm great. I just wanted to offer a different perspective, kind how I think about things and how I work through any big claim, right? So, any big claim kind of has to go through this filter in my brain of, okay. You know, are we exaggerating whatnot there? And so, overall, it was a very interesting talk. Uh, it was worthwhile watching. I think it's worthwhile listening to as well. So, go through there, watch with the critical end. You know, if you see things you shouldn be scared of. That are opposing view of you, you should understand. Hey, let's look through it through a lens and see what I can learn. And I learned some things, and I learned that I'm not going to be eating sweet almonds a lot here. That's great, that's wonderful. But that's going to be it for today. Thank you so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it, though. If you did enjoy this, it would mean the world to me if you either subscribed on your podcast platform of choice, left a A five-star rating there, that'd be wonderful. Or if you commented or liked on YouTube, that'd be great. And if you shared it with a friend, that'd be like the highest compliment. I would appreciate it. But that's it for today. Now, get off your phone and get outside. Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next time. Disclaimer, this podcast is for entertainment, education, and informational purposes only. The topics discussed should not solely be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any condition. The information presented here was created with an evidence-based approach, but please keep in mind that science is always changing, and at the time of listening to this, there may be some new data that makes this information incomplete or inaccurate. Always seek the advice of your personal physician or qualified healthcare provider for questions regarding any medical condition.
