Diet, Nutrition, Metabolic Psychiatry, Brain & Mental Health | Georgia Ede | #153

About the guest: Georgia Ede, MD is a psychiatrist and author of, "Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind: A Powerful Plan to Improve Mood, Overcome Anxiety, And Protect Memory for a Lifetime of Optimal Mental Health."Episode summary: Nick and Dr. Ede discuss: glucose vs. ketones for brain energy; metabolic health & insulin resistance; animal vs. plant-based foods; nutrients, anti-nutrients & plant toxins; ketogenic, carnivore & plant-based diets; carbohydrates & processed foods; treating bipolar disorder, schizophrenia & psychiatric illness with diet; and more.*This content is never meant to serve as medical advice.

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* Episode transcript below.

Full AI-generated transcript below. Beware of typos & mistranslations!

Georgia Ede 2:25

I'm a psychiatrist based in Massachusetts, I've been practicing psychiatry for 25 years. And for the first 10 years of my practice, I practiced conventional psychiatry, medications and psychotherapy, and then gradually incorporated more and more nutrition principles into my practice. And now for many years now, the cornerstone of my work has been metabolic and nutritional psychiatry, centering primarily around ketogenic diets, but other types of dietary strategies as well to help people address the root causes of mental health conditions and help them use less medication sometimes even avoid medications entirely. So that's been, that's been my passion for the for the past 15 years. I

Nick Jikomes 3:13

want to start off by just talking about neurons and and energy and get people thinking about how the brain uses the food that we consume for energy. So in relatively basic terms, how do our neurons How do the cells in our brain actually utilize energy? What are the energy sources they can use? And how do they actually use it?

Georgia Ede 3:34

So the brain is a very, I call it an energy hog, you know, it needs lots and lots of energy, because it's, the way that it works is it needs to generate electricity. And so in order to generate electricity, you need a lot of energy. And so the brain is designed to burn ideally, small molecules, and its two favorite molecules to burn are glucose, which comes from blood sugar. Glucose is the sugar that's circulating in our blood simple sugar molecule, and ketones, which are a small fragment of fat. So if you're burning fat, you can generate ketones. If you're burning carbohydrate, you can generate glucose. And so these very small molecules they cross into the brain. And brain cells can use them for energy. And when they do many things with that energy, but one of the most important things they do with that energy is generate electricity. So if the, if the energy supply to the brain isn't reliable and smooth, then you can see all kinds of things go wrong with the brain. The brain can lose its balance in terms of its ability to produce smooth energy supply, and you can see destabilization, you can see mood instability, you can see energy levels that are too high or too low, unpredictable. And you can gradually over time the brain can, cannot can lose even cells and some of the cells can begin to die if they're on If there isn't enough energy available, so energy is really key to the smooth, reliable operation of the brain.

Nick Jikomes 5:08

Okay, so the brain uses a lot of energy, in large part to generate electricity. So the neurons can send the electrochemical signals that that they actually send to each other. It sort of makes intuitive sense. There's a lot of electricity going on up there. And so you need a lot of energy to fuel that. There's lots of proteins that facilitate that, that pump the ions and stuff in and out of the cell. And then of course, the chemical messengers themselves, things like neurotransmitters, they they need to be made, they need to be stored, they need to do what they do. How does the diet connect to things like the neurotransmitters that our brands are actually using as messengers? Are they made out of components of the diet? What what is the connection there? So

Georgia Ede 5:53

everything in the brain comes from the food we eat, there wouldn't be anywhere else for it to come from. And I think sometimes people don't think enough about that, is that, you know, I was trained, obviously, in medical school and in psychiatry residency, to treat so called chemical imbalances with medications to try to try to improve people's brain chemistry, with medications and medications do have an effect on brain chemistry. But one of the things I like to help people appreciate the relationship here is between the food and the brain, because really, the most powerful way to change your brain chemistry is through food, because that's where brain chemicals and every other component of the brain comes from. So, so yes, you're right. So of course, that every piece of the brain comes from food, and just like every other organ in the body, in order to construct those pieces, you need the right components you need, you need proteins, you need the right, the correct mixture of amino acids that come from protein, you need the right types of fats, some of those come from the diet, some of those we can make ourselves and you need vitamins and minerals, you need micronutrients, in order to help assemble those components. And and to help run the chemical reactions that turn energy molecules like glucose and ketones into energy. So that's why we eat when we eat food in order to supply our brains and the rest of our bodies with the pieces, the components, the parts, and the energy that we need to, to maintain ourselves. So yes, everything comes from food.

Nick Jikomes 7:32

And a lot of the neurotransmitters and things in the brain that the brain uses for communication purposes. These are essentially made from things like amino acids, right?

Georgia Ede 7:42

Yes, so most neurotransmitters are, do ultimately come from amino acids or which come from protein. And some of those amino acids we can make ourselves and others we can't others we have to get from the diet. So and so for example, the amino acid tryptophan, which is an essential amino acid that we must get from the diet because we can't make it ourselves. That amino acid is used, for example to make neurotransmitter called dopamine. And so and I'm of course I'm explain, I know that you are a neuroscientist, so you don't need to know this, but I'm just explaining this for your listeners and viewers who might not be familiar with that. So oftentimes, we'll you know, you can you can use tryptophan for example to make serotonin and, and melatonin which is our, our sleep our circadian rhythm hormone. So you can you can use tryptophan to make a variety of different neurotransmitters. And when if you don't have enough tryptophan, then you won't be able to make enough of those neurotransmitters. And those neurotransmitters are the same neurotransmitters that many of the psychiatric medications are designed to try to support the activity and levels of in the brain.

Nick Jikomes 8:51

I see. So something like serotonin is made from the amino acid tryptophan, as are other things in the brain. Melatonin is an example. Some psychiatric medications like SSRIs for depression, boost serotonin levels, their serotonin reuptake inhibitors. So in essence, you can at least directionally do similar things with food through altering the diet that you could do with a segment that's basically what you're saying.

Georgia Ede 9:17

I don't know if I'd put it quite that way. So, so, yes, so the medical the way for example, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor works like Prozac or Zoloft, Paxil Celexa, those medications, like you said, they're a reuptake inhibitor, so they basically slow down the recycling of those neurotransmitters, so they stay in between the cells longer and the synapses longer so they can perhaps work a little better. And so the food can't really do that. But if you're eating in the wrong way, you can destabilize that system. So if you're not getting enough of the amino acids, you may not have enough tryptophan to to make those neurotransmitters. But also if you're eating the wrong way, you can throw that pathway that regulates the production of those different neurotransmitters out of balance. So if you're eating properly, all of this should work without you having to think about it. If you're going the wrong way, you can really run into a lot of trouble pretty quickly. And you might, you might be told that you need medication to help rebalance the system. But you know, like I said, I was trained that the biological root causes of most mental health conditions were chemical imbalances, and things like neurotransmitters, but we were never, we never stopped to think or talk about, well, what's causing those imbalances in the first place. And eating the wrong way, has a profound effect on that the regulation of those systems.

Nick Jikomes 10:53

So in principle, you could be deficient in something like tryptophan, it's an essential amino acid, we can only get it by eating it in our food. And because it's the precursor to things like serotonin, you could be you can throw off sort of the balance of of serotonin, by being deficient in tryptophan. How common is that? Are there very many people walking around that aren't getting enough tryptophan or something else?

Georgia Ede 11:15

Not in the developed world, typically, most people in the developed world are getting enough protein. And some people aren't getting quite enough, or they're not getting quite the right mixture, or the ideal mixture of amino acids. But most people fortunately at least in some of us are very lucky to live in parts of the world, where we have access to enough high quality protein. That's not true and great parts of the world where malnourishment is an access to, especially to animal foods is very, very limited. And that's, that can cause a great deal of a lot of mental and physical health problems, of course. So, but yeah, so in the developed world, we don't typically see a lot of protein malnutrition, the way you would see in under in places, which are far less fortunate.

Nick Jikomes 12:01

So there's something kind of interesting there, because you said that in many places in, in some places in the world that are less developed, and malnutrition is a much bigger problem. They can be amino acid deficient. And that's often because they lack animal sources of protein. That's not a problem that we have here in the United States, we have plentiful food around. And yet, while I'm often hearing people say, well, I should be getting most of my protein from plants. So what what's going on there?

Georgia Ede 12:33

I'm glad you asked that, because that is that is the prevailing increasingly the popular view and the prevailing sort of official information, the guidelines that we're getting, both from our our governmental guidelines, but also from prestigious institutions like the Harvard School of Public Health, or, or Tufts University, and other other prestigious and the World Health Organization, the USDA dietary guidelines. So more and more what people the message that people are getting is that plant proteins are superior, healthier, plant foods, in general, the more plants you eat, the healthier you are, the fewer animal foods you eat, the healthier you will be. And so essentially plants good animals, risky, or protect perhaps even dangerous. The truth about the biology of the differences between plant and animal foods and what human biology requires is almost exactly the opposite of that message. And so it's very, very, it's very concerning to me that this message is has is being absorbed by people and really taken to heart I mean, people really feel strongly about, I mean, a lot of people want to be healthy. And so they're following this information, and they're taking it to heart, and they're changing their diets, and they're eating fewer and fewer animal foods, and more and more plant foods. And this is this is this is not the way our biology, the way our biology functions at its best plant proteins. With few exceptions, there are a few exceptions, do not contain enough of the right mixture of essential amino acids to to meet our needs. Whereas every animal food contains enough of the right types of essential amino acids to meet our needs without even having to think about it

Nick Jikomes 14:23

is a simple way for people to think about this. Perhaps that. So obviously, are our bodies made out of proteins, the proteins are made out of amino acids. The amino acids aren't all a present equal amounts. There's a particular distribution that our muscles have and our brains have, et cetera, et cetera. So when we think about something like red meat like beef, can people just think of that as like, okay, we're eating the muscle of a mammal. We're a mammal and we've got muscles. So you're going to naturally have a lot of the same amino acids distributed in that food source that are in our bodies, and it's going to be much closer to the The distribution of our bodies than something like, I don't know what that what you would find in lentils or something.

Georgia Ede 15:05

That's exactly right. And so you know, we are animals, we are actually, we are actually made of red meat and saturated fat and cholesterol. And yet, we're told that those are the very things that are that are that are dangerous for us. And, you know, plants, plants, you know, most plants are much lower in saturated fat, most plants lack the amino acids that that we need in the right mixtures. And most plants contain different types of fats. And the ones that are ideal for are the ones that we that are essential to our brains and bodies are optimal functioning. So plants are not, they're not well suited, they're not ideally suited to be the the foundation of the human diet. It's not that they're all dangerous, or that everybody needs to stop eating them. But, but really, we must, if we were looking for optimal health, meaning nourishing every cell in our bodies optimally with all of the essential nutrients in the right proportions, the most safe and reliable, and and complete way to do that is with animal foods, and not plant foods, animal foods, we are much we are animals, so we have a lot more in common with them. And the molecules that they contain are the ones that we need. And they're they're more bioavailable, they're more plentiful, they're much easier to find. And they do not come with, with rare exceptions, they do not come with any anti nutrients to interfere with our ability to absorb them. And they do not come with any, again, with rare exceptions with any toxins that pose risks to our health when we're trying to when when we eat them. This is not the case with plant foods, plant foods, protect themselves with chemical weapons. And these, these do pose risks to human health. And they also guard their nutrients with anti nutrients that make it in many cases more difficult for us to access their nutrients. So just because a plant food may contain a nutrient, so if you're reading out label, you may see that plant food contain something doesn't necessarily mean that you have good access to it. And I think that's a that's a little known nutrition secret. So

Nick Jikomes 17:21

so if it's good people, an example or two here, so you know, if you're eating grass fed beef, and it's got 20 grams of protein, and then you're eating, say lentils or beans, it's got 20 grams of protein on it. They both say they have 20 grams of protein on it, they both actually contain 20 grams of protein. But what's the difference there? You're gonna absorb different amounts of that for different reasons.

Georgia Ede 17:44

Yes, so let's so plant proteins. So the plant foods that are highest in protein are the nuts and Lagos lagoon was being you know, beans, and peas, and lentils, soy, things like that, things like that. So when people are trying to meet their daily protein requirements through plant foods alone on a vegan diet, they really need to include legumes and nuts in their diet, because that's where most of the protein in plants is. So the problem is that we're not we're it's not protein that we're after, as you said before, amino acids is this particular mix of amino acids. So all proteins are not created equal. And most people who are following a vegan diet already understand that and know that they need to be careful about how they plan their diet, so they get so they don't fall short, and these amino acids, but then on top of that, that extra hurdle that you have to go to deal with in order to nourish your brain properly, you also have to deal with these anti nutrients and toxins that stand in the way of you safely and reliably absorbing all of those amino acids. So all of the seed foods, including lagoons, and nuts, these foods contain protease inhibitors that are that are really, they make it more difficult for us to for our digestive enzymes to break those proteins down into their individual amino acids so that we can absorb them, and that's protease inhibitors are there because the plant quite selfishly and right rightfully, wants to hold on to those amino acids for its own selfish purposes. Meaning, you know, if you're if you're a soybean, what you exist in order to nourish an embryo a little there's an inside ever been a little embryo baby going to sprout, it's a bait and so it needs those nutrients including those amino acids. It certainly doesn't want you getting your grubby paws on. They

Nick Jikomes 19:41

don't want to be eaten just like an animal doesn't want to be the difference is that an animal can run away or as spines or has some other way to protect itself. The plant can't go anywhere. And so it has to it has to use chemistry.

Georgia Ede 19:52

That's right. And it's very clever chemistry evolved over hundreds of millions of years really smart what would

Nick Jikomes 19:59

be like well one or two examples of common plant toxins that are coming in, you know, a normal everyday food plant food that we would otherwise consider to be healthy.

Georgia Ede 20:12

Yeah, so there are toxins and they're anti nutrients. So in terms of toxins, one of the one of the food groups that I suggest that people who are struggling with mental health conditions avoid are the night shades. And the nightshades are things like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, all of the red spices on some paprika, chili peppers, things like that. And white potato skins of white potatoes, and goji berries. So these are the these are the, the United shades. And they might sound like they have nothing in common. But if you look at the fruit of any of those plants, they all have kind of a little green elfish hat, you know, if you've picked an eggplant, it's got that little hat. So to me those do too, right. And that's there, they're in the same family. And so they protect themselves with chemical weapons and one of the chemical weapons they protect themselves. One type is called a glycol alkaloid. And these are neurotoxic. So these are these are toxic to the nervous system. And so if you absorb them to any significant extent, which you can, then then that can that can irritate the nervous system. So there's just one example of a chemical that's naturally occurring in plants. And we're told that all plants are equally healthy, and that the more we eat them, the better and that we need a wide variety, we have to eat the rainbow, we need to what we're never taught to think about each different type of plant food as unique, some are riskier and healthier than others. And I think that's just it makes sense to really, to really give them their due, you know, Don't lump them all together in one category. They're very different types of foods that have different vitamins, different minerals, different chemicals in them, different risks and benefits, they're not all the same, and they're not all necessarily good for you.

Nick Jikomes 22:03

And so on the anti nutrient piece. So these are things that sort of prevent the absorption of the nutrients that are otherwise in these things. Is that why like I've seen a lot of data out there around certain micronutrients and their bioavailability across animal and plant foods, everything from calcium to other vitamins and stuff. Is that why you often see with plant foods that although it might contain X number of milligrams of the standard, the other vitamin, you often don't absorb very much of that. Yeah,

Georgia Ede 22:31

so a really good example, is phytic acid or phytate. This is widespread in plants, but it's especially if you're especially fine, large quantities of it. And again, the grains, beans, nuts and seeds, which are all essentially seeds that contain embryos, those are the most heavily defended parts of plants is of course, where the embryo is housed, that you're protecting the future generation of that species, right. So so grains, beans, nuts, and seeds all are rich and phytic acid and phytic acid is a mineral magnet, very powerful one. And it's there to hold on to you, when you think about it. A seed what does the seed need to deal with a seed might need to sit for days, months and months or years waiting for the conditions to be right to sprout. And while it's sitting there, it's dealing with the environment it's dealing with little creatures that are coming up to you know not on it in how is it going to survive. So it needs to protect itself with with toxins but also with anti nuke with anti nutrients phytic acid is there too got to hold on to to calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc for the future sprouting plant that that hopes to become a larger plant. And it may need to hold on to those minerals for a very long time. So when we consume one of the examples, I've given the book, and that I've given a lot of my presentations, because it's just such an excellent example. Easy to understand for for people. If this was a new idea for them is zinc. So zinc, the food on the whole food on the planet that is Richeson zinc is the oyster. So if you eat if you eat oysters, there was an experiment done a long time ago that shows this. If you eat oysters, you see your blood level of oyster rise very nicely. And that is a sign that you're that you've effectively absorbed a great deal of zinc from that oyster. If you eat that same amount of oysters with black beans, which is a seed food or lagoon, you absorb less than half of the Zinc of those.

Nick Jikomes 24:40

So it's not just eating the plant. It's not just plants are difficult for us to extract those minerals from the anti nutrients can actually affect the absorption of animal foods that we eat together with the plant foods. Yes,

Georgia Ede 24:52

and this can happen with iron, zinc, calcium, magnesium. It's a very very common phenomenon in Among plant foods, and so, if you, if you eat that same amount of oysters with corn tortillas and corn as a grains with a seed, you absorb virtually none of the Zinc from those oysters. So very powerful effect. It's not subtle at all. And we often wonder, you know why in wealthy countries that have access to all kinds of foods? Do we have so much? For example, iron deficiency? Yeah, I mean, even people who are eating animal foods along with the other foods, and that's because we're not given the right information about a what are the best foods were the foods that contain the best and most bioavailable iron, the meat, seafood, poultry, and which are the foods that are working against our ability to absorb iron, and those are the grains, beans, nuts and seeds and the certain types of vegetables as well. And even green tea and other types of things. We are told to base our diets on grains, beans, nuts and seeds are very low in nutrients, especially the the grains and the beans, and very high and anti nutrients that they really have not earned their place at the base of the pyramid.

Nick Jikomes 26:08

Well, I mean, speaking of the pyramid, I mean, people have talked ad nauseam about the food pyramid and where it comes from and everything. What you're telling us is really important. It's really interesting. But it's also not new, right? We've known about antinutrients. For a long time, we've known basically all the things that you just told us this is, this has been out there for a long time, if you know how to look for it. Why, then, is the narrative the official narrative, the official food guidelines and what I hear from most physicians that I talk to in my personal life? Why is everything plant based grain based? Where where's this coming from? If it's in conflict with what we know about the biology?

Georgia Ede 26:50

It's such a good question, because it really it really is a hot or cold, hard fact. These are cold, hard facts. These are not disputed. I don't know anybody who would look at this science and say, well, that's not true. The problem I think, with with, it's complicated that I write a lot about in the book, like why is it that we have this plant biased mindset, where we give plants much more credit than they deserve, from a nutritional and, and health standpoint. And, and we demonize animal foods, which are really the healthiest, safest and most nutritious foods that we can eat. And so why have we done that, and the roots of this anti meat sentiment, they have their roots in certain religious traditions that go back hundreds and hundreds of years. But they, they the argument was often spiritual and having having to do with, you know, differences between humans and other animals, and perhaps even our compassion or our ability to identify with species that are similar to us. So for especially mammals, right, so Matt, we are mammals, you know, you can make eye contact with a mammal, you can have relationships with mammals, right. And the way that you can't really with I don't know, a claim, or an egg, yeah.

Nick Jikomes 28:05

No, yeah. I mean, I get that. I get that what I don't. So I mean, obviously, that's out there. A lot of people go to veganism or plant based diets out of a, from an animal cruelty and welfare standpoint. Yes, I totally get that. That's obviously out there. But like, I've spoken many physicians, and they promote these plant based diets, because that's what the goal is from a very physician oriented, health oriented mindset that they say will be better for me. Where is that coming from? So

Georgia Ede 28:38

yeah, so the early part of the story has to do with spirituality and religion and culture and sort of human animal connection, right. But it morphed in the 1800s, it became a health argument. And that and there's information about the history of that in the book, but but more often to a health argument. There's a particular church of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and other branches of churches similar, that realize that this argument is compassionate argument and spiritual argument was not swaying enough people. And so they needed to appeal to people's fears. And so it began to this narrative grew in the 1800s, and has only grown since then. That it's not just that, you know, it may not be may not be kind or it may not be spiritually, it may not be, you know, be a good person if you eat animals, but also that it may be dangerous to your health. And that argument is very powerful. And because people people care about their own health, and they and and so these arguments grew and grew. And then scientists picked up on these arguments and and took some of them face value. And then an ever since have really been conducting study after study after study, trying to understand why plant food woods are better for us and why animal foods are bad for us. without ever questioning the original premise, a lot of these studies are designed to try to find the good in plants and try the evil in animal foods. And there, I challenge anybody listening to find me a study that conclusively shows that this is the case. And the more studies that that are produced, the more studies that the more they, the more so what's happening as doctors learn nothing about nutrition. So in four years of medical school, we've had two or three hours of nutrition education, and most of it was incorrect. And four years of psychiatry residency training, we didn't talk about food once doctors know nothing about nutrition. So the last person will you should go to is is a conventionally trained physician for your nutrition advice, because they're going to read, they're going to they're going to read the guidelines, they're going to read the recommendations without actually looking at the primary research articles that are generating those headlines on those guidelines. The problem with plant based diet science, is that there are lots and lots of studies that claim that plant based diets are healthier, but none of them are conducted in a way that can actually show that to be the case, you

Nick Jikomes 31:23

did a really good job in the book and the beginning of mapping out for people the different types of studies that are out there. And what they do or do not show us, and one that I just wanna spend a little bit of time on is the field of nutritional epidemiology. So most of the time, I think it's fair to say that I'll just say much of the time, very, very much of the time when people see a headline in the news written by a journalist, you know, such and such diet is associated with blah, blah, good thing or bad thing. Oftentimes, those are coming from epidemiological studies. What are those studies? And why is this such a tricky area?

Georgia Ede 32:03

Really, this field of nutrition epidemiology, which I'll explain in a second, there's a whole chapter about in the book, it this is the information or the pseudo information that comes out of nutrition epidemiology is largely responsible for the public health crisis we find ourselves in today. Because nutrition epidemiology isn't fully unscientific method of generating information. So what I mean by that really is kind of a simple example. And there's hundreds and hundreds of studies like this, where let's say that you're a nutrition epidemiologist, and you are interested in the relationship between a particular food and a particular disease, let's say that you believe that you're worried that red meat might cause heart disease? Well, it's a pretty hard thing to show that, really, nutrition experiments are hard to design and conduct and they're expensive. You can't control what everybody eats, you can't track what everybody eats. And you certainly can't do it over long periods of time. With lots and lots of people. It's, it's virtually impossible to do that. So instead, what we do is nutrition. Epidemiologists give out these surveys. They add, they give these very limited, they're called food frequency questionnaires. And they asked people a few questions at most, maybe 130 questions about what they remember eating over the past year and how much? So for example, a question might be a how many half cup servings of blueberries have you eaten on average over the past year? So

Nick Jikomes 33:37

so not only do you have to have been eating blueberries half a cup at a time and measuring it, you have to have perfect memory recall for months or years and your past. And this is what like many of these studies are based on that quality of data, literally.

Georgia Ede 33:52

All nutrition epidemiology studies are based on food frequency questionnaires, and there's no measurement or tracking or recording of food at all, except for sometimes they'll say, Well, we'll actually measure what you ate over the past three days. But there are most of these studies go on for years and years. And there's no measurement recording or tracking of what people are actually eating over that period of time. Yeah, there's no data. There's, they're just wild guesses.

Nick Jikomes 34:22

So, I mean, you could argue that this isn't particularly useful data. Could you also argue that this is actually worse than useful? It's actually counterproductive? Because we start thinking and believing things that aren't actually true. We think we have real knowledge when we in fact don't.

Georgia Ede 34:38

So there so yes, I agree with that. 100% You're absolutely right. Science requires two things, the scientific method, there are lots of different types of studies, but they all if it's going to be science, it has to have two components. It has to have you have to observe some thing that you observe something in the world and that you get curious about and say, Oh, that's interesting. I wonder why that is. You And you come up with your hypothesis, you, you have an observation on a hypothesis. I wonder if red meat causes heart disease, right? And so, and then the second step is supposed to be that you test your hypothesis, you test your theory in an experiment to see if your theory is correct. If nutrition epidemiologists spent 100% of their time in step one, and they never ventured into step two, they never never test they never do experiments. For they don't gather get, they don't gather data and step one. So that's already a problem. But even if this were a real data that we could rely on, they never test their theories to see if they're correct. If you if you if you never test your theory, you can be wrong for decades and never have to face that and never have to correct course, and this is exactly what's been happening in nutrition epidemiology is that none of these so called scientists have tested their theories themselves to find out whether or not they're true. So they can continue believing the wrong things about nutrition and human biology and and health and continue disseminating these their theories. These theories get get rolled into guidelines and into nutrition headlines all the time as if they are fat on when all they are is untested theories based on wild guesses.

Nick Jikomes 36:31

Speaking of of decades of time that can elapse, you know, where people think one thing, but that's not necessarily the case. I want to talk to you about cholesterol, you know, for all of my life, I mean, even to this day, other than what I independently know, you know, if I was just listening to my teachers and my doctors growing up, you know, cholesterol is bad, you don't want your cholesterol to be too high. You don't want to eat too much cholesterol. That is the folklore that I've been taught. Most people have been taught their entire lives. Where does that idea come from? And what is cholesterol doing in our brains in particular.

Georgia Ede 37:09

So cholesterol is a perfect example of a of a really vital molecule that every cell in the human body requires in order to function develop properly, that has been demonized, because because it's only found in animal foods. And so what happens within the plant versus animal debate is that is that essential and vital molecules that we cannot we literally cannot live without our because they don't exist in plants. Plants don't need them. Plants have a different type of cholesterol, but they do need cholesterol, but a totally different kind. If you're trying to if you're trying to place the blame for human health problems on animal foods, you need to point the finger at specific molecules in those animal foods that don't exist in plants. And cholesterol is a perfect example of the type of cholesterol is different genes say Oh, well, animals, let's see, we think animal foods must be bad. We've heard that they're bad for us,

Nick Jikomes 38:14

you start from the premise animal is there for you look for something in animals.

Georgia Ede 38:19

Right. So cholesterol is a critical molecule in every cell membrane. And it's not. It's not just a structural component. It's also used to build other kinds of really important molecules in the body. It structural integrity, it's also important for certain parts of brains a certain thickened or a stiffened areas of certain cells, area of a cell called a lipid raft, which guides cells, nerve cells to their destinations, when the brain is developing. Cholesterol does many, many important things. So it's so important that almost every cell in the body is capable of making it itself. So if you don't need any cholesterol, never fear, you will still make plenty of cholesterol, your body will still be full of cholesterol, your blood cholesterol can even be too high. If you never eat a molecule of cholesterol, or you never touch an animal food in your entire life. Because so important we make it ourselves. So in the brain is especially interesting in this regard, because the brain is particularly rich and cholesterol. It's one of the most cholesterol rich organs and the whole body. So not a single molecule of the cholesterol inside your brain comes from your bloodstream or the food you eat every molecule that because cholesterol is too big and bulky to cross from the bloodstream, across the blood brain barrier and into the brain. Yet, that's how much it makes every single molecule itself on site from scratch.

Nick Jikomes 39:50

And why is it making it what does it actually used for by the neurons? Every

Georgia Ede 39:55

cell membrane so every cell in our bodies has a membrane and so every cell membrane requires cholesterol for structural integrity. And for developmental function and many other purposes as well. You also need cholesterol to build hormones, and other types of uncertain molecules that are important for the mitochondria to generate energy. So you need cholesterol as a fundamental building block of membranes, hormones and certain other components. So you must have it. And if your cells don't contain cholesterol, they will fall apart. So it's not optional. I mean, the brain is full of its reason why the brain has more cholesterol than any other organ in the body is because it's full of membranes. And myelin is just very tightly wound membranes circuit wrapping around and circulating. And insulating the circuitry in our brain, you certainly don't want to skimp on an island.

Nick Jikomes 40:56

So cholesterol is a it's a component of cell membranes and all of our cells. So it's an important structural integrity molecule. It's also used as a precursor for various hormones, which coordinate very important biological changes throughout the body. But I've been told my whole life cholesterol equals heart disease, high cholesterol is always bad. If I eat cholesterol, isn't it just going into my blood and then clogging my arteries?

Georgia Ede 41:26

Yeah, so that that is what we've been led to believe in. Still, most people even to this day believe that even though major organizations including the American Heart Association, and the and the USDA, I have taken back that warning many years ago, that the dietary guidelines essentially, back in 2015, said, dietary cholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern. So essentially, you you can't over consume it. And the reason why is, you know, our bodies aren't just empty buckets that you pour cholesterol into until it spills over. We regulate how much cholesterol we absorb from our food. If we're not getting enough, we make enough we make up the rest. If we aren't getting enough from food, then we make less as we absorb, we absorb only what we need. And so there's that myth is is easy to dispel. But the heart disease is fascinating, because, yes, you will find cholesterol inside the plaques of people who have had heart attacks. But that doesn't mean that the cholesterol cause that heart attack. Heart disease, first and foremost is in an inflammatory disease, where there has been damage to the lining of the blood vessels, and otherwise, the cholesterol couldn't warm its way in. So the all heart disease begins with damage to the endothelial or that, that first layer of that, that lining of cells that separates the bloodstream from the interior of the of the wall of the artery. So damage and inflammation happened first cholesterol ends up there for lots of different reasons. But it's not it is not the culprit.

Nick Jikomes 43:11

Speaking of inflammation, so I want to talk about fatty acids, the different types of dietary fats, so you got saturated fats, mono and polyunsaturated fats of different kinds. Let's start with saturated fat because it sort of goes with cholesterol in the sense that I've been told my entire life, don't eat too much saturated fat, don't eat too much cholesterol, those two have sort of gone together. In many people's minds, even to this day. They're synonymous with heart disease. What's going on with saturated fat? How much is too much? What is what is the basic biology there?

Georgia Ede 43:40

Yeah, so two important things to say to that. So one is that this is another great example of trying to find a difference between plant and animal foods and then hanging the the blame, placing the blame of the theoretically dangerous and the theoretic dangerousness of animal foods on a molecule that's more it's easier to find and animal foods and plant foods. plant foods do contain all foods, all plants and animal foods or plants, animals, all plants and animals containing mixture of saturated and unsaturated fats, just different different ratios, right. And in fact, the only animal foods that contain more saturated fat than unsaturated fat are dairy products. If you're looking at beef, or pork or chicken or you will not find an animal food except for dairy, that is higher in saturated fat than unsaturated fat.

Nick Jikomes 44:34

So if I'm eating a steak with, you know, some fat on it, it's actually got a quite a bit of mono unsaturated fat in it not that much different or sort of, you know, directionally similar to something like olive oil, but I think of it almost like that. Yeah,

Georgia Ede 44:49

so So olive oil is mostly monounsaturated fat, but it's got polyunsaturated fat and it even has some saturated fat. all fats are mixtures. And I think that But one of the big differences, you know, between plant and animal foods is that most plants are very low in all kinds of fat. Because plants store their energy as starch, starch typically underground, like a potato or a tuber, or root, we cannot afford to do that. Because if we did that, we'd have to be dragging big long. So start up union to the airport, you'd have to pay extra, you know, and so, you know, we carry we on purpose, store energy as saturated fat, saturated fat is light, it's compact, it's flexible, you can store lots and lots of energy in a small amount of space. Because we need to move around in the world, we can't afford to be tied down to the ground by big lumps of starch. And so and we make that saturated fat on purpose in our bodies, even if you don't eat any fat at all. If you eat more carbohydrates than you need, at any given moment, you will turn every extra molecule of that carbohydrate into saturated fat on purpose, because that's how the body prefers to store it. So how could it possibly be bad for you?

Nick Jikomes 46:12

So if, if plants like to store their energy as glycogen, or excuse me a starch, a form of carbohydrate? Why are why do I see so many bottles of vegetable oils? Where are all these vegetable fats coming from?

Georgia Ede 46:31

I guess. So. I'm glad you brought this up. So yeah, so So there are some plant foods that are a little higher and fat. And so if you're looking for protein in plants, you usually look to the grains, beans, nuts and seeds. If you're looking for fat, you also look you look especially to the nuts and the seeds in there are certain fatty fruits, avocados, olives, and coconuts, and palm fruit. These are fatty, fleshy fruits. We're not talking with the seed of the avocado. The pet, of course, has some fat, all pits and seeds have fat, but the actual flesh of the fruit, the avocado itself. And when you throw the pet away, there's quite a bit of fat in the avocado. Most fruits are not like that. But the avocado and the olive, and the palm fruit are exceptions to that. Most plants are very low in fat. So if you're trying to, if you think oh my gosh, well, you know, it's not safe for us to cook with animal fats, because animal fats are dangerous. How? What are you gonna use to cook with? What are you going to use to add to our pies and muffins? How are we going to fry things? How are we going to? How are we going to saute things? What are we going to do? Well, we're going to have to go to go to the plant foods, the seeds, where there's definitely more fat in the seeds and most other parts of the plant, we're going to have to extract that and concentrate that fat and put it in bottles and cans and things like that. So that we can get because otherwise it's pretty hard to get much fat out of plants. So in order to do this, it's actually very difficult to wrangle fat out of a seed. If you tried to do this at home, good luck trying to make a bottle of oil out of a pile of seeds. It's very difficult. You need a factory, you need 15 chemical steps and you need an explosive solvent called hexane. And to remove all the odor, all the toxins and all the flavor from from from those seeds, and concentrate that oil into a bottle that's odorless, tasteless, shelf stable, plant based heart healthy, cholesterol free cooking oil, which is really just an industrial waste product of originally from the agricultural industry.

Nick Jikomes 48:48

And what are these vegetable oils? What are these seed oils have to do with inflammation?

Georgia Ede 48:52

Yeah, so you know, the actual if you if you're eating whole foods, so if your diet naturally, if you're hunter gatherer, you know, 1000s of years ago, you would have of course, eaten some nuts and seeds as part of your diet. And that would have been included some fat including. So unsaturated fats and saturated fats and all the different types of fats will be in there. One of the fats that would be in there is called linoleic acid. It's a poly unsaturated Omega six fatty acid, very long chain, very fragile. But yes, it would have some, some of that little lake acid in there. But it would be awfully hard to consume a large amount of it, because, you know, you'd have to eat an awful lot of seeds to get a significant quantity of it. So our diet naturally used to contain maybe two to 4% of this linoleic acid. But when you extract that fat from those seeds in an industrial factory, and you concentrate that fat into a bottle, then you've got a bottle that bottle could be 4050 6070 80% little leg acid in that bottle.

Nick Jikomes 50:01

And common examples of very high linoleic acid oils be

Georgia Ede 50:04

grapeseed oil is the highest in in a little ache acid, some of the so sunflower oil, safflower oil, corn oil, all of these are very high in in linoleic acid. There's a chart in the book where you can look up your favorite fat and see where it falls. The animal fats are lowest and linoleic acid. And there are few plant fats which are naturally low and linoleic acid. And these are, for example, olive oil, and coconut oil. Coconut oil is famously very high in saturated fat.

Nick Jikomes 50:38

What happens so we have these vegetable oils that are high in linoleic acid, they're mass produced, they're highly concentrated in these seed oils, then, linoleic acid being perhaps the most common one, we often cook with them, we, we fry with them, we put them in a pan, et cetera, et cetera. What happens when you heat these things up and then consume them?

Georgia Ede 50:59

Well, they they're very fragile. So any, any long chain poly unsaturated fatty acid saturated, that's a very stable, they're solid at room temperature, you know, they're there, they're there. They're stable, they're chemically stable. They don't break down and go rancid easily. Whereas unsaturated fats, and these include mono unsaturated fats like olive oil, but also especially the poly unsaturated fats and vegetable oils, these, you just look at them the wrong way, and they fall apart, they're, they're really very susceptible to what's called oxidative stress, when they're exposed to the air or to heat or to the oxidative stress that naturally occurs inside the cells of our body as part of our daily operations. They they break down, and then they can also in the process of breaking down, they can instigate this chain reaction of oxidative stress, where all of these reactive byproducts can these t