A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Is Diet Soda Actually Bad For You? ft. Doctor Mike

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Today, Josh and Nicole, joined by Doctor Mike, dissect the diet soda debate, tackling the question of whether it's truly bad for you. Leave us a voicemail at (833) DOG-POD1 Check out the video version of this podcast: http://youtube.com/@mythicalkitchen This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/HOTDOG and get on your way to being your best self. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Josh, what number diet coke is that for you? Ew, how dare you judge me? You come into here, how many times have you gone to the bathroom in your life, huh? Josh, you've like thrown eight cans in the recycling bin. What's wrong with you, man? I can stop any time I want. This is a hot dog as a sandwich.

Ketchup as a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show we break down the world's biggest food debates.

I'm your host, Josh Ayer. And I'm your host, Nicole Inayeti. And today we have a very special guest joining us. Please welcome People Magazine's Sexiest Doctor Alive 2015 and the reason my late Jewish grandmother once said to me, see, you could have been a YouTuber and a doctor. Dr. Mike Varshavsky, welcome to the show. Wow, what an introduction. I hope my grandma, you know, God rest her soul, is sitting there thinking the same thing. Very proud of my YouTube viewership and medical acumen. Boy, it is so hard to explain to a hundred centenarian Jewish grandmothers what YouTube is. But when she found out there was someone that was also a doctor, that is when I immediately went down the totem pole.

But comparison is a thief of joy. Mike, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, I'm really excited to chat what seems to be something that you have on full display there. Some Cokes and Diet Cokes and Peppers and Dr. Diet Pepper? Yeah. Correct. Did you go to medical school with Dr. Pepper?

Are you familiar with his work? I believe that there was a Dr. Lisa Pepper in my class. Man, that's tough. And I'm not making that up. There's a Dr. Pepper on Married at First Sight. Really? Yeah, best show ever. Huge, huge, huge.

Today, Dr. Mike, we brought you on because Nicole and I are, I don't want to say dumb, dumber than some. I feel like, I don't think we're dumb. I think if we applied ourselves, maybe we could have been doctors too. So don't cut yourself so short, Josh. What's wrong with you? I could not have been a doctor. But what I can do is yell about diet soda on the internet. That's true. You can do that pretty well. And that's what we're

doing today. Dr. Mike, we wanted to answer the question is diet soda actually bad for you? And I know that is a very loaded question. Bad. Bad always comes in quotation marks. But I drink probably three Diet Cokes a day. It used to be more.

How many Diet Red Bulls do you drink a day? Oh, okay. That's another. How many diet drinks? How many diet drinks, including your, I would say your breakfast smoothie, might also be a diet drink.

Not might. I drink a bunch of aspartame at six in the morning with my pre-workout. I'm drinking aspartame at nine in the morning with my protein shake. I'm drinking aspartame at 11. There is not a point in my day in which aspartame is not coursing through my veins. And many people online, I feel like Nicole, I'd lump you in there, says, this is terrible for you. It's going to kill you. Mike, what are your initial thoughts?

Well, the one thing that I can guarantee you is that life is going to kill you. So thinking about the individual ingredient like diet soda and the artificial sweeteners that are found in them is likely not what's going to do you in. We live in a world that is full of risk. And the number of risks we face and the number of things that impact our day-to-day behaviors, our chances of getting sick, our chances of getting better, really are astronomical and probably too much for the human brain to even wrap our heads around. Like if we even try and think what is a hundred trillion look like or count like or appear like, we can't imagine, we can't think in those numbers. Much in the same way, we can't think about risk numbers. Much in the same way we can't think about risk. So when we ask a question that's very binary,

like are diet sodas bad? We're truly asking a question that has no answer. It depends for whom, it depends what we're switching from, what we're having it in lieu of, how much are we having it, and only until we get all those questions answered, maybe we even come close to answering that question. But I'm excited to discuss it because I think there's fun in the discussion. Oh, 100%. And also diet soda is something that has rocketed in popularity in

recent years. And I think there's a lot of different factors about it. One thing is people's general fear of sugar. My general thoughts on nutrition, and I am certainly not an expert, I've just been on a lot of bodybuilding.com forums. Now, I'm reading this fantastic book by, it's called Food Politics by Marion Nessel. She is a longtime academic at UC Berkeley. But she said something that kind of stopped me in my tracks, which is nutrition science has, the advice from nutrition science has not changed since World War II. It is eat less meat and eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. Every single thing past that is because the media operates in forms of headlines.

There needs to be novelization in this. Sensualized or whatever. Exactly. There needs to be some sort of new information to report and people report it. of new information to report and people report it. And aspartame is one of the ingredients that has been really pushed as like a potential single cause of, I've seen Alzheimer's, strokes, cancer, autism, and then- Autism? People are saying that? People, I mean, people on the internet will say everything.

That's true. That's true. But this is one of those single ingredients that people like to single out. That's true. But this is one of those single ingredients that people like to single out. And one of the first studies was in 2007. It was called the Ramazzini Foundation. They did a test where they were intravenously injecting lab rats with aspartame, and that showed a link to bladder cancer. And that was one of the first studies that really influenced people to not drink aspartame,

or at least to fear it. But Mike, I want to ask you, what are the limitations on these studies where they're not experimenting on humans because they can't, and they're using things like lab rats, and they are, say, injecting things intravenously that you would normally consume orally? Like, what are the correlations that you can draw from that? intravenously that you would normally consume orally? Like, what are the correlations that you can draw from that? Yeah, so basically when we do mechanistic research, starting with a hypothesis, we have a theory that if you consume

product X, you're going to get outcome Y. Like, does aspartame increase risk of a specific cancer? We don't rush to start testing that in humans. We first start looking at the mechanisms in a petri dish, in a lab model, just to see what happens. And we start seeing a possible mechanism that can evolve. Then we raise that up and we start doing it in animal models. Sometimes that happens in rats, sometimes it happens in the rhesus monkey, and we start seeing the progression of it. Almost everything fails that initial hypothesis theory

before reaching human outcomes. Even like if you take big pharma, right, who want to maximize their profit. So they're not doing research willy nilly. They're doing research on things that they believe have a high chance of working. And even with big pharma, when a medication starts in the hypothesis theory in those petri dishes and animal models, 999 out of 1,000 do not make it to human trials.

And even when they make it to human trials, passing the human safety and proving that it actually works, 95% of those fail. So imagine if these are companies that have the most brilliant people in the world, they're trying to spend their money as efficiently as possible, and even then they're failing. That goes to show that our knowledge isn't as deep as we put it out to be,

especially when it comes with Petri dishes, animal models. It can show guidance to us as doctors, as researchers, in which way we can go forward, where we can ask better questions, but it certainly doesn't tell us how we should live our lives. Because if we did that, boy, we would have a different result on a different day, depending on who authored the study

and what finding they were looking for. There's actually a study that exists showing consuming any food, they literally took dozens of foods, and they saw that consuming any one of those foods raises the risk of colorectal cancer. Just to prove that if you really want to find that correlational link, it doesn't mean

that it caused the cancer to happen. So we have to be very careful when we're looking at this research or even being presented with research, how we let it affect our everyday lives. Yeah, 100%. And it seems like nutritional research specifically because there are so many different factors becomes incredibly hard to digest.

Like there was a recent 2023, the World Health Organization comes out and they say that aspartame is, quote, possibly carcinogenic to humans. And many, many people sent me this distinction and said, see, aspartame, carcinogenic, World Health Organization, a legit organization. Ergo, I was right. You were wrong. Diet soda is terrible for you. And then if you even go a little bit deeper, what they mean by possibly carcinogenic to humans is the findings of limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and animals and of limited mechanistic evidence of how carcinogenicity

may occur underscore the need for more research to refine our understanding. So basically they said, we don't know. None of the studies have proven anything. Then why write it? So basically they said, we don't know. None of the studies have proven anything. Then why write it? Why write a diagram? To scare people? This is why I went into YouTube because I watch my medical profession put out accurate information like what you just read. But their ability to make it user-friendly or understandable be complete poop.

And I can't find a better word for it because it's poop. It's misleading what is being said. Even when we do like statistical research and you'll see like news articles pop out and they say this medicine statistically significantly lowers rates of your blood pressure. And you're like, oh, well, statistically significantly, that sounds significant. That sounds strong. Those are words. Statistically significantly just means that whatever outcome happened,

it was statistically strong that it happened. But that outcome could be huge. It could be clinically insignificant. So just because something is statistically significant doesn't mean it's be clinically insignificant. So just because something is statistically significant doesn't mean it's also clinically significant. And how we show that to the world is what makes us good doctors, I think. Otherwise, then you're going to get probably carcinogenic or possibly carcinogenic, and then you're scaring people as opposed to, hey, we saw some initial mechanisms,

but unproven as of yet. Whoa, that's a lot more reassuring than what they initially said. I just want to thank my AP stats teacher. That's right. I got a four on the exam, but honestly that in fantasy football, because like when you hear a stat,

like doubles your risk of say Alzheimer's, that was one of the ones. Scary. That, as to the untrained ear, that sounds scary. It is incredibly scary. Yeah. And then if you see that the risk went from 0.001 to 0.002, that is not something that is actually going to affect anybody, even on a mass population level. And so, like, actually being able to dig into the statistics and understand where this is coming from. Also, understanding, I don't expect every person in the general population to go into the methodology of every study. Yeah, you can't expect that from people.

But you look at this initial rat study out of the Ramazzini Foundation in the early 2000s, and you found out that they were injecting them with the equivalent of a human drinking 1,200 Diet Cokes a day. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Poor babies. So you see the links are really tough. I just want to get into the history of diet soda really quick because I found it. Lay it on me, Josh.

Let's hear it. Well, okay. I'm going to ask you two. What do you think the first diet soda was in America? Tab. Tab? I have no idea. I'm an immigrant, so

I don't know American history well. What's the first item? From where? From Russia. Do they make, do you ever drink kvass? Do they have diet kvass? No. What's kvass? Sounds good. I kind of want to try it. It's made from like fermented bread?

Yeah. I'm a big fan. We'll find some diet kv gloss. But no, it was actually a soda that predated Tab by about 10 years and it was called NoCal. And NoCal was made with neither had I until I was researching this, but it was primarily made for diabetic

patients and it was mainly sold and consumed in medical facilities. And it wasn't until... Like if you're a diabetic in the hospital, they would give it to you. Yeah, they wanted a sweet treat. And it was made using a sweetener called sodium cyclamate and saccharin. So saccharin was the original sweetener found in tab.

Saccharin was actually banned in the United States in 1981, leading to the formation of Diet Coke using aspartame in 1982, if you're tracking with the history. The reason this is important is no cow comes out with sodium cyclamate in 1952. That was six years before the FDA passed the Food Additives Act, which they introduced the crazy legislation that if you're adding chemicals to food, we should test them first. Before that, you simply were not allowed to, or you simply didn't have to. You could do it. You were not obligated to. And then

there was a very similar study. Lab rats showed bladder cancer with insanely high doses of sodium cyclamate. It was a one study phenomenon that was never able to be reproduced whatsoever. And we have now banned sodium cyclamate in the United States because of that study, and it was not banned in Europe. And so there's this crazy sordid history where, you know, Europe banned saccharin before the United States did. The United States banned sodium cyclamate before Europe did. It's still considered safe in Europe. How can science is supposed to be about objective truth, right?

And sharing the information around the world. But how do we end up in a situation where one ingredient is banned in Europe, one? And sharing the information around the world, but how do we end up in a situation where one ingredient's banned in Europe, one's not in the US? In my opinion, it's probably due to the bureaucracy of the matter. You have a lot of people that are either elected or appointed into certain positions. They're in those positions for long periods of time. They have their own intrinsic biases on what they think is right. And as a result, you have rules that don't make a lot of sense.

Like for me, as a primary care physician, I find it strange that the FDA will only step in and regulate a supplement if it's already raising red flags about causing harm and killing people. But otherwise, I can right now bottle up whatever I want into a capsule on this table, put it into a little capsule in a bottle, a pretty bottle,

say Magic Mike's formula to make you faster, stronger, better, whatever, and I could legally do that. And the fact that the FDA won't check it is wild. I think Channing Tatum has rights to that name. So that's your only legal battle there. So check this out. I can do that. But my only concern is not that I just poured God knows what into the pill, but that Channing Tatum might sue me. That's the only risk to doing this. That's a problem. That is a problem. And Magic Mike should be public domain. I think that's what we learned from this.

I grew up in the golden age of GNC where literally when I was in high school, you could walk in and you could buy Trenbolone. You could buy legitimate steroids. What is Trenbolone? Trenbolone, I believe it was an anabolic steroid originally used in cattle production. Mike, forgive me if you know more about this than I do. I don't. I'm not super familiar with cattle hormones and steroidal medications. What are they teaching them in school? No, go ahead.

But no, you could literally buy anabolic steroids. There's a product called Tren Extreme. The makers of it are now in prison because they were putting straight steroids in it. Oh, my goodness. And there was also another product that had straight-up amphetamines in it because the supplement industry is not regulated and we had a bunch of cracked-out 14-year-olds. Yeah, like there's been so many instances of over-the-counter medications. This happens quite frequently as of late in gas station pills where like – Sex lion pills? Yes, yes exactly libido boosters

and really the only ingredient in there is sildenafil which is the medication found in viagra so they're selling a prescription medication within an over-the-counter medicine because no one's checking what's actually in it that That's crazy. You're telling me it's not the properties of honey and ashwagandha that are leading people to four-hour? Ginseng? Well, that's probably the question I get most is like, which supplement should I take to boost X, Y, and Z? I'm like, probably shouldn't take anything

unless there's a medical reason as to why you're taking it. Dark leafy greens. Well, yeah, those are great. Why not take them? My question is why people, instead of eating dark leafy greens, go for like some green powder. Just eat the dark leafy greens. Why make them into a powder? Chewing's awesome. It's a good time. Yeah, no, that means that. I too like to chew. That is a hell of a question. When I played sports in college and I knew a lot of people who instead of eating any vegetables would only drink spirulina powder. That was the big thing. And they're like, I'm

getting all the nutrients. And I was like, have you heard of a salad? But some people don't got it in the bag. I want to talk about the alternative to diet soda. Because when we're talking about people drinking diet soda. Sparkling water. Well, yeah. I mean, water is probably the... I'm a Pellegrino girl. Always, let me tell you, every time at Shabbat dinner, my mother-in-law puts out all of the Cokes and then she gives me the Pellegrino because she knows I only drink Pellegrino. I don't like sodas, honestly, anymore. You don't like the flavor. You don't like the sugary stuff.

Okay. Well, I mean, when I was a kid, I loved Coke. I mean, I'm more of a Sprite drinker than any of these things, but I don't know what it is. I mean, I'm more of a Sprite drinker than any of these things. But I don't know what it is. I think it's too sweet. And I hate, despise, disgusted with the taste of Diet Coke and zero and all these zero calorie stuff.

Do I have it like if I'm like eating food and I need some indigestion help? Yes. Do I have a sip of Diet Coke? Of course. Because I feel like the fake sugar or the real sugar helps. But I don't drink – like people just drink cans of soda. Yeah. I can't do that.

I think it depends on if you're a drinker. Pellegrino also has a softer bubble. Which is why I don't like it. I need the violence. I need the violence of Topo Chico. No, 100%. That's why I don't like Pellegrino. I'm a soft, delicate lady. I like the soft bubbles.

Too much bubbles, it just ruins my day. No, but we have seen an explosion. And I think part of it is the fear of full sugar sodas, the kind of carb phobia that we've been fed for our entire lives. Part of it is the fear of astrotime, the unknown, which is why we've seen things like LaCroix really explode on the market. Oh, sure. But Dr. Mike, do you drink diet sodas? Do you consume artificial sweeteners? No, I'm a Pellegrino guy myself as well. Well done. Well done. I'm proud of you. Or sparkling water in general. I will say anything bubbly, even if it doesn't have sugar, there's been some theoretical evidence as how it

can influence weight. In fact, some of the doctors that work in my metabolic department in my hospital will frequently talk about with their patients who consume gassy beverages and how it creates some bloating and expansion of the stomach, which can then lead you to have more space in the stomach. Therefore, you don't feel as full if you have a smaller meal, if you don't have the sparkling water. So it's not something that's incredibly proven, but something that we take into consideration when we're giving recommendations. Well, this sucks. No, but I don't want you to think this sucks. No, I know.

See, that's the thing. We can't villainize and say something's all bad or all good because if you're swapping from a sugary soda and you're looking to reduce the amount of added sugar you're taking in, which is probably useful in most cases. But if you're looking to do that, switching to a sparkling water is a great alternative. Agreed. But now if you're drinking a lot of sparkling water and you're having acid reflux symptoms,

and you're already struggling to lose weight and you've kind of hit a plateau, maybe it's something else you can try. But it doesn't mean I'm signaling everyone to stop drinking sparkling water. Thank you. I read a headline that said sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Dr. Mike, should I switch from putting sugar in my coffee to putting cocaine in my coffee? I hate those metaphors. They're so bad. No, please don't do that. I saw somewhere that said cheese is the same level of addiction as cocaine. Oh, God.

So we're just going to put cheese in our soda. Okay. So when we're talking about is diet soda bad for you, we understand it is a clickbait title. There is absolutely no answer, but that's what people are likely searching. That is what I have searched hundreds of times, and I get on WebMD, and then it says you have colon

cancer, and then I get freaked out. It seems to be there are two sides to this. There's what's happening to you on the molecular level with diet soda, which all the studies, again, the World Health Organization said possibly carcinogenic. Maybe, possibly. Because the evidence isn't really there. But the more interesting side of it to me is the behavioral side of it,

which when you're drinking diet soda, what is it doing to you psychologically? You said that this tastes disgusting to you probably because – Can I have a sip? Yeah. Did you put your mouth on it? I did, yeah. I'll put my mouth on it too. I have a clean slate for most things.

But you – Give me a sip of regular soda. You were not raised on drinking a bunch of sugary, sugary beverages, right? I was not raised that way. I used to drink a half gallon of cranberry cocktail, not juice, mind you, cran-raz cocktail a day because I thought that there was fruit in it. I wasn't raised with a lot of, like, nutritional education. I thought there was fruit in it. That meant it was good for me, so I would drink it with impunity.

But, like, that imbued my taste buds with just such a fortitude, Nicole, to withstand all of this taste. taste buds with just such a fortitude, Nicole, to withstand all of this taste. Combine that with my love of pre-workout and various nerds candies. Yeah. And I taste Diet Coke and it's like shooting a BB gun at a tank. To me, like I need this flavor. But can you just drink the regular Coke for a second and tell me how much better that tastes? Oh, my God. It's like the nectar of the gods.

Doesn't it taste so good? But if I drink the equivalent of, say, I drink four Diet Cokes a day, I drink four of these, that's an additional, quick math, 640 calories. That's so much. Which, you know, is not, it runs contra to my own personal, like, yeah, to my own fitness and health goals. Sure. You know, so for me, I'm like, I need this. But there has been a fair amount of research out there that says if you drink diet soda because aspartame is 30 times sweeter than sugar, it is conditioning you. And there's been some really convincing research both on humans and fruit flies that were fed Splenda instead of sugar, ate 30% more food. And they also found this with people when people consumed diet soda. And this is on analyzing 10 years of data of people's real lifestyle choices.

People who drank diet sodas ate about 30% more of what they call discretionary calories, which are fun little treat foods. So there does seem to at least be a, like a, not causal, but correlational link. Correlation. Yeah. Between drinking diet soda and eating more sugary foods outside of that. Wild. Yes. And then when we look at the randomized controlled data, which is kind of our gold standard of when we do research and why dietary research usually is not randomized controlled, because you have to like monitor what every person eats and then swap them and randomize them to certain groups.

That's very hard to do long-term. And if we don't have long-term data, we end up using questionnaires and following people for a long period of time and all that stuff. But what we found is, yes, in some instances, we found that people have a prerequisite for, like a precursor for more sweet foods if they consume people who drank artificial sweetener beverages actually got their sweet kick from those things and ended up eating less sweets and lost more weight. Sounds simple.

So sounds like science is all over the place. It's conflicting, which means that there is no clear answer yet. So now I'm going to give you the practical answer of how I practice in a field of uncertainty. Because being a good doctor, especially a family medicine doctor, means I have to work within the bounds of our current knowledge. And many times our current knowledge is incomplete, and yet I still have to give some kind of advice, right? I can't just have a patient come in and say, meh, because that's not going to be a very valuable visit. And my Yelp score is going to probably drop really quickly. So here's what I say to patients. If you are drinking water and you're happy, do not switch to diet soda. There's no benefit to doing so. In fact, there's some potential risk, potential risk. We don't even know that yet. If you're drinking sugary soda and that sugar is harming you,

whether in the form of having higher weight, having high triglycerides, you have diabetes, switching to a diet soda is going to be smart because then those risks are going to be swapped for less risk. So again, to who are you giving the advice? What are they switching from? That's how we're going to give practical feedback, even in the areas of uncertainty. Mike, that makes such a terrible headline. I feel like we should say diet soda kills you faster. You know what I mean? I feel like we should just workshop that. No, but I mean, that is, you know, the answer that nobody wants to hear, which is very nuanced.

But it's the best answer. Yeah. It's nuanced. It's nuanced. Do it a thought. And guess what? You're doing the diet sodas four times a day. I would say most people don't fall into the category where they're having multiple cans in a day.

Most people who are looking into this are just having it sometimes, barring certain outliers. And if you're having a Diet Coke or whatever beverage you want that's artificially sweetened sometimes, who cares? The people that then start isolating that or the cold plunges or some other fad thing in a given moment, it's like you are so disconnected from the risks we face in everyday life, how our mental health changes when someone breaks up with us, whether or not we take too much of a prescription medication, whether or not we're over consuming calories, whether or not we make it to the gym, whether or not we sleep well, those things have huge impacts of our health. Talking about the four minute cold plunge protocol that you're doing

or whether or not you have one Coke can a week is so useless. I cannot begin to explain to people how unimportant it is. Gut health. Nicole, the key here is gut health. This comes in and it eviscerates your flora. You have to have a full of sauerkraut before every meal. The fauna within my gut right now. And the flora within it as well.

Little birds. There's little pigeons and they're pecking at. No, no, no. The flora is the flowers and the fauna are the little deer. This guy, he's on the payroll for Big Pharma right now. I know, I know, I know. Why do we have him on? This is ridiculous.

Cold plunges, they target, Nicole, they target your lipidiness. Lipidiness. Yeah, yeah, lipidema. If it lasts for four hours, see Dr. Mike. Yeah, sex line pills. All right, Nicole and Mike, we've heard what you and I have to say. Now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe. It's time for a segment we call...

Opinions are like casseroles. He liked it. Does that mean nobody wants them? He did a little dance. You don't like casseroles? I don't know. To be honest, I can't believe I'm admitting this. What's a casserole?

That's another podcast entirely. Oh, God, that is a great, okay, so. Do you have another hour? It's funny because casserole. Is it that long? So, casseroles were technically the first time the term was used in the modern American context in the mid-1700s. I'm dead-ass serious. It was in Vermont.

But that said, like, any, it's just any large amalgamation of foods that is baked inside one dish and meant to be eaten as such so it's just like a one pot so they've existed throughout all of history it's how most people like a stew kind of like a stew but stew is too wet stew's too wet okay have you ever had uh like my grandma's i think there's some stews out there that would have exception to that statement no but like uh have you had kugel before k Kugel's not a casserole. Yes, it is. It's cooked in a casserole dish. If you do like a beef stew with a kugel top,

that's a casserole. Okay, you're the only person on planet Earth that has done that. No, Mike, have you ever had a beef stew with a kugel top? I don't know what a kugel top is.

This is not what a kugel top is. I don't know what a kugel top is. I'm not part of my medical education. Bye. Okay. Should we get into our first opinion? The Minnesotans call it a hot dish. Okay, well, my first opinion, Dr. Mike,

Nicole and I have both taken a very pro-leeching stance on this podcast. Pro-leeching. I'm into leeching and bloodletting. Well, because here's the thing. You have blood in you and it's bad and you need to get it out. What better creature than a leech? Why is the blood problematic? Nicole, my colleague. Are you asking me? Yeah. You should ask this guy. Do you know we still do bloodletting for very specific conditions?

I can name you one. Tell me. Please name us one. Polycythemia vera. Okay. Where you have an overproduction of red blood cells, and as a result, it actually, you would go in and get some blood taken out yeah but you would do it like with the syringe and like oh yeah you would the leeches don't take uh enough blood you're not just slicing

someone open and like bloodletting the leeches need jobs nicole um actually i used to go to um i used to go to he was a chiropractor but he was also the USA weightlifting Olympic team's doctor, and so I went to do soft tissue work. But he also did some kind of weird stuff, and he did a practice called wet cupping. My dad did that in China. My dad did that in China. They make little incisions, and then they do the cupping,

and then it sucks the blood out. Yes. So I walked into this man's office for the first time, and there was a person whose back was covered in blood, and I freaked out. My dad did that in China, and he showed me pictures like, look how cool this is. And I'm like, this is not cool. Don't show me your bloody back. All I'm saying could have been leeches. Nicole, do you want to read the first opinion?

Sure. I love to read. So we asked our audience if they had any specific health or nutritional questions. And so Nicole is going to read them out to you. You get first crack at your response to them. Sure. So the first one we have is at pretzel emoji, picky eaters are just a sign of weak parenting. No, can't do it. Can't co-sign that statement. Why? What is the cause of picky eating? Or I mean, I'm sure there's not one cause, but… Yeah, that's the thing. That's so variable.

Could you have contributed to the pickiness of your child with your parenting habits? Sure. But does that mean it's necessarily your fault? I mean, I can give you medical conditions of like hyperphagia syndromes where children eat so much so that their obesity cannot be caused by overfeeding alone. It's a hormonal issue. So to say that all causes of it are that, not true. I think.

And now we get Nicole's medical opinion. As someone who could have been a doctor if she applied herself. Nicole's medical opinion. As someone who could have been a doctor if she applied herself. I do think some parents, you know, kind of like, like if my mom didn't like a certain food. Like my mom doesn't like the color purple. She's never been a fan of the color purple.

Not the movie, like the color purple. She doesn't like it. Do I now have a slight aversion to the color purple? A little bit. I don't, it's not my favorite color. Sure. Do I now have a slight aversion to the color purple? A little bit. I don't, it's not my favorite color. Sure. Do I think? But there's plenty of examples of people who like hear that from their parents and then love the color purple.

Yeah, that's me. Okay. But that's because of the way you were raised. Like I always wanted to be like my mom. I'm familiar with the 2008 study of Rodriguez et al coming out of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where I think what... All right, next opinion. We got... What do you mean?

You need to say something about this. I know nothing about parenting. I'm just so afraid. I really want children and I'm so afraid that I'm going to do all the things that I think are right and then they're going to hate me and only eat french fries and...

Just let them hang out with Auntie Nicole. They're going to be whipped into shape. Don't worry about it. I am so frightened. Okay. I'm going to correct the opinion, and the opinion will state this now. Parenting can have an impact on the pickiness of your child's

eating habits. I like that. That's good. Well done, Doc. Nuance, baby. All right. We got... Oh, I had one that I liked. Here we go. Nicole, your drink is purple right now. Oh, my drink is purple. It got – wait. Oh, I had one that I liked. Here we go. Nicole, your drink is purple right now. Oh, my drink is purple. It's like pink. It's like fuchsia.

Good to you. Overcoming childhood trauma. I'm proud of you. At Greg Bernershaw says, eating healthy doesn't mean you can't put seasoning in your food. Oh, of course. In fact, seasoning in many ways is healthy and low to no calorie. There's so many ways to use spices where you're not adding to the caloric intake. And we've seen spices carry a correlation for healthier outcomes. And notice I say spices aren't necessarily perfectly healthy,

but they lean healthy. Yeah. It's so funny because my relationship with diet and nutrition, I know this stuff is very nuanced and can frankly be triggering for a lot of people. But for me, all the people I grew up around, so I was a hammer thrower in college. Nicole's sick of hearing about this, but my coach- I love it. Don't say that. I love it. My coach would threaten to take away my scholarship if I dropped underneath 250 pounds and we were working out constantly. How old were you? This is from like 18 to 22 in college. And so I knew a lot of people who were equally likely to be trying to gain weight for their

specific sport as they were trying to lose weight. And so my relationship to this is like, it's all very neutral. You use nutrition, especially caloric or macronutrient intake to satisfy your personal goals, whatever they may be. I know a lot of power lifters. I know a lot of strong men. And so my buddy who is Greece's national record holder in the shot put, shout out Nick Scarvellis, can't wait to go to your wedding on Samos, buddy.

But anyways, we were at an XFL game and I watched this man pull out a quart container filled with white rice covered in mustard. And I said, buddy, why the mustard? And he's like, well, I need 100 grams of carbs right now, and mustard has zero calories. And I just started listing other things that also have zero calories. Soy sauce, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, just anything. And I want to grab these giant hulking bodybuilders and just say, you can put the spices in your food, man. Yeah, I've never understood the bland chicken, white rice, broccoli mentality.

I think it's because the macros are consistent and they crave and desire consistency within their routine. So I get that, but putting paprika on it isn't going to completely screw it up. And I wish I could just, like you said, shake them and say, you can have red and green flakes on your food. It might make you, I don't know, find a little joy in eating. Some people, they view food exclusively as fuel. As fuel, yeah.

And I can't empathize with them. Me either. But I understand. I did watch a bodybuilder eat, quote, macro-friendly spaghetti bolognese. Oh, that's cool. Well, it was literally 10 ounces of lean ground beef. And what I saw were six spaghetti noodles. Only six.

Yeah. And I was like. But at that point, you can just like. Make a chili. Yeah, make a chili. Turn it into a chili. It's not spaghetti anymore. Those like shirataki noodles.

Oh, can you do a casserole with that or no? Absolutely. Yes, you can. I'm so glad you asked. Of course you can. The state ofio has like six indigenous chili based casseroles just in ohio they were all invented in ohio so funny one more let's do another one okay let's see um hands okay at hands and schumacher says chicken thighs are

greater than chicken breasts not only can it be more flavorful, but also more forgiving to cook. Still a ton of protein and fats are not evil. I switch up the seasonings so I don't get tired of the flavors. Chicken breast versus chicken thigh. I'm allowing space for their opinion. I like chicken thighs. I lean towards more chicken breasts. I buy, I buy in my home more chicken breasts than I do chicken thighs.

People in America buy more boneless, skinless chicken breasts than any other meat product on the market. Makes sense. And it sucks because 99% of people don't know how to cook it properly. sucks because 99% of people don't know how to cook it properly. The best advice I can give is right when you get your chicken breasts at home, season them with salt. That salt is going to permeate throughout the entire chicken. You are curing your chicken. Marinating with anything but salt does literally nothing. Spices don't seep, but salt does because it creates a reverse osmotic reaction within the protein structures of the flesh. It makes your chicken 10 times juicier and you won't hate what you're eating. True.

That said, my one thing about diet, my one rule is that I will never eat so clean that I have to eat chicken breast over a chicken thigh. If you are schvitzing about your decision between thigh and breast, I think you've lost the plot on what it means to eat and enjoy food. That's what I believe. That's great. That's good. Mike, do you cook? That's fair. I don't cook.

I occasionally dabble, but I generally don't cook. What I did find the other day, because my cholesterol levels came in unfavorably last time I checked, I needed to decrease the amount of saturated fat I was consuming. And there are still days of the week where I consume red meat and I was eating like a leaner cut of beef. And then I found at Whole Foods, they have bison tenderloin, which has on the label, which means that it's probably close to zero, zero grams of saturated fat in a four-ounce serving. So I was like, whoa, that's kind of awesome. And I started eating that instead.

So we'll see how the cholesterol numbers do now. I'm a big bison fan. It's also just delicious. A bison steak? Beef-adjacent meats, bison venison, they are really great if you know how to probably cook it. I also love beef-adjacent stuff. Can I just ask Mike personal nutrition questions now? Because hear me out.

My cholesterol came back high too, and I'm worried. Okay. I mean, this is your podcast as much as it is mine. Go ahead. Ask him. I don't cook any red meat in the home anymore unless it's for something special or entertaining. Really? Julie and I exclusively eat chicken and fish, but what I do eat is

over a pound of animal flesh a day because I've been raised with the idea that one gram of protein per pound of body weight, and so I try and eat roughly 200, I don't religiously track, but 200 grams of protein per day, and I told my doctor this, which Mike is my new

primary care physician. Thank you so much. Do you take Blue Shield? Only if the copay is 10x for the podcast. Yeah, we can do that. We can do that. You can talk later. But no, I told my doctor, I was like, oh, I don't eat red meat. I only eat chicken and fish at home.

And they were like, well, that's still just a lot of meat to eat that could be contributing to your cholesterol. Probably decrease that. And I was like, well, have you seen this bodybuilding.com forum article that I've printed out for you, Dr. Lyashevsky? And she did not seem to find that amusing. So in general, cholesterol is driven by consumption of saturated fats, which are found primarily in animal products. So even if you're not consuming red meat, you're likely consuming higher saturated fat diet than most. So you're consuming leaner sources of protein

with fish and chicken and the fish has fat, but it's healthy fats. So that's a good reason to keep fish in. But I would maybe look to replacing some of your chicken protein with something like edamame, mung bean pasta, or the bonza pasta that you'll see in the supermarkets, which have both fiber and protein, which will help your cholesterol levels twofold, because you're getting less

saturated fat, but still getting your protein and second when you increase fiber we've actually seen decreases in cholesterol as well so that's what i'm doing myself as well so we're kind of on the same trajectory i'll keep you updated with my ldl levels if you do the same man is ldl bad together ldl is bad hdl is good it's the marker yeah the marker of ldl is considered the bad club. Nicole, ask him about seed oils. Do it. Okay. Hey, Dr. Mike, can you tell me a little bit about seed oils?

Give me like a two-minute spiel about seed oils and why you think they're either good, bad, neutral, or you just, what are they? Tell us about them. I would say that they're neutral and the hype around them. And it's neutral because we're still lacking some data, Tell us about them. I would say that they're neutral and the hype around them. And it's neutral because we're still lacking some data, much in the same way that we can't clarify as artificial sweeteners being all good or bad.

Same thing with seed oils. Look, if you're having seed oils to excess, it's going to be bad. But if you have water to excess, it'll be bad. There's medical conditions related to that where you throw off your electrolytes so bad you can go into a coma. You eat enough carrots, you turn orange, but that doesn't mean the carrots are unhealthy. So much in the same way, if I asked you a question that's not medical, like are hammers bad, what would you say? Hammers? It depends what you do with them. Oh, look at that. You're bringing some nuance into the conversation. Yeah, I did it. So, yep.

The same way. Do we have any other, if anybody can leave the room, I have a rash that I was trying to, I'm just saying, now that we're here, it's probably fine.

I drink from your cup. Am I going to get it? That's not where the rash is. Oh, good. No, I'm kidding. Dr. Mike, thank you so much, man. This was absolutely incredible that you gave us very clear, concise. No, I'm kidding. Dr. Mike, thank you so much, man. This was absolutely incredible

that you gave us very clear, concise answers that have a one-word takeaway. No, I'm really grateful to bring some nuance to this conversation and hopefully our audience

can take something away from that and from somebody that's significantly smarter than both of us. I sure did. I think the biggest takeaway is to use nuance as a superpower, A.

B, not to villainize or be deathly afraid of one ingredient or nutrient. And in general, think of diet as part of your lifestyle and not just, oh, this food is bad, this food is good, this food is bad. Because that creates a lot of unhealthy eating habits that usually, even if they're helping you for the short term, long term, it's not going to be sustainable and valuable. And here it's about creating sustainable habits. Beautifully said. And don't put cocaine in your coffee. On that note, thank you so much for listening to A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. We've got new audio-only episodes every Wednesday, video version here on YouTube every Sunday. And if you want to be featured on Opinions or Like Casseroles, give us a ring and leave a quick message at 833-DOGPOD1. And make sure to check out Dr. Mike on his YouTube channel, at Dr. Mike.

Doc, you got anything else to share? As always, stay happy and healthy. That was beautiful. I'll see you all next time. Thanks again, Doc.