Stuff You Should Know - The War on Fat: The Seven Countries Study

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

The Seven Countries Study was a fairly impressive, long-term study on the effects of fat in our diet, among other things. But it was very flawed and launched the misguided "War on fat." Learn all about today, then make up your own mind. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's Josh and Chuck, your friends, and we are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff You Should Know book, Chuck. That's right, what's the cool, super cool title

we came up with? It's Stuff You Should Know, colon, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys. The illustrations are amazing, and just the look of the book,

it's all just, it's exactly what we hoped it would be, and we cannot wait for you to get your hands on it. Yes, we can't, and you don't have to wait, actually. Well, you do have to wait, but you don't have to wait to order. You can go pre-order the book right now, everywhere you get books, and you will eventually get a special gift for pre-ordering,

which we're working on right now. And that's right, so check it out soon, coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's here somewhere, and this makes it Stuff You Should Know,

the heart-healthy edition that I've been wanting to do for a very long time, Chuck. Yeah, and this was one that was put together by our buddy Dave Ruse, but back in February, and I lost it, and thankfully you said, hey, by the way, you know, we got that seven countries thing just sitting there gathering dust.

Yep, I said, Chuck, don't lose it, here. I lost it, and then I found it. I was lost, but now I'm found. Right. And fat is good for your body, the end. I know, but that's such like a revolutionary statement these days, radical, even, basically, to say fat is good for your body, the end.

Especially our, well, not even our age, but anyone in America in the 80s and 90s. Somebody in our cohort, you mean? Yeah, I love that word. I do, too. So the reason why it's kind of radical to say that fat's good for you is because, yeah, everybody our age, Chuck, knows that fat is horrible for you,

and even if you kind of know that fat's not as bad as we used to think, you probably still don't realize how much better it is for you than it actually is. There's still some part of you that demonizes it. And during like the 80s and the 90s, you couldn't get fat if you shook it out of a pig. Like it was nowhere to be found in the United States. We had low-fat everything.

Remember we had like potato chips where they took out the fat and replaced it with like a diarrhea-creating agent, right? What were those called? The Olien. Olien, yeah, we did those. But I think they were like Lays Olay. Weren't they called Olay chips?

They should have been called Oy Vays. So yeah, like we were doing all sorts of things. And one of the worst things we did, too, even worse than adding Olien or replacing fat with Olien, was to take out fat and replace it with high fructose corn syrup. Because one of the things that fat does is give food flavor.

And we take fat out of food. You still want it to have flavor. And if you're a food processor, one cheap, easy way to put flavor back into it is to put high fructose corn syrup into it. And so they think that like all of this war on fat that took place in the 80s and 90s is actually at least partially, if not fully responsible

for the outbreak of chronic diseases that we're seeing now, including obesity and diabetes that is just epidemic right now in the United States. Yeah, it was so ingrained in us that even after doing this podcast episode and knowing what we now know, it's still like you say things like, you know, boy, that steak,

you just feel it like clogging up your arteries as you know, that fat just gets wedged in there. You just get these mental images of fat just like breaking off of food and sticking to your blood vessels. Right, yeah, like this is really unhealthy or this is super indulgent or something like that. And that just may not necessarily be the case,

but yeah, we had a number done on us basically and we're still crawling out from under it. And what's the most magnificently amazing thing is that basically all of this, the war on fat, the low fat trend, the possibly the diabetes and the obesity that resulted from taking out fats and replacing it with sugar,

all of this stuff came from one study that was conducted back, starting back in the 50s that some people are like, this study isn't even legitimate methodologically. Yeah, so that is the seven country study. And the creator of the seven country study was someone named Dr. Ansel Keys who was married and published and this is,

I'm not gonna, we'll just let this speak for itself. They published a number of high volume selling books about the Mediterranean diet, these cookbooks. And sometimes like the very first one was only what, like two years after they started doing this study. So they've been accused of cherry picking their data and promoting correlation as causation.

And as a result of all this, the United States very famously came out with a food pyramid that we was drilled into our heads in school and said, fat is cholesterol and that is heart disease and eating fatty things will kill you. Yes, like ipso facto, the problem is, is that it was all based those recommendations

that food pyramid was all based on the study and not any kind of like clinical data. It was just basically a study that was set up and designed to support a hypothesis, not really test a hypothesis so much as support. This hypothesis by Dr. Ansel Keys that saturated fats rose cholesterol levels in your blood and that increased cholesterol levels in your blood

would kill you through heart disease. And so Dr. Keys has been very much demonized over the years as people have figured out like no, fats aren't bad for you and actually you need them. But there's also been like an effort to reform him too. And in his defense, he wasn't just some, some psycho narcissist doctor from what I could tell. He is, he invented K-Rations.

K-Rations are called that after him Keys. Oh, no way. Yeah, that like kept a lot of GIs alive in World War II. He was a major part of the Minnesota starvation experiment where volunteers, conscious just objectors in World War II volunteered to be starved so that the scientists could figure out how to refeed people without killing them,

which became very useful when we liberated the POW camps in Germany and some of the occupied areas. So he was like a good, okay, I don't know enough about him to say he was a good person but I don't think he was like an evil person by any stretch of the imagination. And also the reason that he started conducting the study in the first place was because there was an epidemic

of middle-aged men in particular in America who were just dying left and right of heart disease and he wanted to figure out what the problem was. He also started the K-pop phenomenon which is so catchy and great, I don't know any K-pop. I know the kids love it though. They do, they're nuts for it. That one B-52s band or something like that,

I can't remember their name. No idea, but if they're called the B-52s then they should be sued because that's been taken. That's right. So Dr. Ansel Keys is an American from Minnesota, a physiologist and in the 40s when the Don Drapers, the Don Drapers although that was a little later, but the Don Drapers of the world were falling over dead

from smoking cigarettes all the time and eating steak for lunch and martinis for lunch. He said, you know what? I'm gonna figure this out and see what's going on and I'm gonna identify some risk factors why men in this country are developing heart disease and men around the world is what it ended up being. But it started in Minnesota where he did

a little pilot study and while he was doing that he got a message from a colleague in Italy who said, in Southern Italy, we got the no heart to disease, everybody's a healthy. And he said, really? And he also said, Southern Italy's really nice, you should come visit. And so he went there in the 1950s and I bet,

I mean Southern Italy is still great, but I bet in the early 1950s it was just idyllic. Yeah. And he went down there and he started these informal studies comparing business executives with the working class men of Southern Italy, measuring serum cholesterol levels, talking about what you're eating,

getting the data on heart disease and heart attacks there from the hospitals. And he started to form this hypothesis that, you know what, dudes, middle-aged dudes that have higher serum cholesterol levels are more likely to die or at least suffer from a heart attack. Yes, yes. And that was like the beginning.

That was, yeah, and that was his hypothesis and it's a pretty sound hypothesis, especially based on some of the data that he'd seen because he around this time, after he was intrigued by his friend in Southern Italy and his trip to Southern Italy, which by the way, he fell in love with Southern Italy so much he shopped there.

And I believe lived out his life till age 101. Wow. Yeah. Well, that proves it. It basically does because I believe he did adhere pretty strictly to the Mediterranean diet he espoused. He was no hypocrite. But he started poking around and getting his hands

on whatever data he could for things like fat intake in the diet and incidences of heart disease and heart attacks, wherever he could get it in the world. And he compiled data from 22 different countries. And he said, wow, this is really kind of all over the place. I'll just select six of these countries that really prove my point. And he created what's known as the six-country graph,

which a lot of people confuse with the seven-country study. But it predated the seven-country study, but it was this thing that was kind of like the transition period between first forming this hypothesis and beginning the seven-country study. The six-country graph was kind of like the connective tissue between the two. And it also told him where to look

to really find the biggest disparities that might support or undermine his hypothesis. And so he got to work looking around and contacting people around the world and said, hey, I have zero funding to offer you. I know that World War II just ended and everybody is basically trying to rebuild their economy and their nation and Europe is kind of war torn and shattered

and Japan has had bombs dropped on it. But do you wanna start studying whether eating steak is bad for you and gonna kill you? And actually, astoundingly, some countries said yes. Yeah, so the countries ended up being Italy, Spain, South Africa, Japan, Finland, the US. And I guess was it Greece? Was the last one, did that count?

Okay. Yeah, Greece. Did Greece count? Well, I mean, I knew, yeah, I know Greece counts. Greece is the word. Sure. So it was time in the mid-1950s. He had the interested countries and the interested parties.

So in 1958, he developed these select populations and you kind of teased it earlier, calling this cohorts. These populations of men they referred to as cohorts in the study. So when you hear say cohort, it's not like one guy. It's a population of guys. Right. So the seven countries they would monitor for 25 years

and ideally lead to what risk factors would lead to heart disease. And that was his goal was I'm gonna find out what these risk factors are, provide some evidence, and then say, here's what you should be eating basically. Yes. So, I mean, that's exactly what he did. Like you said, within two years of starting this study,

which was supposed to last 25 and actually did last 25. And some of the people who were the original participants were studied for more than 40 years. But within two years, he turned around and published that cookbook. That's how certain he was of his hypothesis being correct. Yeah, and I don't, you know, we don't wanna poo poo the Mediterranean diet.

No. I think the idea, I'm sure the Mediterranean diet is it can be quite healthy. The idea though is you shouldn't just be like, I'm gonna eat low fat because that's what happened in America is everyone didn't say, hey, we'll just eat Mediterranean. They said, we'll just eat junk food full of sugar

and high fructose corn syrup. But doesn't have fat in it. And that was the other thing too, is he is very frequently unfairly accused of demonizing fat. He didn't do that. He said, you need to be eating olive oil by the gallon full, just inject it daily basically.

He didn't say that, it's kind of paraphrasing. But he didn't leave out things like, you know, fats from fish or from olive oil. It was saturated fat in particular that he was convinced was the culprit for heart disease and deaths from heart disease. Right, and eat a lot of grains, eat a lot of pasta, eat a lot of fruit, eat a lot of bread.

A lot of vegetables. Sure, vegetables are good for you. Yeah. That's true, right? Yeah, and also I think one of the other things that was so radical about the Mediterranean diet, like even now you're like, oh, it sounds kind of exotic. This is the 50s that this guy first introduced

the Mediterranean diet. But one of the other things that was radical about it, and I should say, I didn't give credit to his wife, Margaret, who co-wrote the first book with him, at least the first one, if not more, they wrote it together. But the thing that was radical about it was that he said, hey, those fruits and vegetables and all that, make those the main, like make the meat your side dish,

like flip it over and you're gonna live a lot longer than you are just by eating a big steak and some cream spinach on the side. Hey, I got no problem with the man. There is definitely a case to be made about eating what you like and living shorter. It's tough to argue with in some cases. Hey, what do we do when we, occasionally on the road,

we'll go to a steakhouse together? We split a cream spinach every time. Sure, I mean, how can you go to a steakhouse and not eat cream spinach? It's the best. It makes you strong, right? Bye-bye. Yeah, my forearms just are freakishly bulging.

Should we take a break? Yes. All right, go work out those forearms and we'll talk about the cohorts right after this. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you wanna know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. Okay, so we're gonna say it again, cohorts, cohorts, it's a study population that bears some sort of similarity to one another. Sort of. There were 16 in the seven countries study

and all 16 cohorts totaled 12,763 participants. So it's a pretty good study. 16 different groups of people, more than 12,000 total in seven different countries. It's fairly impressive and ambitious study for the time, for sure. It was and I think there were at least two in every country except for the U.S.

which had one cohort and he never said, we have to be fair, he never said, you know what, this represents all men in these countries and sort of all men around the world. They never pretended like that was the case but they had to start somewhere and we're not pooping the whole study. Like it was very robust and if you carry out a study

in seven countries with all of these men over 25 years, it's, you know, they weren't slouches or anything like that. No, but the very fact that he went around and said, oh, these people eat a Mediterranean diet, I'm going to include them. These people eat what I consider the opposite of Mediterranean diet. I'm going to include them rather than saying like,

we'll just pick these countries at random and start studying them and see if their cholesterol and take is low. And then if so, if that correlates with the lower heart disease, he didn't do that. And that is definitely worth criticizing for sure. So let's, I guess, talk about some of these cohorts and who they were, former Yugoslavia,

he studied a couple of small towns, one that had the Western European diet and one that was on the Mediterranean diet largely. Finland was really interesting, I think, out of all these because he compared two villages in Eastern and Western Finland because East Finlanders were recording a lot more heart attacks.

In fact, supposedly like the highest record on planet Earth at the time. Yes, and for good reason too, you would think because they would eat things like- Oh, this is so great. This makes me hungry. Yeah, it kind of does actually. They would eat a fish soup that was just loaded

with butter for breakfast. Yeah. They would eat what was called the logger's lunch, which was described by one of the researchers as, you ready? Yeah. Large hunks of meat suspended in congealed fat, enveloped in a dark bread loaf, fully permeated by fat.

I'm so sorry to our vegan and vegetarian listeners because you're probably turning it off right about now. Yeah. We should have spoiled or triggered warning this one. Yeah. Too late. Which by the way, I have to say, I have been really doing my best

to eat far less meat, not for health purposes, for ethical reasons really, but I gotta say that does sound kind of good to me as well. Like if you put this in front of me and say, here's your chance to eat a Eastern Finland logger's lunch, I would take you up on it, I think. Yeah, I cut down on meat too. Yeah.

Yeah, I eat so many lot of red meat. Don't eat a ton of pork anymore. Can I- Yeah, especially pork. A little foul. Especially pork for me. I don't always eat meat, but when I do, I try not to. So then, so you've got your high fat diets in Finland.

And then he said, all right, I need to, like you kind of mentioned earlier, I need to choose some opposite in my view, opposite countries of what they eat. So where do you go? You go to Japan, of course, where they ate a lot of fish and he went to even a tiny little fishing village where they ate almost all fish.

And then again, in Greece, in the Greek islands, and in Southern Italy also, where they were obviously eating the Mediterranean diet. Right. So he takes all these different cohorts, takes all of their different diets and starts just kind of looking at all sorts of factors. That was one of the other reasons,

you said it was a very robust study. One of the other reasons that it was robust is because they looked at all sorts of stuff. It wasn't just their diet, they looked at things like what they drank and what they smoked and how much they smoked and all of this kind of stuff. It was a big, long study.

And again, they followed these guys for at least 25 years. And some of the stuff that they found were basically this. And this is the two points that the seven countries study told the world. And they just so happened to be the two points that Ansel Keys fully expected the seven countries to tell the studies, to tell the world. And it was that if you have a high serum cholesterol,

like a high concentration of cholesterol in your blood, then there's a greater chance that you're going to die from cardiovascular disease. Right, and Eastern Finland, where those loggers were eating fat breads. That's a great name for a restaurant. Fat bread? Sure.

Oh yeah, wow. If restaurants are still around in a few months, then we should open one called fat breads. So those fat bread eating loggers, they had average serum cholesterol levels of more than 260. And there were more than four heart attacks, four heart attack deaths per every 100 middle-aged men five years after the study started.

Right, okay, so Chuck, I looked it up. They had an average of 260. The window of normal or acceptable or you don't have viscous blood is 125 to 200. These guys were averaging 260. That's a lot. It is a lot. So the opposite of that was the former Yugoslavian place,

Dalmatia, where they had the Mediterranean diet and there men had an average serum cholesterol level of 185 and had one death per 100 men over that same period. And Dalmatia is where the Dalmatian dog, they think is from. I kind of assume that, but you never know. Did you, it was worth saying anyway. This is a show about facts and trivia. That's right.

Did you, have you ever been to Croatia? No. It is spectacular, man. I'm sure. It's on the Adriatic and it is incredibly gorgeous. You mean I went on a cruise once that went through there and it is, I've just wanted to go back ever since. Was it one of those river cruises?

No, it was, again, it was on the Adriatic. It was a cruise all the way around Italy. From one side to the down past the boot and then up the other. I bet that was quite lovely. Yeah, we're not like cruise people or anything like that, but we went with Chandon, the champagne maker, had a cruise that we're like, well, okay,

this is the one we're going to take. And it turned out to be really great because we're not like Italy fans. Oh, you have nothing against Italy, but we were never like, we got to go to Italy. Right. And we're never cruise fans. And then after we got off of those,

we're like, I want to go on another cruise and I want to go back to Italy and would it kill you to give me some more Chandon? Did you just drink tons of champagne? Yes. That's wonderful. So the other thing that it said was the other conclusion was diets higher in saturated fats

will correlate to more heart attacks. And the data did show a big correlation between saturated fat in the regular traditional diet and the heart attacks. And I think Crete, where saturated fats equal between eight and 9% of daily calories, the average number of heart attack deaths per 100 was basically zero over that five years.

And in the US, where we only had the one cohort, I don't think we said they were railroad workers, right? Yeah, in Minnesota. Minnesota railroad workers, they had 17% saturated fats in their diet and they had more than three deaths per 100 during that five year period. Right, so all this stuff just totally backs up

what Ansel Keys was saying, right? And later studies that basically took the seven countries study cohorts and drilled down into them a little more. There were two particular ones, the Zootfen study from the Netherlands and the Hale project. Both of them looked at just continued following people

beyond the 25 years. So like the Hale study was dedicated to looking at healthy aging, that kind of thing. And they turned up some other stuff that you now basically take as gospel as well. Like if you follow a Mediterranean diet, your risk of heart attack drops precipitously. I think 39% lower risk.

If you eat fish, it lowers your risk of dying from a heart attack. Like even just eating fish once or twice a week can drop your risk of a fatal heart attack by 50%. Like these were things that came along, not from the seven countries study, but from that thing being continued on

by supplementary studies. Yeah, and two of the big ones that people like myself and my wife like to spout is that you drink the two glasses of wine a day, you're actually healthier than not drinking at all. And if you eat that one square of dark chocolate at a, you're actually healthier as well. If you eat more than that and drink more than that,

then it goes the opposite way. But that two glasses of wine and one square of chocolate is people really like to tout that one who like to drink wine and eat chocolate. It's what they call a sweet spot. Yeah. So like seriously, think about it though, if you drink less than two glasses of wine a day,

you're likelier to die of heart disease than if you drink two. I mean, that's what they're saying in the study at least. Right, and I mean like I haven't seen anything that says, nope, that's not true, that's BS, but everybody makes that case that you said to or that makes that point that like once you go beyond two, not only does it have the opposite effect,

it gets really bad really, really fast. Yeah, and what you can't do also is be like, well, I haven't had any drinks for three nights, so I'll have five glasses of wine tonight. And that averages out to super healthy. Yeah, yeah, they say binge drinking is way worse for you, but then they also say that binge drinking is way better for you.

We have no handle on what drinking does to you. I just know that drinking makes me feel like ASS the next day. Yeah, I mean, the older you get, you definitely have to pick and choose. Dude, like two beers can, I don't wanna say wreck me the next day, but I am not loving life the next day necessarily.

Two beers, dude. Yeah, my whole deal is sleep. Like I haven't had anything to drink for four nights, and that was after a pretty big couple of nights in a row for various reasons. And I just, I sleep so much better. I wake up feeling so much better. I mean, it's irrefutable, you know?

What I do try to do now though in my old ages is really drink a ton of water while I'm drinking. Oh, that's smart. And I use, I'd now take these, I don't know if I should buzz market the brand, but I take a little supplement. Advil. That is, you know, it's basically like a super vitamin

that supposedly will help curb a hangover. Like have you noticed that it actually has an effect? And if it does have an effect, do you think it's just power of suggestion or does it really work? No, I think so, but it's not gobbledygook. I mean, it's B12 and like things that we know can probably help with a hangover.

Yeah, yeah. Have you ever gotten a B12 shot? I haven't. Oh man. A lot of times they miss or it doesn't work or it's watered down or something like that. It's really hard to get a good B12 shot when it works. Brother, you can tell the difference

and you feel like a million bucks. Really? You're not high, but you're like high on life kind of high. But you're not not high. I guess actually it's a really fair way to put it. You tell you the truth. How long does that last? Like basically all day, you just feel great.

You want to talk to strangers. You're like totally large and in charge. You're getting stuff done. You never feel overwhelmed. Like you're like having, you have a sense of humor. It's just, it just takes like all the best parts of your personality and like bulks them up. Not in any kind of speedy manic way,

but just you just feel like you're running on all cylinders and you just wish to God that like you were always like that, but God hates you. So that's why you're not. That's why you, or that's what you get at one of those hangover next day places, right? Like an IV and a B12 shot. Yeah. Yeah.

Or you could go to like a medical clinic or a, you know, a med spa or something like that. And they usually have it. Some chiropractors have them. Have to do that. Yeah. I think you have to have some sort of medical degree to inject it or whatever. But I've always kind of been on the hunt

to have B12 prescribed to me so I can inject it myself. Oh yeah. Sure. So I guess that there's any doctor listeners or something you should know out there, hit me up because I need a prescription of B12, please. Oh man. Where were we? I think we were about to take a break. Yeah. Let's take a break

and we'll talk a little bit about the criticisms right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the co-classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to know, then you're in luck.

Just listen up to Josh and Chuck, stuff you should know. Okay, so I think we've kind of made it clear that there are some people out there, communists, pinkos who hate the seven countries study, can't stand it. And they have a lot of very valid points. Yeah, I think one of the biggest criticisms

is that it was a very correlative relationship. Right. And not a causal relationship. Yes. I mean, that's kind of the biggest one. That and the fact that it's a study, it's called an ecological study, which is, it's a study that at the time it was,

who was this, Dr. Henry Blackburn, he was one of the original officers that it was state of the art for the time. But he's like an ecological study and correlation is pretty weak if you're talking about trying to find a causal, I guess a causal inference. Yeah, because the thing is, is you're taking all of these people

from all around the world and you're examining them to see, you're trying to find out what's the underlying cause of their common affliction, heart attacks, or what accounts for the absence of that affliction, again, heart attacks. But the problem is, is there are so many differences between somebody who is on a Mediterranean diet

and lives in Crete and somebody who eats the loggers lunch in Finland besides just what they eat. There's so many other factors, so many different things involved that even if you can find a correlation like Ansel Keys did between saturated fats and heart attacks,

it doesn't mean that there's actually not something else at play. And that's the biggest criticism of the study that most people widely level against it. Yeah, and it's also an epidemiological study which follows a population to something, not so good for you over a length of time. But if you wanna do that right,

you can't, like you said, just they have to be the same age, the same sex, they have to do the same job, they have to be the same ethnicity, they have to be in the same place, and the only difference can be what they're eating, basically. Right, and I get what he was doing,

he was trying to compare this type of diet to that type of diet in different places around the world, but it was just, that's flawed, that's a flawed methodology. That's an adventure, that's not a study. Right, exactly, that's a travel eating show, basically. It sort of is. But it was almost like he was trying to cram a dozen studies into one

rather than break it out appropriately into each different study, like I'm gonna study these people and use this as the control. His study lacked a control group or a control variable, right? And that's another big thing that's leveled against it as a big flaw

and makes you wonder, okay, is that correlation between saturated fat and heart disease even real? Yeah, I mean, even when they tried to kind of drill down to an apples to apples, like in Finland, that was one place where they had, all right, at least we're all in the same country, so that's a good place to start.

Let's see here, the two Finnish cohorts, I still love saying that. They consumed relatively similar levels of saturated fat, so in the West they had 19% and the East they had 22%, not a huge difference. That's so much though. What, 3%? Yeah, the railroad workers in 1950s, Minnesota,

were eating 13% of their diet with saturated fat. Oh, so much fat, yeah. 22% was in that Finnish cohort. Yeah, close to a quarter of your diet with saturated fat. That's crazy. But the average number of heart attack deaths in the East was twice as high. Weird.

Versus, I think, four deaths per 100 men, versus two in the West. Yeah, so that means there's something else going on. Yeah, exactly, because their fat intake was similar, but that shouldn't, what would account for a double, the increase, so who knows? And they just, the answer is they don't know, we don't know. We don't know what would account for that.

And there's a lot of other people who've looked at this and said, okay, there's still like a lot to be said of this data, there's a lot you can extract from it. And some people have come along the way and said, hey, you can run this stuff through statistical analysis. Apparently they did another, and they did when they originally looked at the data back in the 50s or 60s or 70s.

And they did it again for the 25th anniversary of this study. And one of the things that turned up was that sugar actually seemed to correlate more strongly. Sugar intake in the diet seemed to correlate more strongly with heart disease than even saturated fats did. It was almost roughly the same,

but the thing is that sugar bump, when you factor it in saturated fats, the sugar bump disappeared. And so they said, oh, well, it's just an anomaly, it's really the saturated fats. From what I could tell, if you had a saturated fat bump and you factor it in sugar, that would disappear as well. So some people have come to think like,

if it's not sugar, maybe it's a combination of sugar and saturated fats. That's actually the real problem, not saturated fats on its own, but that it's not even necessarily sugar on its own, but this combination of the two. And that's led a lot of people, including one big critic of the seven countries study

to say it's processed food. That's what kills people is processed food, this combination of bad fats and sugar that is really proving to be deadly. Yeah, and I think that's just so clear now that real food is far and away better for you than processed food. Like you just can't refute that.

No, you can't. I mean, even if you just base it, and we always make fun of anecdotal data, but if you just base it on how your body feels after you eat certain kinds of food and then after you eat processed food. The problem is, is we don't know how to feed seven billion people on this planet

without processing food, you know? Where's Norman Borlaug? Yeah, I don't know. He's dead, dead in the cold ground. God, doesn't care about anything now. So it hasn't been refuted, not necessarily. It hasn't been completely refuted to where they say, just throw this thing in the trash.

But I think the, and hopefully we've gotten this point across is the damage that it did in the United States was, we went all in on it. Right. And they said, fat is the killer. And if you just avoid fat and eat these processed low-fat foods, you're gonna be just fine. Yes.

So like that, and you can't really lay that at Ansel Key's feet. That was the Department of Health and Human Services who did that. Oh, for sure, yeah. They just took these findings and ran with them. They were like, well, we don't have any clinical data yet and they're like, I can't hear you, I can't hear you. I'm already at the printers getting these posters

of the food pyramid guide printed up. And that was definitely a huge problem that created this larger problem because it led to this demization of all fats. That food pyramid that showed the little bit at the top was like fats and sweets and stuff like that. Like it didn't say, you know, just this kind of fat or keep away from that kind of fat.

It was fats. You Americans are too fat and dumb to understand that there's different kinds of fats. So just stay away from fats altogether. And that that's really what led to this because there are plenty of fats that are actually good for your heart. Like things like fats found in fish,

fats found in olive oil. And then even potentially, yeah, avocados are about as good as it gets. And then potentially Chuck, they're like the kinds of saturated fat that people tend to associate like with a steak as being bad for you. That's not necessarily true either.

And again, it seems to be like we talked about in the peanut butter episode, those chemically processed or industrially processed fats that change things that make peanut butter shelf stable and way more delicious. Like those are the fats that are actually really bad for you. Those are the ones that you should avoid or eat in moderation and that that kind of nuance is needed

to actually have a healthy diet. Cause we learned from this experiment that you can't just cut fats out altogether. We need a lot of those fats to survive and be healthy. Yeah, and the evidence as far as cause you would think, you know, this started in the 1980s in America. So surely we all got a lot healthier, right? Because of the food pyramid and all the low fat food.

We cut fat any way you can slice it. We cut fat over two decades plus. People still think fat is the demon in a lot of circles. And America is as sick as we've ever been. Type two diabetes has increased. Oh man, this is crazy. 166% from 1980 to 2012. I don't know about 2012 till now.

Why would guess more of this? Yeah, I doubt if it reverse course. We have beaten down heart disease some, but we've also stopped smoking a lot more and we've got better emergency room care and better drugs like statins and stuff like that. Right, but it's still, you know, cardiovascular disease still kills people more than anything else in the US.

Yeah, despite those advances in medical treatment, it's still killing people more than anything else. And like even exercising hasn't helped. Like we exercise basically more than ever, but still a third of the country is obese. A third of the United States is obese. And all of this, like think about this, all of those things have happened while we cut fat

essentially out of our diet. So that just goes to show you like that didn't work that's not going to help that we have to rethink this whole thing for sure. Yeah, and again, we're not poo pooing the Mediterranean diet. There's also the flip side of this stuff with keto, the Atkins diet, paleo, stuff like that.

You know, I think we've tried to, you know, we're not gonna tell anyone how to eat and we're not dietitians, but we've tried to preach over the past couple of years, you know, eat real foods, eat balanced diets. Try moderation as best you can. Moderation and, you know, calorie, reasonable calorie restriction and exercise.

Yeah, and I mean, portion control too is, it sucks when you first do it. It sucks to get used to, but once you get used to it, it's easy to maintain. It's also easy to go back on when you're like, I'm gonna eat this whole box of hamburger, help her tonight.

I know, but how does that make you feel? It makes you feel like garbage. Yeah, ultimately, yeah. Emotionally, and even if it's hitting a reward center, and trust me, there are so many reasons that people don't eat the right things and eat too much of the wrong things. Emotional reasons and psychological reasons,

and we're not, all of that stuff is valid, but even if it's hitting that reward center, it will probably also make you feel awful, emotionally and physically. It's true, and also just to say, we're definitely on our high horses right now, but we're no better than anybody else. No, I'm still 60 pounds overweight.

I mean, we had, you and me and I split a whole roll of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls last month, you know? Oh, yes. Yeah, I know. Tough to turn those down. I can't even get that stuff. But it's just the, well, no, Chuck, and you're right. Having it in your house is problem one.

Not having it in your house actually is helpful. It's crazy, it's weird, but it actually works. Especially during a quarantine, when you can't just pop up, or you don't feel like you should pop up to the store and get that Ben and Jerry's. Right, exactly, like yeah, for sure, because then you just pace around your kitchen

until it's time to go to bed. But you didn't eat anything. Get that, oh, you know what, I tried the other night. What? That peanut butter and whipped cream. Oh, what'd you think? It was delicious. I'm sorry, I still haven't eaten

a peanut butter and mayo sandwich yet. No, it's really good. Emily made, she makes good homemade whipped cream, and it was, it was delish. Yeah, it's hard to turn down. No, I want some. But you know, have a little bit of that one night, then I won't have any for a little while.

Yeah, and even, I think what I was gonna say earlier is walking around with this information is good and helpful and like you're never going to always adhere to it. Probably wouldn't be that fun of a life to always adhere to it. But just knowing it and kind of using it as like a general compass or guide will make you healthier and will make you feel better.

And maybe at some point along the line, if you already have this info, you're gonna get a kick in the pants by something. You're gonna hit like a period of growth and that might be part of it. You might like lose some weight. You might get over a chronic disease. You might, all sorts of things might happen

because you know what to eat or how to start thinking about your food. It's just good to keep in your back pocket at least. It is, and in the end, it doesn't matter anyway because it all has to do with the health of your grandfather. Right, yeah. Hey, one other thing I wanna say is that critic Zoe, Dr. Zoe Harcomb, she pointed out

that actually the strongest correlation that the seven countries study turned up was the latitude of where the person lived. Yeah, sunshine, right? Yeah, and which is really strange until she points out, and I'm not sure how much she was pointing this out to basically undermine the seven countries study. Partially that.

But it does make sense in a way too, because she's saying, well, we synthesize vitamin D in our skin from cholesterol in the skin when it's exposed to sunshine, and vitamin D has a lot of protective qualities for the immune system, so maybe that has to do with it. Yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out. Yeah, well, that's it for nutrition.

We'll probably never talk about it again. That's not true at all. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. All right, I'm going to call this Jackhammers. Why did you do that? I don't know. Why not? People asked me, asked on Twitter, they were like, why, I thought you guys hated this.

And I said, yeah, I think Chuck's got some weird self-loathing going on. It's trolling. And I just got caught up unfairly. Yeah, so we have often and long made fun of our Jackhammers episode, and I've re-released it as stuff you should know select just to be cheeky. And this is about that, because Chris, from Massachusetts,

really appreciated it. Hey, guys, just finished listening to stuff you should know select on Jackhammers, and I know you call it the most boring, worst one, but I actually enjoyed it. I'm a mechanical engineer, and in college, took a class on vibrations, which led to conducting research on noise,

on the noise that a Jackhammer makes. This is, we did that show for this guy. The noise or the ring that you hear when a Jackhammer strikes is the resonant frequency of the Jackhammer, moil point, after being struck by the inner pile driver. I don't think we said any of that stuff. No. I was working with my professor on developing an inner damper

to reduce that noise produced for this. Oh, man, God bless you, buddy. For the same reasons that you named in your podcast. Some of the concepts he developed were quite amazing. You could take one of the moils he designed and drop it on a concrete floor, and instead of a loud ringing, you would expect to hear it would land with a soft thud. Unfortunately, the concepts never quite panned out.

Because we call them moils. Exactly. But your podcast reminded me of the many nights spent in the lab collecting positive data and the painful ringing that you mentioned in the show. Thanks for the countless amazing episodes. My girlfriend and I have gotten many hours of entertainment from your show, and truly appreciate all the great content

and laughs. Chris from Massachusetts. Chris, thank you for getting in touch. And thank you for your attempted contribution to the world. Had it paid off, that really would have been something. But thank you for even trying. And if you want to be like Chris and let us know that you're an unsung hero, we want to hear about that.

And if you know an unsung hero, let us know about that person, too. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.