#197: Matthew Rees - A Big Fat Crisis -Uncovering Fact from Fiction about Our Food
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Matthew Rees - Journalist, Author, Speechwriter, Founder of foodandhealthfacts.com
In a world that is littered with false information and blatant lies, especially when it comes to health and nutrition, it is so important to seek the truth.
Matthew Rees is a treasure trove of facts and commentary about food and health at his website, foodandhealthfacts.com.
As a longtime journalist, speechwriter, and author, Rees has written for such esteemed publications as The Economist, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Reader’s Digest, and more.
He’s also co-authored several books, but his personal passion lies in nutrition. He pulls information and research from recent scientific studies, interviews, books and more, and makes them all easily digestible nuggets of truth on our toxic food culture and how it’s contributing to massive rates of disease and death throughout the country.
It is his mission to help us better understand how consuming unhealthy foods leads to the mess of chronic health issues we’re facing today as a society, but also provide understanding and solutions.
Episode Highlights
Fact #189: Why we overeat and why it’s so hard to lose weight - sensory-specific satiety
Fact #188: Don’t believe the (health) hype
Fact #187: The ominous obesity outlook emanating from America’s schools
Fact #185: Weight-loss drugs are not without risks
Fact #181: Eat like an Italian
Fact #149: Why is there so little advocacy about dietary health?
Fact #142: Washington is MIA on obesity. Why?
Fact #135: A strategy for boosting vegetable consumption
Fact #115: Hershey rolls out a mid-morning snack
Fact #105: The human biome, fiber, and flatulence
Fact #101: Doctors’ dietary knowledge deficit
Fact #86: U.S. food spending in the restaurant sector
Fact #78: The health profile of organic food vs. non-organic food
Fact #52: Rising U.S. dairy consumption
Fact #46: The rise in U.S. poultry consumption
Fact #39: Americans’ spending on food (as a share of disposable income)
Fact #38: Americans’ increased consumption of added fats and oils
Fact #35: A Bolivian tribe with the world’s healthiest hearts
Fact #32: Americans’ calorie consumption from ultra-processed foods
Fact #28: The role of physical activity in weight loss and weight gain
Fact #27: The foods most associated with weight loss and weight gain
Fact #9: The most and least satiating foods
Matthew with Dr. Esselstyn and T. Colin Campbell
Episode Resources
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
Visit and bookmark foodandhealthfacts.com
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Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
I have great news, everyone. Our powerful Plantstrong kitchen assistant has just undergone one huge makeover to be even more powerful in helping you save time and money as you plan and prepare plant-based meals throughout the week. We still have hundreds of whole food, plant-based, oil-free recipes personalized to your preferences. We have adaptive grocery lists and grocery delivery via Instacart or Amazon. But now in addition, we also offer exclusive content and discounts on partner brands, like Vitamix for example, plus live support from my team of friendly experts. You can try it for free for two weeks when you use the code, STARTFRESH, all one word, on our annual plan. And yeah, you got to enter a credit card to redeem it, but you can cancel with one click if it doesn't absolutely knock your socks off. Visit plantstrong.com to check out our new and improved Plantstrong meal planner.
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the Plantstrong podcast. The mission at Plantstrong is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your Plantstrong journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
My Plantstrong cousins, in a world that is littered with false information and blatant lies, especially when it comes to health and nutrition, it is vitally important to seek the truth. My guest today, Matthew Rees, is a treasure trove of facts and commentary about food and health. In fact, that's exactly the name of his website, foodandhealthfacts.com. As a longtime journalist, speech writer and author, Rees is a true seeker by nature. He has written for such esteemed publications like The Economist, the New Republic, and the Wall Street Journal. His writing also has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Reader's Digest to name a few. He's also co-authored several books, but his personal passion lies in nutrition, and that's how we've come to know each other.
It's also why I wanted to have him on the Plantstrong podcast, so when his travels have brought him through Austin, Texas, I embraced the chance to meet up with Matthew in person and discuss the facts, and that's exactly what we do today. I would encourage you to bookmark his website, foodandhealthfacts.com. And if you're able, follow along with us during the interview where we talk through several of the blog entries on his website. Matthew pulls information and research from recent scientific studies, interviews, books, and much more, and he makes them all easily digestible nuggets of truth on our toxic food culture and how it's contributing to the massive rates of disease and death throughout our country. It is his mission to help us understand how consuming unhealthy foods leads to the mess of chronic Western issues that we're facing today as a society, but also provide understanding and solutions. Let's dig into the facts with Matthew Rees. All right, Matthew Rees, welcome to Austin, Texas.
Matthew Rees:
Thank you, Rip. It's great to be here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Great to have you here. Great to have you on the Plantstrong podcast. Let's just review for a second when we first met and then how that has evolved to you being here today. If I remember correctly, we first met because you called me to ask me some questions about Eddie Reese. Were you doing a book about Eddie?
Matthew Rees:
I was writing a profile of him for Swim Swam, and yeah, you and I talked and you provided a lot of very useful information, and then at the end of the interview I asked you about the plant-based side of your life.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's right. And for the listener that's not aware, Eddie Reese is the coach of the Texas Longhorns. I think they've won 15 or 16 national championships, the most successful NCAA division one coach ever on the planet. I had the privilege of swimming for him back in 1982 to 1986, and he's just an absolute legend. And so we talked about what I was doing and getting into plant-based nutrition. And then if I'm not mistaken, you came to one or a couple of our Plant Stock events.
Matthew Rees:
I did. I came. You told me about it, and that I think it was the 2016 Plant Stock up at the Esselstyn family farm, which was a very inspiring event. And then about six months later, I brought my sister and my parents to one of your events in, I think it was in Burbank or Hollywood, California, and equally inspiring and prompted my sister to go home that night and literally clean out her refrigerator. You had a big impact on her, and she has done her best to try to maintain that, the Plantstrong lifestyle.
Rip Esselstyn:
What then inspired you to get interested in an even deeper level in issues around food and health?
Matthew Rees:
I had been someone who I never really paid very close attention to my diet and just ate in hopes of not being hungry, just as fuel and satiation. And I have a friend, a physician, in McClean, Virginia, near where I live, who is a plant-based doctor, and she helped introduce me to a lot of the thinking and your father and Colin Campbell and others. And so I, having gone plant-based, I then started reading more and more, but it was really during COVID that I, like a lot of people, I had a little more time and I saw what was happening and to people who had a lot of chronic disease and obesity and how they were experiencing much higher rates of hospitalization and mortality when they contracted COVID. And I just thought, if I'm ever going to carve out some time to write about these issues, this is probably it. In October of 2020, I launched a website, foodandhealthfacts.com, and then a newsletter that was part of that website.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. And so for those that are not watching on YouTube that are just listening to this, we have it actually up on the screen, your website, Food and Health Facts, right here. And your first ever number one health fact was called A Big Fat Crisis. And can you remember exactly the stats that you had in that one?
Matthew Rees:
Well, I think it was between about 1975 and maybe 2016, and that the obesity rate in the United States had increased at a greater maybe percentage than really any other country in the world. And that to me, there's so many dimensions of this issue that I'm fascinated by and frankly a little depressed by. But the US, the United States being really an outlier globally when it comes to obesity, and today for all intents and purposes, having the highest obesity rate in the world, 42.4% of American adults, and how is it that this country with such high living standards and supposedly this first class healthcare system, has really the worst dietary habits and the worst outcomes when it comes to health and so much of it driven by food?
Rip Esselstyn:
And you look at that in a lot of your facts, and you've got 189 of them right now that you've done over the last two plus years, and I subscribe to your newsletter. I find each one to be just really fascinating. And you've expanded lately, and they're a little bit longer. The first ones were just morsel sizes, and now they've gotten bigger and you're writing a little bit more. What I'd love to do with you right now is I'd like to start in reverse order. Instead of starting at number one, I'm going to start at 189, and then we're going to pick somewhere between 25 and 35 and just talk about them.
And I went through, and I counted up of the 189 that you have, somewhere close to 50 of them have the word obesity in the title. And I think that that's something that's very present in these facts is just the level of obesity that we've reached and the different side effects that are happening in this country because of that. And I think the whole thing that started you off on this journey was when you have several different comorbidities, including obesity, what it does to your chances of being hospitalized or death when you contract COVID.
Matthew Rees:
Yes, yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
For those of you that are not watching this, we'll do our best to explain what's going on, but right now, I'm just scrolling down and we're starting at fact number 189, and this just came out 3/16, 2023, why we overeat and why it's hard to lose weight. And I have a couple notes right here. And this is a, you took a interview that Ezra Klein was having with... Help me with his name, Stephan...
Matthew Rees:
I think it's Guyenet.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Guyenet.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Who's a neurobiologist and the author of The Hungry Brain. But can you speak to this aspect called sensory specific satiety?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. It's a fascinating concept, and I think the simplest way to explain it is that the more different foods you have on the plate, the more you're actually likely to eat, and that somehow that having six potatoes, for example, you might get full at three, but if you have, I don't know, three other maybe big vegetables, you're going to... Somehow your brain senses, oh, that's different, and so you almost get, it's almost like a refresh, and that satiety that you thought you had actually isn't there. And he explains how, that's one of the problems with eating at a buffet is that you have all these different foods and you fill your plate, and the result is obviously you overeat. And many of the foods of buffets obviously are often not particularly good for you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. And to me, there's something about when you eat something that's savory, and then you can get completely full on savory, but now it's that sweet part of your stomach or your brain wants something that is sweet. And for example, I just went to the Expo West Trade Show, similar to a trade show that you went to recently. Millions of square feet. I don't know how many different booths, probably 10,000 different food booths. Everybody's handing out samples. We started walking the floor at 9:00. By 9:45, I'm full just from sampling all these bars and plant-based things. But at some point I'm like, wow, you know what? I could use something that's savory, even though I've already sampled 30 different plant-based bars. I know exactly this sensory specific satiety you're talking about. Another thing that they talk about there, and you talk about it in several of your fun facts, is snacking occasions and how those have just ramped up significantly over the last 20, 30 years.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah. And you'll see a lot of different ideas about what is driving obesity, but one of the theories that's been put forward is that just people are eating more throughout the day and it's not just three meals. It might be breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but then almost half meals in between each of these different meals. And we just see that the broader issue is the ubiquity of food. You go to the hardware store and they're selling candy bars at the checkout stand. And I think also, frankly, the fact that so much food now, particularly after, during COVID and after, it's so much easier for food to get delivered to the home. And so it's often it can be difficult unless you're making a conscious effort to pull back and escape from having all of these, the influence of this food, and this is typically, this food that's all around us, it's typically not fruits and vegetables. It's highly processed food that can sit around on the shelf somewhere for weeks or months. And so it just plays into all of the temptations and we see what the result has been.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly right. It's ultra processed, little to no water, no fiber, loaded with oil, salt, sugar, everything that our brains just crave. And you're right, I can't remember how many calories on average people are snacking on per day, but I'm sure it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 600, easily. Easily.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, and just today I was reading about how all of these processed food companies are creating all of these little new snacks to, again, just their twist, some new form of Doritos. And they're just always coming up with these new product lines, and it's just to try to, they feel people may be... It's new and novel, so it's going to get people to buy it. And there's actually data on how the processed food companies, the number of products they are unveiling every single year to play on this, the check this out, new, you better try it, and they win and the human body loses.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah. Another little point that they talked about in this interview, Ezra Klein with Stephan, was even doing something as simple as just changing the shape of the food can actually change how much you eat.
Matthew Rees:
Yes. The shape of the food, and there's also... I mean, this gets into a very interesting issue, which is called food choice architecture, and there have been some university dining halls that, and Stanford is one of them, where they don't have trays anymore because you go into a dining hall and it's this big huge tray and it feels odd to just maybe have one little plate, or one plate. And so they got rid of trays and they also make the plates smaller because again, it feels odd if you have this big plate and you just have just a tiny little bit of food on the plate.
And it's something that plays in, that every person in every kitchen can do this, is to not necessarily have food out and visible, or if you're going to have the food that's out, have it be the bananas and the apples and the carrots, not the junk. But yeah, the shape of the food again, plays into this. And it's just the tricks that, well, the food companies are trying to play on you, but the tricks that your brain are playing on you, and the reminder and the broad point is that how much you really have to be conscious of the food environment if you're going to resist all of these temptations.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, you brought up Stanford there, and you have a whole fact on Stanford, I believe, and one of the things they did as well is they try, as far as that choice architecture is concerned, they try and put, I believe it's some of the healthiest food in the beginning, like the salads and the soups, and then also just how they label the food. Instead of labeling it carrots, it was like twisted roasted carrots and people would eat like 20% more or something like that.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah. No, it was an interesting little study where they did in the dining hall, over a period of about a month, they would give these creative labels to what were just everyday carrots. And they did, somehow, they were able to monitor that consumption did go up. And what it underscores is, look, marketing matters and people want to think that something maybe has some extra flare, some extra degree of nutrition. Typically, this marketing obviously is done in service of ultra processed food. And there's all this, what we have talked about, what you've written about, and I have, health washing, and it's easy for the processed foods to do health washing. It's very hard, frankly, for a carrot or an apple or banana or any fruits or vegetables, because they are what they are, and you can't necessarily hype too much, or it's difficult for the consumer to believe that hype. But in this case, in the Stanford example, at least with a group of college students, it seemed to have some effect.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned health washing. The next fact, 188, is don't believe the health hype right here. And if I'm not... I love this, where you start out by saying way back, what, 40 years ago, Fruit Loops was spelled F-R-O-O-T because there's no fruit in it, they couldn't legally put Fruit.
Matthew Rees:
That was my introduction to the world of deceptive marketing. And I still, again, it was in a documentary in my fourth grade class, and I've remembered it to this day.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
But this whole piece that you've written here is all about health washing as you see right here. And you mentioned how Michael Pollen has cleverly captured how health washing works and how it tricks consumers. And I think that unless, if you don't... I think one of... I learned from a very, very brilliant dietician, Jeff Novik, who maybe you saw at Plant Stock back then. But he said, "The first rule in reading a label is never, ever, ever, ever believe the front of anything on any package or box or can." That's number one, because that's all they're trying to do is do that old health washing there.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah. No, that's without a doubt. Yeah, I think, and maybe I've heard him say, "Don't buy any food that's making a health claim," for that exact reason, because you're probably not... They're going to come up with some rich in vitamins and they're not mentioning, well, it's also high in sugar and it doesn't have any fiber. They don't tell you all the bad stuff, obviously. And the related point is just understanding how to read a nutrition label. And you don't have to... It's not as simple as maybe we would like it to be and it doesn't contain all the information that I think some of us think should be there, but you can be aware of what does it say about added sugars and what is the level of sodium and what is the level of fiber. And just there are a few basic things that can be a signal to you as to whether this is something you really want to be consuming.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, you're exactly right. I think if you can focus on some of those macro things like, okay, let's look at added sugars. Let's look at fiber because if there's a lot of fiber, that probably means it's more of a whole food. It's also whole grain. Let's look at sodium as you said there, and then let's also look at fats and oils. Those are some of the biggies.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let's see here. Number 187, and for those that are watching, just know that I'm not going to go from 189 all the way down to one, but we're going to start out pretty strong here. The ominous obesity outlook emanating from America schools. What can you tell me about this? Because it's pretty darn sad.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I mean, this in many ways is in a situation or environment that has a lot of very depressing facts, the high obesity rate among America's children, which is by some measures, the highest childhood obesity rate anywhere in the world. And you have... Look, you have the environment in the home is contributing to this. I mean, in some ways, some studies show that actually the healthiest food that kids are getting, it's actually at the school, which is a remarkable fact. And it's not that the food is great, it's just that the food they're getting in other environments is so much worse.
67% of the calories that American children consume today comes from ultra processed foods, which is just a recipe for long-term disease and disability and being overweight and all sorts of chronic conditions. And the data, several studies came out during COVID showing that it was already a big problem, but it actually became worse during COVID as children obviously weren't in school and were stuck at home, and we'd see, obviously, high rates of depression and other factors. And I think the food became probably a source of some degree of comfort. And they defaulted to, again, largely unhealthy, highly processed, ultra processed foods.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm. Did you interview Marion Nestle at all?
Matthew Rees:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
One of the things that she remarked about this is, why isn't everyone behind healthier food for kids?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah. No, it's...
Rip Esselstyn:
It's like, really?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, right. How can you... I mean, right now, there's an effort at the Food and Drug Administration to make some modifications to school lunches, and the processed food companies are coming out and throwing up all sorts of objections to it. And then you have the federal, what used to be known as the Food Stamp Program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which unfortunately, it serves an important purpose for certain segments, low income segments, but there are no restrictions on the foods and the beverages that can be purchased. And the data shows, federal data shows, that very high rates of purchase of basically junk foods and beef jerky and sugar sweetened beverages, and the children are paying the price, and it's going to have extraordinarily harmful long-term consequences for them and frankly, for the whole country.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned Snap. I think you wrote, one of your facts was about how when people get their, I guess, these food stamps, these grocery stores know exactly when they get them, and that's when they put the sugary beverages, the big ads or even the promos and stuff like that. But the timing is impeccable.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. No, that was an extraordinary study showing that, yes, that.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:25:04]
Matthew Rees:
... was an extraordinary study showing that ... Yes. I think it was maybe the Center for Science and Public Interest, actually went into these stores and ... Because there's a certain time each month when the benefits become available to the recipients, and that they just tracked the presence of these ... You see these big stacks of sugar-sweetened beverages, the sodas and the rest, in the stores. And there were more of them. And this is sort of the story of SNAP, also, is that the big winners are the food and beverage companies, and the stores that sell these products. And the losers are the beneficiaries of the people who are getting the SNAP dollars.
And there's been an effort to try to change this. And this was ... I'm getting a little bit off the topic here, but one of the more perverse ... I live in Washington DC, and I feel like I've seen a lot, but one of the more perverse sort of examples of how lobbying works is that the food and beverage companies contribute large sums of money to the anti-hunger groups. And the anti-hunger groups then advocate against any restrictions on how SNAP dollars can be sent.
And so in the name of kind of equity ... And I understand the sensitivities, but again, it's the food and beverage companies who are winning literally billions of dollars. I mean, SNAP accounts for massive, massive sales for food and beverage companies, and for the retailers. So they win in a big way. And it's just sort of ... The cycle just goes on and on, and you have the beneficiaries having higher rates of obesity and disability and disease.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. In the same vein, you talk about how ... And this is going back to the kids, and the obesity there, how we now have one in five kids that are obese, compared to one in 20 in the 1960s. But you talk about how when there was in ... I can't remember what state it was. It was some state, they were trying to ban sodas. And you said that six Coca-Cola execs were immediately on a plane to fly to that state to kill the bill. I mean, it's like how can you win, when you're dealing with that kind of ... I guess, what, power?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah. No. Look, there are extraordinarily kind of vested interests. And again, this sort of gets into why ... At the federal level, why you really ... Here, you have this national crisis. Again, 42% of American adults, obese. And for all intents and purposes, you have the federal government not doing anything at all. And there's a bigger story about that, which we can get into if you want, but a lot of it does come down to the fact that the food and beverage companies are big donors to members of Congress. And so there's really ... Congress has really just taken a hands-off approach to any of these issues, which is just, again, striking when you think that the foods we eat and the beverages we consume are the single biggest driver of mortality in this country. And we're not doing anything about it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Would you say that it is the white elephant in the room?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I mean, I sometimes think about this in the context of smoking. And in 1964, the US adult smoking rate was 42%. And a decision was made. You know what? This is not ... Millions of people are suffering disease, and we have high rates of death. And there was just a decision that we're going to try to do something about this. And it worked. The smoking rate is still too high. It's still about 14%, but it was one of the greatest public health victories, definitely in the second half of the 20th century, in addition to the controlling HIV/AIDS.
But there's been no similar effort with regard to the intersection of food and health. And the result is the United States has the lowest life expectancy of just about any developed country in the world. And the bill really came due during COVID, when the US ... Much higher mortality rate. US life expectancy fell three years. It's now at a level that it hasn't been since 1996. And so much of this has to do with the food we eat. And I'm still struck that part of the debate ... There were other issues why the US had struggled with COVID, but the ... It's kind of the food dimension, and all of the comorbidities were largely, I feel, overlooked, or have been overlooked, or not received the attention they deserve over the past three years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. It's super disappointing. I mean, what an opportunity for us to potentially right the ship, steer it in the right direction. And it feels like we missed out.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. No. And I was sort of hopeful. And I knew it was an uphill battle, but I was hopeful that maybe during COVID, there would be kind of this awakening. And I think it just sort of got overtaken by other events and other concerns. And so I try to be optimistic and not ... And some of my friends, and people who read the newsletter, sometimes refer to me as Dr. Doom, but this is ... Sugar-coating maybe isn't the right word to use, but I don't feel like ... There's no upside in trying to present a better picture than there is, because there are so many really adverse indicators that, again ... Even before COVID, US life expectancy was declining, which is just a striking ... And it had happened for about three years in a row. It hadn't happened since the Spanish flu in 1918. And so, in so many ways, just in terms of the health indicators of this country, we're going in absolutely the wrong direction. And so much of it is really traced back to the food we eat.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems pretty darn obvious, right? I mean, everywhere we turn, there's more food, more highly ultra-processed food that is staring us in the face. Like you said, whether it's a hardware store, whether it's whatever. You're going to be faced with it. And you've got to be able to say, "No, thank you." And then everywhere we turn, it seems like our lifestyles are getting much more sedentary, as well. So I think you combine those two things together, and it doesn't bode well for us. So I think people need to ... They need to take the reins in a major, major way. Let's talk about obesity for a second. And you have a fact, number 185, that weight loss drugs are not without risks. And the big weight loss drug right now is ... How do you pronounce it?
Matthew Rees:
Well, it's Wegovy or Ozempic, or semaglutide. And there's, I think, different brands, but those are broadly the ones that are getting all the attention, and were even referenced at the Academy Awards, recently.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So what's your opinion of them?
Matthew Rees:
Well, I sort of have mixed views. My understanding of how they function is they basically function as an appetite suppressant. And on the one hand, the data shows they're fairly effective. And so that's a good thing, but there are significant side effects. And it's a weekly injection, and it's not a cure. In order to benefit from these drugs, you have to keep taking them. So you're really talking about a lifetime commitment.
And I have some concerns. We're a highly, highly medicated society to begin with, and reflecting the poor state of our metabolic health. And this is just another drug. And so I haven't quite exactly figured out ... There are pros and cons, but I would ... Look. The ideal arrangement ... And my concern is that people are just ... That this is a signal, you can just eat whatever you want and just take a drug. And I don't think that's the longterm solution, but if it can help reduce the diabetes rate and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and some of these chronic conditions, that's a good thing. But I don't think we should look at it as a panacea.
Rip Esselstyn:
Couldn't agree with you more there. You recently went to a huge trade show, and you said it was all about these really innovative entrepreneurs. And I think, let me just see here. Yeah. Here it is. The entrepreneurs striving to improve human health. Let's just talk about one, and that was this person that has invented this electric spoon. And who is it? And what does this electric spoon do?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. So he's just an inventor, and he's invented this spoon that has a electromagnetic force. And the idea behind it ... I didn't actually use it, so I can't really vouch for it, but ... Is that it magnifies the taste of salt or sugar. And so the idea is that by using the spoon, you can actually use less salt and less sugar on your foods. And so it's one of these little ... Is it the ticket to better health in and of itself? Probably not, but it's kind of a clever idea. And the more, the merrier. I mean, assuming these things are ... There's some degree of effectiveness, these are the sorts of innovations that we need, because the food and beverage companies, they're innovating like crazy to get us to eat worse. And it'd be nice to have some countervailing forces, like this little spoon.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and that's a really good point, because these huge food companies are trying to create that ultimate bliss point. And so it sounds like this spoon, for example, is a way to counteract, so you can eat healthier foods that don't have these crazy amounts of salt and sugar and fat. And it raises all those things, so you maybe are creating that bliss point without all the bad that's associated with it.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. No, and I think that's right. The one other point, as you know, is that with a lot of these foods, the issue is not really the salt you're adding. It's the salt that's already ... They come kind of preloaded with so much sodium. So you really have to be aware of that. But if you're eating, say, sodium-free foods, maybe you can use less salt as a result of the spoon.
Rip Esselstyn:
For those of you that want to eat the PLANTSTRONG chilies and stews with the electric spoon, I highly recommend it. I think it's a fantastic choice. Number 181, you say eat like an Italian. So what's going on in Italy that we should try and absorb here in the states?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. This was a fascinating kind of topic to explore. And the Italians, among the world's developed economies, really do have a lower obesity rate. So obesity really is a ... It's kind of a global epidemic, but the rates tend to be higher in wealthier countries, Italy being an outlier. And they have a rich culinary tradition. They cook a lot. And as we know, I mean ... Look. You can cook unhealthy food, but there's a much greater likelihood if you're cooking for yourself, you're going to be avoiding, obviously, all of the ultra-processed foods.
So they cook for themselves. And they just have a much lower level of consumption of ultra-processed foods. And they just have an appreciation for the value of food. And there's also some evidence that the portion sizes are smaller. And the results ... The data, again, shows lower obesity rates and longer life expectancy. And so in many ways, they should be a model for the United States, and for other countries who are struggling with an obesity epidemic.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Another one of your facts you have is how much time some of these ... On average, these countries spend at mealtime. And if I'm not mistaken, the Americans, on average, spend 61 minutes at breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I think that's right. And the study showed that ... It ranked, I don't know, 25 or 30 countries. And maybe they were all advanced countries, but I think Italy, maybe, and France, spent the most time eating.
Rip Esselstyn:
They were like 130 minutes.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. And the US, last. Or basically the least amount of time eating. And so-
Rip Esselstyn:
Which is funny because I guess ... And I think that the fun fact was something like the less amount of time spent eating correlates with greater obesity.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could see it the other way, meaning, oh, well if you're eating a lot, it's going to take you longer. But I think that ... And one point related to this is that there's some evidence that ultra-processed food ... It just goes down quicker. And part of the problem, again, with the ultra-processed food is it provides lower level of satiation. So you eat more and you don't feel full.
But Americans, and the convenience culture, and fast food, and the rest, which we're all familiar with, it's just sort of grab and go, and eat on the run. And so you're not thinking about what you're eating. And I think that's one ... As you know better than I do, but that's kind of one of the real pillars of healthier eating, is reflecting on what it is that you're consuming, and spending some time with it, and ideally doing it with ... Eating with other people.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. No. That socialization, sitting around the table, taking your time. Absolutely. I want to talk about ... Because you mentioned satiation there. And one of your facts is what foods are the most satiating. And we'll get to that in a second here. But before we do, let's talk about ... Let's go to 149. We're going to jump down here to one of your older posts here. And let's see. Got to keep going, here we go. So why so little advocacy about dietary health? And I think that you make the correlation here with climate change, right? And I think it's really powerful.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. This was something that ... It just struck me. So you think about how much advocacy there is about climate change. And I'm not challenging any of that, but you think about just how much there is, relative to how much advocacy there is, and multinational efforts, international efforts around diet and health. And again, with diet and health being the single biggest driver of mortality, not just in the United States, but globally. And it just sort of begs the question, why isn't there more happening?
And there's kind of complex reasons for this, and there's a whole sort of infrastructure that has been built up around climate change. And that's fine. But if you think about if someone had ... Whether it's a million dollars or 5 million or a hundred million, where would it be better to put that money? And I would like to think that ... I almost feel like diet and health, it's almost sort of like an emerging market. It's just not getting the attention. And there's a huge potential upside for what can be done, whereas there's a lot of money going into climate advocacy. And again, I'm not questioning that, but food and health just does not get the attention, I think, that it deserves, given people are dying right now. Every day. And millions of people a year are dying of consequences related to their diet. And you would just think that there would be more concerted advocacy around that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and you talk about how ... I mean, we almost know that the number one driver, globally, of death is eating the wrong foods. And I think you said ... It was somewhere. It's like 17 million, something like that, whereas how many people have died from, let's just say, climate change, right? It's significantly less than that. And to me, the crazy thing is that if we could get the preponderance of people to eat this way, not only could we basically solve this ... Our $4 trillion annually healthcare bill, we could also, I think in the most powerful way, make a dent on climate change.
Matthew Rees:
Yes, yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's the silver bullet for that.
Matthew Rees:
No, that's exactly ... I'm glad you raised that, because ... And that's the part that so often doesn't even come up in these climate discussions, these international climate discussions, or domestic, is the consumption of meats, in particular. And in fact, I think one of the sponsors of the most recent climate summit was ... I don't know if it was McDonald's or Coca-Cola. And it was just sort of like ... We're just completely missing the connection between the two. And it just sort of underscores all of the ways in which this whole issue is ... All of the indicators are wrong, and all of the forces are wrong, and we're paying a massive, massive price. And I sort of wonder, in 25, 50, 75 years, are people going to look back on this era and say, "What were they doing?" I mean, sort of the way we would look back at the advertisements for doctors smoking.
I don't know. I'm not going to be here in 75 years, but I would like to think that at some point, there's going to be some recognition that the food system, really in the US, but really globally, the way in which it's harming the recipients. And look, starvation and hunger is not cured, but the problem is not ... That's not the primary problem now. The problem is it's too much food, not too little. And we largely solved that hunger problem, but then we went overboard in the other direction, and we're paying a huge price.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, one of the most well known climate advocates is Greta Thunberg. Is that her last name? If I'm not mistaken. And I just read a little piece that said that in her whole book, in this new book she just wrote, she has, I think, one page on eating. And I think it's unfortunate that even somebody like her, who probably ... Just has not made the connection, right?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it's striking that ... I mean, look, she's 18, but you'd think someone would have said to her ... Would've read the book and-
Rip Esselstyn:
Very much so.
Matthew Rees:
... You're missing something here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's go to ... So you mentioned this a little bit earlier, and so let's come back to this. Washington is missing in action on obesity. Why?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I think it starts with just the campaign contributions of the food and beverage companies, and they give to both parties, and they give a lot. And so that helps sort of stifle, I think, any reform. But then I think you have forces with both parties, with Republicans and Democrats. And so with the Republicans, you have just a built-in resistance to any form of regulation or taxation. And we saw this when Michael Bloomberg tried to do some of his reforms, and even what Michelle Obama did. And there was just a ... And the phrase that always gets tossed around is nanny state or big brother. And so, for Republicans, that often is kind of a deal breaker.
Among the Democrats, you have ... Basically, people who are overweight or obese, I think, have become ... It's sort of almost evolved into a form of identity politics. And they don't want to be accused of doing anything that would qualify as fat-shaming or anything critical of people who have these conditions. And so as a result, you just ... Again, you have Congress not really doing anything. And then you throw in the fact that a government agency, the Government Accountability Office, did a big report about a year ago of all of the different federal government's initiatives around sort of food and health, and it was a stunning indictment. This is an independent office, but a stunning indictment of the fact that there was basically zero coordination within the federal government.
I mean, there's not much happening to begin with, but even those programs that do exist, they're not coordinated at all. And so it just speaks to how Washington is just really MIA on this issue. And it's not that government is the ultimate solution, but I think there is a role for government, given this national crisis that we're living ... It's sort of been this slow-burning crisis. And now, again, we have the highest obesity rate in the world, and is Washington going to do anything about it?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. I just read, I think it was yesterday, that Prince Charles is looking to hire a vegan chef. So wouldn't that be something, if Biden and some of the people, Kamala Harris, they got a vegan chef to come?
Matthew Rees:
Yes. Yeah, yeah. No, that would be ... And I should say that the Biden administration, they had a kind of ... What's called a White House conference on health and diet. And I can't remember the full name. And it was the first such conference that actually ... Since 1969 when, actually, Richard Nixon did it. And so it was a one-day conference. In our world, just the fact that there was a White House conference was kind of held up as this great milestone. And look, I give them credit. It remains to be seen how significant ... Sort of what the follow-through is. But President Biden did come, and he spoke. And so that's encouraging, but again, there's a lot ... There are massive forces working against any change.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think you had Neil Barnard, and you had Dean Ornish, and Cory Booker, all attend that, and were speaking and espousing kind of the message that we're trying to espouse too. Hey, the answer's really simple. It's just whole-food, plant-based.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. And Cory Booker has ... Democratic Senator from New Jersey ...
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:50:04]
Matthew Rees:
Cory Booker, Democratic senator from New Jersey, I think he's vegan or plant based. Football player at Stanford. He has been a big advocate for the whole Food Is Medicine program, and held a senate hearing on that. There are rumblings of reform, and that's very encouraging. But it's small, relative to the magnitude of the whole problem.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. You look at Eric Adams, right?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Eric Adams is really making a dent, I think. It's encouraging to me, to see somebody that's doing his best to drive this, whether it's hospitals, whether it's schools, into a lot of his policy.
Matthew Rees:
Someone who I believe was directly inspired by you and your father, correct?
Rip Esselstyn:
It was my father. Yeah. To help with his type two diabetes. That was really taking him down. Now he's, I don't know if you've met him anytime soon, or anytime lately, but he looks like, he's just a pillar.
Matthew Rees:
Is he?
Rip Esselstyn:
He's cut, and he's, yeah. He looks great. Let's talk about, so fact number 135 is a strategy for boosting vegetable consumption. Let's see, we're looking here at, this is a study that was published by the Journal of American Medical Associations in Stanford. Oh, we already talked about this.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, this was the Stanford-
Rip Esselstyn:
So this was-
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah, the carrots-
Rip Esselstyn:
... the twisted-
Matthew Rees:
... with citrus dressing, and smart choice vitamin C, citrus carrots, and yeah, all the different ways in which-
Rip Esselstyn:
Carrots.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Okay, so there you go. Basically, make vegetables exciting, right?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, marketing matters. All the junk food is getting all this fancy marketing, and so if there's a way we can make fruits and vegetables, whole grains, more appealing, all the better.
Rip Esselstyn:
We talked about health washing. But this one, I just had to laugh. The relationship ... Wait, not this one. We already talked about that. That was the relationship between time spent eating, and BMI. We talked about that. But this was, 115 here. "Hershey rolls out a mid-morning snack." It's like, "You've got to be kidding me." Here it is, the Reese's Snack Cake.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I'll point out that I have no connection to the Reese's. I'm Matthew Rees, they spell it differently. But yeah, well and then, so at the end here, okay, so they're releasing this whatever. Soft bake chocolate cake, topped with Reese's peanut butter cream, covered in real milk chocolate. Then they almost take this, so the Hershey press release portrayed the company in heroic terms. "Now you can indulge in a Reese's treat any time of day. Consider morning officially saved."
Then just almost the F you at the end is, they hashtag, "Not sorry." As if they're anticipating the criticism and, "You know what? That's your problem." It just again speaks to the hubris of these companies, that they can ... It's one thing, look, they're going to release the product. But the preemptive pushback. Look, I don't think these products have any redeeming health features. They're 380 calories, and again, it's something you have in between breakfast and lunch.
Rip Esselstyn:
I can tell you, back when I ate these kind of things, my favorite thing in the whole wide world was a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. So if I was still in that frame of mind, I would see these and I'd be like, "Oh, I'm all over these. I'm going to have at least one mid-morning, and mid-afternoon." So we're talking almost 800 calories right there, that I'm adding to my total. That's crazy.
111, I don't know if we talked about this. Just the changes in the American eating environment. I feel like we have.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, this is the-
Rip Esselstyn:
Re-setting the table?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, that's the snacking, and this is an excerpt from this book by Robert Paulberg, who's at the Kennedy School at Harvard. It's just food products being designed by corporate scientist to be irresistible, and relentlessly promoted by food manufacturing companies. You mentioned the bliss point. Michael Moss, the Salt, Sugar, and Fat book has talked about this. The science or the research has been looking now more and more at whether these foods are actually addictive, and the way, again, and this-
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't think there's any doubt that they're addictive.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, and there's been a professor at Yale, who's explored the way in which some of these foods, they actually trick the human body, and the body doesn't even register them as the calories that they are. That gets into that satiation point.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is that Katz? David Katz?
Matthew Rees:
No, it's not David Katz. Her last name is Small, and she was written about in this book that I reviewed, by Mark Schatzker, the title of which I can't remember right now. But it's a wonderful, wonderful book. All these ultra-processed foods, the human body wasn't designed for these foods. That's the point, and so they're almost tricking the human body. So we're eating more, and we're not getting full, and we're getting unhealthier.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and we're not getting any of the nutrients that we need either.
Matthew Rees:
Yes, right, right. That's, right. You're eating these foods, and so you eat those foods, and then you don't eat ... It's a double whammy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, you're getting the macros that you need, but you're not getting anywhere close to all of the vitamins, the minerals, the vital nutrients, the antioxidants, the fiber, water. The list goes on. This is something that I was really, I'm not surprised at, but I want to touch upon it. Because you mentioned something in here, that I thought was worthy of bringing it up. That's the doctors' dietary knowledge deficit. This particular quote, from David Katz, in the third paragraph. If you don't mind, I'm just going to read this.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Actually, why don't you read it?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay, go ahead.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, part of the problem is that medical students receive little training in nutrition. Less than 1% of lecture hours at medical schools, according to one study. The medical school curriculum, points out David Katz, a professor, head of a research center at Yale, is based on a report issued in 1920. A time when, "Diseases of nutritional deficiency still prevailed, and the modern diseases of dietary excesses were inconsequentially rare."
This, as I have done this deep dive, and I find all of these disturbing facts, the fact that the doctors just are not trained in nutrition, and whatever training they get, it's often biochemistry. It's nothing about how food interacts with the human body. So you have these highly trusted individuals when it comes to health, and they don't have the tools to serve the patients, who are largely getting sick because of the food they eat. It speaks to the incredible disconnect, and the contradictions built within our healthcare and medical system.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, and the term here, the last word is anachronism. Which is, in the definition is-
Matthew Rees:
Well, it's something that is-
Rip Esselstyn:
... kind of archaic.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right? But it doesn't ... Nothing about where we are in 2023, and the prevailing medical issues, lines up with what these doctors are learning in medical school. It is so sad.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah, no, it's just this real void, and just a missed opportunity for doctors. There have been, I know some schools have actually taught, have cooking electives. That's great. But your father was a doctor, and doctors, they spend all this time in residency. They often end up with terrible diets, and have terrible sleep patterns, because they're working so much. So they're often not, it's very difficult for them to lead a healthy dietary existence.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Let's go to fact number 105. The human biome, fiber, and flatulence. Because you have the last line here. David Lustig, a prominent obesity researcher, pithily notes that, "Our choice comes down to fart or fat."
Matthew Rees:
I think I learned some of this from you actually, because you've talked about walk and talk, and the fiber sometimes can contribute to flatulence, and beans, legumes in particular.
Rip Esselstyn:
We don't want to shy away from that.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Look, if that's the byproduct, we'll take it, because it's much better, having a little bit of flatulence is a lot better than having the diseases that come from not eating those foods.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and I like to tell people that, when I do have flatulence, my flatulence, they're like raspberries. It's a beautiful thing. All right, let's go to ... You know what? I don't think we've talked enough about eating out, and restaurants. I think that's a really, really important one. You have a whole thing right here. US food spending in the restaurant sector. If you could talk about that.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, nearly 40% of total US spending related to food went toward restaurants and other establishments. This is, I think, a fundamental part of the problem is that Americans are spending more and more of their food dollar outside the home. The foods that, in basically all forms of restaurants, but particularly obviously in fast food, in so many ways it's low in fiber, high in fat, or high in sugar, lacking the nutrients. Look, it may be somewhat inexpensive, but there's a high price to pay for that. But the other thing that's changed over the last 30 years or so, is that the portions have dramatically expanded. We remember-
Rip Esselstyn:
Have you been to the Olive Garden lately?
Matthew Rees:
I have not.
Rip Esselstyn:
We went a week ago.
Matthew Rees:
Oh, you did?
Rip Esselstyn:
We were at a swim meet in San Antonio. We got the cleanest we could get. I could not believe the size of these bowls.
Matthew Rees:
Oh yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
I should say troughs.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, for the restaurants, there's very little extra cost for them to basically double the size of a portion. So the customer feels like, "Oh, I'm getting a good deal," and so you over-eat. The unlimited refills on the beverages. Again, it's probably costing them pennies to do that. The Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts did this study, where they did this comprehensive survey of meals in restaurants. I think they may have looked at, if not hundreds, maybe even thousands.
The percentage that met a definition of ideal nutrition was 0.1%. I think it was actually your father who once said to me that, "Any time you go out, you just have to know, it's the wild west out there. You don't really know what you're getting." Unless you are really vigilante about what you're ordering, and how you're talking to the server, it might be presented as, I've had this experience, I'm sure you have. You think you're getting something vegan, and then, I don't know, there's dairy all over it, or cheese.
I frankly just try to eat out as little as possible, and just eat at home. But if you're going to be eating out, you just really need to take a lot of preventative measures. Look at the menu in advance. I think you've suggested, just ask, "Can the chef just get ..." Don't even order something on the menu. Just say, "Can I just get some steamed vegetables, and maybe some grains?"
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I'll just give a little plug here. If anybody is in Austin, Texas, or comes to Austin, Texas, a really fantastic place where you can eat, super clean, whole food plant based, no added oils, is Casa de Luz, which stands for House of Light. Which I've been going to since 1989. Spectacular place.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, that's-
Rip Esselstyn:
You need to go, if you haven't been.
Matthew Rees:
Maybe I'll go this afternoon.
Rip Esselstyn:
You should. Let's talk about, because everybody asks me this question. I'd love to know, because you did some research on it. It's a fun fact, or I shouldn't say fun fact. It's fact number 78. That is, organic versus non-organic food. The results that you came up with here in your research actually surprised me.
Matthew Rees:
Oh, did they?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Matthew Rees:
Okay. Yeah, I mean look, there are reasons. People can come up with many different reasons to eat organic food. It may have a lower, obviously they're not using pesticides, and a variety of other factors. But there's not compelling evidence that organic food is actually healthier than non-organic food. The USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, made that very clear when they created the designation.
I think that organic food, it tends to be more expensive. So there are strong feelings about this. But I think that the jury is out, as to really whether, for purely health reasons, whether it's a clear advantage to eat organic food. Again, a very comprehensive study from Stanford University has pointed that out as well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, which I think is, for many people that are out there, it should be very comforting.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, and-
Rip Esselstyn:
Just do your best to get more fruits, more vegetables. More servings of all these whole plant based foods.
Matthew Rees:
Well, and there's one interesting study as well, showed that when people were eating organic food, they were under the impression that, because it's healthier, "So I don't actually have to exercise as much." Then you have issues around the cost, and is it potentially leading people to just not buy any fruits or vegetables, if the only option is organic?
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and then you've got organic donuts, you've got organic sugar. You've got organic cigarettes.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, in that health washing column, I wrote about this organic ice cream. It was just larded with sugar, salt, fat. The ingredient list had six different forms of sugar. Again, you will have entities, and we're familiar with them, that portray themselves as some holier than thou, they have this health halo just because they're organic. The reality is, there is nothing healthy about this food. But because they have the organic label, people think, "Oh, it must be okay for me to eat this."
Rip Esselstyn:
I think it's the same way with gluten free. You've got your gluten free donuts, you've got your gluten free candy bars, your gluten free chips. All that stuff. Along the same vein, if you could speak to fresh versus frozen.
Matthew Rees:
Oh, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then this, I knew this, but I think it's a nice something for people to hear.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, so this was a study from the University of California Davis, a very eminent agricultural school. Agriculture focused school. They found no significant difference in the health profile of a variety of different frozen fruits and vegetables. This was a wake up call for me. I never liked that, after a couple days, blueberries would get soft and wilted. So all of the blueberries I buy now are frozen. You can keep them as long as they stay frozen.
So it's really, for the people like me or others who have concerns about, "Am I going to be able to eat all of this quickly enough?", just get the frozen option. Keep it in the refrigerator, and eat it when you can.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, I tell people, if you could see my freezer at home, between green leafies, peas, corn, mangoes, blueberries. I usually have three different types of blueberries in there. We have these big honking ones, we've got wild blueberries. Yeah, so I love that you did that with frozen versus fresh.
Matthew Rees:
I'll just put in a plug for one of your videos. I think it was what you eat in a day. You made these, it was both breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I remember, one of them involved mangoes. That's just, for anyone who's looking for a little 10 minute tutorial, that actually had a big influence on me, and hopefully others as well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice, nice. Rising US dairy consumption, this is fact number 52. I am a little bit perplexed that in 2023, people are still continuing to eat more dairy. But not surprisingly, milk has gone down.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, that's encouraging. But it's offset by all the other stuff, and all the different ways in which ... So much, I think, look, Americans eat a lot of pizza. I will say, you can get pizza without cheese, and you obviously sell pizza crusts. But that cheese that you're getting on the pizza has to be just continuing to drive up the consumption levels.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and here you say that the per capita consumption of dairy in the US has increased, from 539 pounds in 1975, to 653 in 2019. I would have thought it would have been a lot more than that.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, it sounds like, I don't know. That's 1.7 pounds per day. But yeah, whatever you measure it, it's a lot, and it's too much. It's clearly contributing to-
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and I know you're not eating any dairy right now, probably.
Matthew Rees:
Right, no.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm not eating any. So that means somebody is doubling down, right? Somebody's doing 1000, 1200.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, it's that Hershey's mid-morning snack. That's all of those products.
Rip Esselstyn:
So one of the things that I think is going up, and it doesn't really surprise me, is the rise in the US poultry consumption.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you just read that?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, this was, annual per capita poultry consumption in the United States increased, from 26.4 pounds in 1970, to 62.4 pounds in 2019, according to the US Department of Agriculture. I don't necessarily have an explanation, other than, people maybe having some awareness. "Well, chicken's better than beef. So I'll just get chicken, and then that's fine. That's healthy." So I don't know, do you have a theory? I mean obviously-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, I do, absolutely. It started with paleo, then it was keto. Most recently it's been carnivore. Did you hear about the new, all meat diet that's out there? It's called the lion diet. You want to eat like a lion. It's just meat, salt, and water. Those three things. Anyway, it's just, I don't know what's going to one up the lion diet, but yeah.
I think this is why. People, as we've talked about for the last hour so far, people, they're overweight. They're desperate. They're trying to figure out this riddle. It's really not a riddle, but it is if you can't see what we can see. You can't see the bullseye. So yeah, they're thinking, "Oh, well let me just double down on chicken or whatever."
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, the chicken nuggets, and obviously the poultry industry in this country is so huge. The products are relatively affordable. But without the health benefits.
Rip Esselstyn:
I found this. This is fact number 39. America's spending on food as a share of disposable income. Will you just relay this to people?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, so basically, from 1960 to 2019, the share of disposable income spent on food fell basically in half, from 17% to 9.5%. In some ways you could say, "Well that's a good thing. We don't have to spend, to we can use our income on other things, or have more disposable income." But what it really speaks to is the proliferation of this low cost, low in nutrition, high in salt, sugar, and fat food, that's being produced to serve the consumers who are maybe looking for these low cast, highly convenient options. But there's a price to pay. There's a short term, medium term, and long term price for buying such low price foods.
This does get into this issue that I know you've talked about, in terms of, does it have to be expensive to eat healthy? To eat plant based? You can buy a can of garbanzo beans at Whole Foods for, I don't know, $1.19, and even less if you're buying the beans by the sack. You'll find studies on showing conflicting data, but you don't have to shop at Whole Foods, or other grocers, in order to eat healthy. But you do need to think about the products you're buying, and ideally eating and buying products that are in as close to their natural form as possible.
Rip Esselstyn:
The thing to me that's really surprising is, I've seen some figures that, 50 years ago, 60 years ago it was, 40% of our disposable income was going for food. The fact that it's basically 10% is quite surprising to me. 10%, and yet we're continuing to buy the most unhealthy foods on the planet, within 10%.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah. At what point is getting a deal worthwhile? Because it's again these, and if you have the slope going down on spending less on food, just as the slope is going up on, we're becoming more obese, there's clearly a connection between the two.
Rip Esselstyn:
I also, you know my stance on added oils.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Not a fan of added oils. This fact, number 38. Americans increased consumption of added fats and oils. Can you share this-
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, yeah. This was striking. Again, USDA data. The biggest change in the American diet from 1970 to 2010 was increased consumption of added fats and oils, such as olive oil and canola oil, rising from 337 calories per day, to 562.
Rip Esselstyn:
That 562 is effectively 25% of what should be most people's calories. For those of you that are not aware, oil is 100% fat, and really has no nutritional ...
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:15:04]
Rip Esselstyn:
... aware oil's a hundred percent fat and really has no nutritional integrity to speak of. Yeah. It is the-
Matthew Rees:
And highly caloric, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh my God. Yeah.
Matthew Rees:
You don't have to have much to... Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
No. Right. And so we like to say oil is to the fat world, what sugar is to the carbohydrate world.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Just empty calories.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. And here you have-
Rip Esselstyn:
And lots of them.
Matthew Rees:
And you only have 210 calories coming from fruits and vegetables. So this right here, if you were going to choose sort of one point to try to explain some of what has gone wrong in the American diet. This image, in fact, 38 captures it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Carrie, we will have to edit this so I'm trying to find here where we are.
Speaker 1:
We're going to Wisconsin.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let's see. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Can you tell me what time that was on your audio, Rip?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. 1:12:30 ish. Yeah. All right. So, all right, we're getting there. We're getting there. Again, I mean, I want to go through every one of these, but obviously we're not going to.
Matthew Rees:
Sure, sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
But we're getting near the end here. But can you speak to this one. A Bolivian tribe, where the world's healthiest hearts. Fact number 35. I found this to be fascinating. I had never heard of the two Tsimane.
Matthew Rees:
I don't even know how it's pronounced, but...
Rip Esselstyn:
When I see Dan Butner in three weeks, I need to ask him if he's done any research on these guys and why they're not part of his blue zone.
Matthew Rees:
Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, this is research published in a very eminent journal, the Lancet in the UK. And it showed that this tribe had incredibly low levels of coronary arthrosclerosis and no evidence of the condition, lowest levels of coronary artery disease of any population recorded to date. The tribe members take on average 17,000 steps per day, derive 72% of their calories from unprocessed carbohydrates, 14% from fat, 14% from protein. They're eating like people ate probably hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and they have not been subjected to all of the ultra processed food.
Rip Esselstyn:
I mean, Peter Otello probably would like that 17,000 steps.
Matthew Rees:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
But I really like the 72% of their daily calories from unprocessed carbohydrates.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. Plantains-
Rip Esselstyn:
Plantains, corn, and nuts. Right?
Matthew Rees:
... corn and nuts. Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
14% fat, 14% protein. It just looks... That's idyllic there. That's a sweet looking diet right there. All right. Let's see. Well, we have talked a lot today about ultra processed food and how bad it is, but this fact number 32, basically, you let us know exactly what percentage of our calories are coming from ultra processed food and what is it?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. 58%. 57.9%. And with children, which was in a different fact, it's 67%. And this hasn't always been this way, but this is the story also of the evolution and the deterioration of the American diet. And this paper published in the British Medical Journal, BMJ, had a great description or definition of ultra processed foods. Industrial formulations, which includes substances not used in culinary preparations, in particular additives used to imitate sensorial qualities of minimally processed foods in their culinary preparations. And if you're watching, you can see the image of the pizza, the Italiano takeaway pizza and some sort of cookies and the chicken dippers made by Bird's Eye and just sort of these concoctions that are not natural.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, the thing that jumps out to me when I look at this is whole natural food has one ingredient.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Right. Just a tomato.
Rip Esselstyn:
One ingredient.
Matthew Rees:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then we have processed. You know, you got the tomato sauce that's got 11 ingredients. You've got the raspberry jam that's got six, and then you got this chicken roast that's got 10. But ultra processed, 26 ingredients on the top, then 25 for basically the raspberries, and then 16 on these chicken dippers. And the fact that if we go back to where we started this, the fact that 58% of Americans' calories are coming not from processed. Ultra processed.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
That is alarming.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. No, and there's no reason to believe that the numbers are improving, I think. I'm sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
No.
Matthew Rees:
I'm sure the numbers are just getting worse. And we see the manifestation of that in the data on obesity and other indicators.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. I'd like for you to talk for a second about this fact number 28, which is the role of physical activity and weight loss and weight gain. This does not surprise me, but I know a lot of people think that the key to losing weight and getting healthy is to eat less and exercise more. And so this actually addresses that, and I think a beautiful way.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I mean, there's this phrase, I don't know if it's in here, but you can't outrun an unhealthy diet, or you can't exercise your way out of an unhealthy diet. And so much of the evidence shows that, look, exercise has huge benefits, and you and I both know that, but weight loss should not be viewed as one of them. You should not be exercising for the sole purpose of losing weight. If you want to lose weight and become healthier, the real key is eat a better diet. And, yeah, this shows the exercise to lower blood pressure, reduced risk of heart attack, and stroke.
And look, we all have heard of the people who say, "God, I'm running and I'm doing all these different exercises and I just can't lose weight." And we remember the Biggest Loser, that television show, and what was so troubling about that was that, I don't know, it seemed like 90% of the time it just showed them exercising and I don't even remember what they were eating. And I think maybe it was sponsored by Subway, and look, they were losing a lot of weight, but exercising for whatever, 3, 4, 5, 6 hours a day, for most people other than elite athletes, that's just not sustainable. You're just not going to be able to do that. Maybe in a reality TV show setting, you can, and the studies showed that many of the participants in that show regained the weight because they probably were not getting the focus on food that they needed, and they just couldn't sustain that level of exercise.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. No, there's been some extensive, I think, articles written on what's happened to a lot of these biggest losers. I think it's like 90% of them have come back to weighing what they were, if not more. So again, you got to do it the right way. Right? The smart way.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Whole food, plant based.
Matthew Rees:
Yes. Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right, let's... Just a handful more, if you don't mind if you're there.
Matthew Rees:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
So let's hit this one since we've talked so much about weight gain and obesity. So the foods most associated with weight loss and weight gain, and I think this is it right here. So, yeah, it says here that yogurt, nuts and fruits, the greatest weight loss and then the greatest weight gain, french fries, no surprise. Potato chips and then sugar sweetened beverages.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. And the sugar sweetened beverages in particular for children, there's very troubling data on just how much the average American child consumes in terms of Coke and Seven Up and Sprite and the rest. Again, one thing that these three, French fried, potato chips, sugar sweetened beverages have in common is they're not great in terms of satiation. So you eat them and you're still hungry or thirsty or whatever. And nuts by contrast tend to be high in satiation. Walnuts obviously being the best to eat, and then fruits. And I've also seen just on the satiation point there was one study in particular that talked about, actually, I think it was sweet potatoes actually have the highest level of satiation.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, we're going there. We're going there.
Matthew Rees:
Okay. Good. Good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. That's an important one. And the sugar sweetened beverages, one of our pillars that I wrote about in the Engine 2 Seven-Day Rescue diet was basically pillar number three is why we want to make sure we're chewing our calories and not drinking them. Because when you drink them, your brain and your stomach don't register those calories as calories, and there's really no satiation whatsoever. And so you will invariably consume the same amount of solid calories on top of the liquid calories. So it's sad how many people are drinking this instead of water.
Matthew Rees:
Well, and to your point, it's also the issue people think, "Oh, well, I'll just have a diet Coke or a diet..." and that's not the answer. Tea and water, I mean, those are our best beverages.
Rip Esselstyn:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, we talked about the satiating foods here. Let's go right there and talk about it. It's number nine. All right? And here we go. Here, the most and least satiating foods. I'm going to let you take it away.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I think this is very important because look, hunger and satiation do factor in so much to why people eat. We want to be filled up. So we have boiled potatoes have a 323% kind of satiation factor at one end. And at the other end, a croissant came in, showed worst, and then a cake, donuts, Mars bar. And again, so you're getting these foods that are typically very low in nutrients, very high in calories, and they don't fill you up at all, so you're just going to be eating more. And I think it was good to see that oatmeal scored very well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oatmeal was number three. It says ling fish. I don't even know what a ling fish is.
Matthew Rees:
I don't know that either. But oranges are fourth. Apples are fifth.
Rip Esselstyn:
Brown pasta.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, baked beans score high.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, really, the top five, except for the ling fish are all some sort of a whole food plant-based source.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for each individual, maybe it's going to be a little bit different, but finding those foods that you like that fill you up and that have those nutrients or that are good for you is where the focus should be.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. We got two more. Two more. We got to talk about protein consumption in the United States. That was fact number seven. And I'll let you take it away, and then I'll make a comment or two.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. I mean, the recommended daily allowance is 0.8 grams per kilogram, 56 grams per men, 46 grams for women. Most recent USDA survey survey shows dramatically more, that the average American male is having 97 grams. Women, 69 grams. And you see this comes back a little bit to the health washing, you see so many products touting, "high in protein." And there's this sense, and I've learned this from you and from others, that somehow we always need more protein and that we're protein deficient. And the reality is that Americans get too much protein or much more than they need, and not enough, and they don't get the fiber that they need. And you see many more products touting their protein than their fiber content. And the hamburgers don't have any fiber, and they may be high in protein. And so the focus... And somehow the, I don't know, the protein people out there have done a great job of convincing Americans that we all need more protein when that's just not the case.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I would even go as far as to say that I would bet you the vast majority of Americans are protein toxic. And as it says there, 64% of the total protein intake is coming from animal sources, which is deleterious to our health and does a real number. And I won't go into all those things right now. So just suffice it to say, everybody, that when you're eating a whole food plant-based diet, the one that we prescribe, recommend, you're getting all the protein you need, you're getting complete protein sources, and it's really the Goldilocks version with all nine of the essential amino acids, so don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And let's end on this one, which is where we really started. And that's a big fat crisis. Right? So when you posted this back on October 26th, 2020, did you think that you'd still be doing this two plus years later?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. That's a good question. And I kind of started this, and I didn't really know where this was going to go and where it was going to evolve and how it would be received. And I just knew that if nothing else, if it was just an intellectual outlet for me and forced me to document some of these troubling indicators, that was sufficient and if other people found it interesting, all the better.
But this, to me just spoke to how far the United States had fallen, and not just the increase in the obesity rate, but the largest absolute increase of any country in the world except for a few small South Pacific Island nations. And it just, again, shows how much we've just sort of veered off the course of health and the way in which food is driving these high rates of disease, disability, and death. And again, the fact that the US life expectancy, even pre-Covid was in decline, but even before that was the lowest of developed countries in the world. And let's keep in mind, we have the worst sort of health outcomes, and we spend at least about twice as much on health on a per capita basis as all of these other countries. So we're getting the worst of both worlds. And why is this...
Rip Esselstyn:
How is this acceptable?
Matthew Rees:
Yeah, right. How is it acceptable and why? The whole healthcare debate is, there are so many different factors that play into it. But fundamentally when we talk about discussions about healthcare policy in this country, at some point, it was about five or six years ago, I realized, wait a minute, how comes no one's actually talking about getting people healthier? It's as if it's just not even part of the debate. We're going to rework how insurance works and Medicare coverage, and all these different things, but there's no emphasis, such a small little emphasis on actually just improving the health of the American people. And that's ultimately where the focus should be and needs to be, and it really isn't.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So how can I subscribe to your newsletter if I want to get this? Does it come out once a week? It
Matthew Rees:
The goal was for it to come out once a week. At the moment, it comes out about every other week, and I write kind of more of an essay. I've been doing some longer pieces. They started out much shorter. But the website is just foodandhealthfacts.com. And there are a couple of different places where you can just click to subscribe and it's free. And I'm on Twitter at Food Health Facts, and there, obviously kind of shorter items highlighting some of the troubling developments that we see almost every day in the world of food companies and what they're pedaling. And I welcome any and all subscribers and feedback as well on what I'm writing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Are you subsidized by Big Broccoli or Hershey's?
Matthew Rees:
No. No Subsidies at all. And just a kind of labor of love, and I wish I had some better news to report on a more regular basis, and I do look for positive developments. But as I said earlier, I don't see any upside in painting a rosier picture of American's health than the reality, which is so depressing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I've said this on the podcast many times, but I do feel like we will get there just like we kind of did with smoking. Right? You mentioned with smoking, what, it was 42%?
Matthew Rees:
42%.
Rip Esselstyn:
And now it's down below 20%, if I'm not mistaken,
Matthew Rees:
About 13%. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
13%, right. Yeah. So that's fantastic. But I think it will happen with the way we eat. The only question is how long will it be? Will it be 15 years? Will it be 100 years? What will be the tipping point? Because to me, it is the silver bullet that will allow us to mitigate the major ills that are going on right now that we need to pay attention to.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm right there with you and you've been a big inspiration to me and your father and all of the work that you have done, whether it's the food you sell or the books you've written and the messages that you get out. And so I hope that if I can just do my one little part to sort of build on all of your great work, that's what I'm trying to do.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, this has been a fantastic hour and a half. Super important look into what's going on with food and health in this country. I can't wait to have you back on, and we can talk about a bunch more facts maybe in six months to a year, but I really appreciate you coming on the PLANTSTRONG podcast, Matthew.
Matthew Rees:
Thank you, rip. It's great to be here. It's really been an honor.
Rip Esselstyn:
Keep it PLANTSTRONG.
Matthew Rees:
Yeah. Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Matthew's website, once again is foodandhealthfacts.com, and I would encourage you to pay a visit and also sign up for his website to stay on top of all of the research and entries that Matthew posts about. And a little FYI, it's also a wonderful source of information for people who are just curious and interested on the impacts of nutrition on our overall health. It's not always pretty, but it is the truth and the best way to combat these forces is through knowledge. Thanks, as always, for listening to the PLANTSTRONG podcast and always keep it PLANTSTRONG. We'll see you next week.
Thank you for listening to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything. The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori Kortowicg, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous, truth seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:36:03]
