Fruit and Honey are NOT Carnivore!

hello and welcome to the how to carnivore podcast i'm your host simon lewis and you're tuning in to the plant-free md series with dr anthony chafee dr chafee is a surgeon nutritional researcher and former pro-rugby player he's been strict carnivore for three years and an on and off carnival for more than 20. dr chafee looks and feels like a real life superhero if losing fat building muscle finding focus and getting the most out of life is important to you you're going to love the plant-free md series hey everyone welcome to another episode with the plant-free md dr anthony chafee today's topic is all about fruit which is kind of strange for a show that's called how to carnivore but in the carnivore community everybody seems to uh all of a sudden be talking about fruit um there's a lot of people including carnival aurelius and the carnival md paul saladino who were really big into eating meat and organs but also a lot of fruit and dr chaffee has spoken a lot about the damaging effects of glucose so i thought it'd be really interesting to run a few things by him in particular some of the arguments that carnivore aurelius has put to has put forward for why we should eat fruit uh and to get dr chafee's perspective so uh dr anthony chafee welcome yeah thank you very much uh yeah and and fructose in particular yeah yeah um okay well we can get into that so to start off with we're gonna do a little bit of a a rapid fire i just read one of carnival aurelius's blogs to be clear i love carnival aurelius and he's hilarious on instagram um but it should be fun to get another perspective on the message that he's putting forward so the first point that he raised is our eyes have evolved to eat fruit uh and i interpreted this as something to do with uh oh he was talking about the way that we can recognize colors so we can see like a ripe red fruit in a tree uh thoughts dr chafee well i mean yeah i mean that that's probably correct but you know the thing is is that we don't you don't lose a trait evolutionarily unless there's an unless there's an evolutionary advantage to losing that trick you know we can still move our jaw side to side but that doesn't mean we can mill uh grains and and fibrous plants but we it didn't benefit us to lose that trait and so you know evolution didn't expend the energy or the or the worry in doing that um so same thing with with uh being able to see colors maybe you know seeing colors you know gave us an advantage in other ways as well i mean certainly uh helps our our modern lives also so there may have been other advantages to that and at least there wasn't enough of an advantage to lose it however there are people who are red green color blind quite a lot of men are red green color blind this is thought to be because of hunting and you know you can see in sort of low light dawn dusk uh times a little better you can also see you know the the contrast between like you know foliage and uh like an animal right whereas if you if you have full color vision it's harder to to sort of pick out shapes in in the wild and things like that wow so it's it can be it can be an advantage to be less good at seeing colors yeah exactly and that's that's why a lot of carnivores and the predators and things like that are is because they don't you know they're not seeing a whole bunch of different colors and noise they can just sort of see there's this there's something there it's just sort of hiding in the bushes and it stands out a bit more and so this is thought to be why we a lot of people develop red green uh color blindness that's very interesting yeah and so you know yeah maybe but you know we also had you know a long cecum and so forth and that used to be where we used to pile in fiber and so forth and we haven't used that in a long time either that did confer an advantage to shrink that down because it takes a lot of energy to maintain a large gut um and so that shrank so that's a vestigial organ colorblind you know color vision can be thought of as this digital as well that that conferred a specific advantage at a certain time but it didn't necessarily confer an advantage after that but it didn't didn't give us a huge benefit to lose it necessarily which is why it didn't completely go away but that but you see that all over the place and all sorts of uh different examples of that where you uh just don't have uh you didn't have a evolutionary advantage to lose a trait just like you know moving your jaw you know that's what how i would respond to that okay yeah i like that response um i mean being able to recognize colors and have like a sort of a broad range of colors that we can see is an advantage for lots of things like you know we can humans can also do art and build computers and do all sorts of stuff where i feel like that would also be that would also come in handy not just for recognizing fruit um anyway okay we move on uh number two humans like sweet things it's true we do like sweet things does that mean we're designed to eat fruit i mean people like cocaine too i don't really see what what that has to do with anything um you know yeah so carbohydrates are generally sweet they're generally mildly sweet uh you know glucose is not very sweet you know there's lactose that's kind of sweet to me it's much more sweet because my my sense of taste is very different now it's just been full carnivore but um fructose is is the sweetest of the of the sugars the carbohydrates and it's thought to be evolutionarily that this is so because we don't really know of any you know fruit or plant that contains fructose that is acutely poisonous to humans like will kill you that day so we our ancestors who were able to recognize this as a bit of a nice flavor were able to eat something that sort of got them through the lean times and so this was a quick hit of energy this is something that they recognized as safe or at least temporarily safe and you know were able to survive and so that that would have conferred a survival uh benefit you know being able to being able to eat some plants when it was necessary to survive but that doesn't mean that that's optimal for us that doesn't mean that that's our evolved natural state and you know and of most benefit to us um yeah i think kind of aurelius does say that obviously you can survive on just meat and fat like he's he's totally open to that um he just want to make that clear that he's not he's not saying we need fruit but he's saying it can be a benefit um okay all right number three uh it's to do with the human gut uh and he says that fruit and meat digestion both rely on enzymes rather than fermentation so i suppose this is sort of contrasting with like with vegetables that kind of ferment in your gut or like a cow when they grass your response so i don't know how that that really you know uh you know justifies the argument that we're you know supposed to eat uh carbohydrates and this is this is something that you know simple sugars or whatever that this is this is our natural evolved state you know when we came from a rivers background six you know eight million years ago or so and you know when they ate more and more meat we've been basically full carnivores for the last two and a half three million years uh but you still have certain traits and you know and so and and that would confer uh evolutionary advantage and survival advantage if you were able to eat you know fruits or starchy things or whatever uh when you needed to and you know this is why we've been such an uh dominant species we've been able to habit you know uh you know habitat all over the world like literally everywhere from you know north to south pole um and so you know that that can that can give us an advantage to be able to to you know run on these uh energy sources but you know if you're if you think about optimal if you think about how we evolve you're thinking about what's best for us you have to think about you know people living in snow covered climbs like you know the north pole the inuit and so forth and many other uh civilizations and and also the ice ages there were tens of thousands of years in a span where there was not a single fruit tree or beehive around they just weren't and so you know i mean vegetation aside there was certainly no fruit and there's certainly no honey and so if you're saying that this is what we have all done this is something that we have to have i would say that that's just inherently uh you know verifiably false because we did not have the access to that for tens of thousands of years and you know the inuits don't have it at all and and one of the one of the contentions that uh have been put forward is that you know lack of of carbohydrates or fructose can cause organ dysfunction and and uh even like thyroid dysfunction and so forth that's his next point okay we'll get to that one then okay uh so the next one is to do with metabolism and thyroid um so eating this is kind of a realist eating fruit tells your body you're in a calorie-rich environment so you your metabolism accelerates uh which uh which means that you can burn i'm not 100 sure what the point is there but then um he also argues that if we're not eating fruit and we're regularly burning the fat that's stored in our bodies that's stressful and then by eating fruit um in a less stressful situation so i feel like you've got something to say here oh yeah is it is it really stressful isn't it no no no no i don't know i you know i think that that's going you know harking back to the idea that you know this is a fed state in a fasting state and a fasting state is you know putting your body in stress and this is hard on your body and it's only supposed to be if you're lost in the desert and you can't eat for a month and and this is a survival mechanism that's nonsense this is this is the primary metabolic state of all animals in the wild your fat stores are your gas tank this is this is how your body runs you fill up your gas tank you run on your gas um all animals in the wild run like that you know animals in the wild except like hummingbirds and in some insects and things like that they run on fat you know and so you know they're not running on carbohydrates uh you know even herbivores they break down you know fiber into you know short-term fatty acids right so they're all running on this they're all being able to access their fat stores they're all running on fat and so they're all in this stress horrible state that's that's boxing their thyroid probably not um and then the idea that you're in uh you know high caloric state you've got an abundance of food and so forth you put your your your body is less stress what has more energy in nutrition and calories than fat not a single food source so you know carbohydrates you know have four grams or sorry have four calories per gram that has nine okay so you know i've heard this before you know people saying that we must have eaten a lot of honey and so forth which is such a calorie dense uh substance and it's like you know density is a specific word density you know means calories per gram the densest you know caloric source is fat um carbohydrates are the same caloric density as as protein if you can you know by you know burning it which is which is nonsense i mean things are you know function very differently in your body biochemically so you know those calories don't actually work exactly the same as like a calories from protein or the calibration of fat and so forth metabolically however if we're just going off those numbers it's definitionally not you know you know uh it's calorically dense you know uh fat absolutely has the most energy program um as far as thyroid is concerned again look at look at the innues look at people in um you know the ice ages and so forth if you had some sort of deficit that caused hypothyroidism that's a big problem especially for survival in the wild hypothyroidism is a dreadful state to be in it's very very harmful it's very hard to live with and if you don't uh have it have enough you can die from this more importantly when a woman is low thyroid and she's pregnant that baby becomes severely deformed and uh misdeveloped it's something called cretinism we call people cretins but that actually is a medical term for this this specific um you know developmental delay of of congenital hypothyroidism um you know all the best insults are all you know old medical uh terminologies you know and and and green is one of them and so this is a very serious issue you become very intellectually delayed and impaired and physically uh impaired as well and you know so if you had if you had to have carbohydrates if you had to have fructose specifically yeah you're in an eyeshadow yeah well exactly you everyone everyone would have been cretins and they would have just died out you know we would not have made it through tens of thousands of beers of ice ages the inuits would not exist right now because there are no damn fruit and there is no honey so i don't think that that holds water and i don't i don't think that if you just sort of you look at that from that perspective and you know this is something that you know dr saladino says he likes to look at these things from an evolutionary perspective and so forth uh he looks at you know the ha um padza people looks at the heads there a lot yeah which is which is great but you know he talks about how you know they eat honey you know when and where they can fine but you know it's the males doing that because males are out hunting you know there have been studies looking at this and the women generally don't eat a lot of honey they're generally more health and better health than the men they generally have better better dentition and better uh you know dental health than the men as well so you know just on the on the hadza when i see paul saladino you know talk about the hazard and he went and visited them which would have been an amazing experience cool as hell yeah yeah yeah um but like sort of just next door or near the hudson you have the maasai people and the maasai people as far as i can tell are the possibly one of the most dominant and you know incredible incredible physically and and culturally of all the african groups and they're tall and lean and they don't eat any carbohydrates they just eat they just take blood and milk from their cows and meat yeah and obviously yeah and just and meat obviously and uh yeah and so that's the thing you know is um it's cherry picking isn't it you know you're looking at you're looking at the example that uh you find the funny tribe yeah yeah but but you know also but within that tribe there are people that eat more or less honey and they have you know differences in health just within their that on that tribe and then you look at the the masai and they're very different as well they're much more healthy than the hands uh on top of that there's one thing that you know um uh and again i preface by saying i i really like and respect dr saladino and i you know carnival really is funny as hell i really do like this stuff and they have and they both have a lot of really good resources that i encourage people to look at but i just i just disagree with them on this point uh and that's fine you know people people can disagree and have discussions about it um you know dr saladino was uh was was talking about um you know different studies that he didn't he didn't like you know looking at you know you know getting your calories from fructose versus glucose and there were problems but you know he wanted he wanted to study when he was talking about a debate he had with dr gundry um you know saying that okay well show me a study showing that you know fruit is a problem or honey is a problem okay well you know just because no one's done that study doesn't mean that that's that doesn't exist you're trying to prove a negative here and so you know and he called it you know reductionist thinking that you're just saying well because there's fructose here because you know in isolation fructose can cause problems does that mean that honey's a problem does that mean that fruit is a problem he's saying no that that's that you know that that's reductionist thinking okay well that may be but you know then why are we talking about lectins why are we talking about tannins why are we talking about oxalates why are we talking about cyanide why do we talk about you know solonine and all these sorts of different plants you know i mean these things exist in plants and that's what you know uh all of the carnivore proponents uh you know including saladino and so forth rail against you know they talk about these things i talk about i've always talked about these things um but that's reductionist though isn't it you know according to that that line of thinking well this has oxalate so that's that well you know has there been a study to show that spinach does cause a problem and oxalates in the context of the spinach cause a problem so you know maybe maybe that's reductionist but you know we are being reductionist in other ways then as well and i don't think that it's um a problem to do that you know if there's a harmful substance in in a food stuff and that harmful substance is getting to your body and causing harm [Music] you know that's causing harm i guess his argument would be maybe in the context of fruit in itself in the whole food is less of a problem than just refined sugar which is true you know i mean we know that you know you get uh you know fiber and so forth you get the fiber in the planet this actually stops the absorption of everything this is why fiber is really bad for you um it stops the absorption of different nutrients and so forth including the fructose so then it goes into your your lower gut and you know and you don't absorb all of it fine honey's not doing that you know you're going to get honey honey you're going to get the fructose from honey and honey has more fructose than high fructose corn syrup there's going to be other things in there that are beneficial this is this is the lifeblood of the bees right this is this is what they eat and you know so it's going to have things in there that is good for animal life but it's also going to have uh fructose and fructose while maybe it's good for a bee is not good for us and can cause serious harm and dr saladino talked about those sorts of studies or animal model studies or hypercaloric studies where you know maybe this group has you know is eliminating uh fructose but they're also reducing calories uh yeah you know i'm sure those studies exist however dr lustig has been doing exemplary work and research for well over a decade on this and he has done you know human models human trials with isocaloric studies meaning that all they did is swap out the fructose calories stayed the same weight stayed the same he did not let these kids lose weight he did not let them eat less calories and so and they were eating junk food they were eating kid food they were eating you know you know toasty bagels and this and the other but they were just not eating donuts you know what i mean they were not eating fruit they were not eating they were still eating junk food they just were eliminating uh the fructose and they and he was reversing metabolic syndrome he was reversing uh fatty liver disease in these kids in like eight days okay in every single one of these things and so this actually uh this study you met the criteria of uh for causation uh in these studies so you know um now maybe you know dr saladina would say well you know they didn't you know have those kids eating fruit and honey they maybe were eating that maybe but you know i think that um you're getting you know i think you're getting a bit particular when you're saying no i want this study to be done exactly like this well if you want that study to be done exactly like this please go and do it you know you're a doctor you've got you know i'm sure you can get a grant proposal you know i'm sure you can get a grant together and and do that you know if you if you really think this is healthy or whatever you know do the study um you know there's there's a lot of information out there that uh suggests and shows and even shows uh causation that fructose is harmful and we have biochemical evidence we have a biochemistry department at ucsf uh you know show that fructose metabolizes into the same metabolites as ethanol and causes the same damage to your body from those metabolites as ethanol okay so it doesn't doesn't do the same things in your body before they're metabolized but as soon as they're metabolized they do the exact same things as ethanol does okay gram for gram okay so this is this is going to cause the same problems as ethanol it's going to cause fatty liver disease cirrhosis diabetes heart disease and you know even implicating cancer and alzheimer's and so forth so i don't see uh how you can just say well the fructose here doesn't count and it's just it's just not going to cause a problem okay we'll then do a study and prove it because all the studies right now biochemically show i mean first of all don't you don't need a randomized control trial when you're you know to show a biochemical process that's not how we we study that we're going down and actually seeing you know how this molecule uh acts in in vivo you know and this is what it gets broken down to and this is the pathways they go through you know that that's hard science you know um so you know it'd be it'd be nice if we had all these studies we don't if he wants to say that fructose is actually really good for you if you're eating fruit or if you're eating honey go ahead and do it you know i would say that um you know the fruit thing you know if you're eating fiber and so forth with with it you're going to you're going to ingest or absorb less fructose but once that fructose is in your body i i haven't seen any evidence to suggest that that's not going to act as fructose in your body and you know he asked for these studies okay where is his study to say that once that fructose is absorbed into your body from honey or fruit it's not going to act the same way as as uh you know table sugar you know i haven't seen him produce anything like that that's um that's the question and it's like um you know is is a small amount of this fructose when eaten you know with whole foods whole fruit so you're getting the fiber as well is that giving people a net benefit um and i suppose you know saladino and kind of aurelius would argue yes but as you're suggesting it'd be good to see a study and yeah well and yeah i mean they could do that i mean they could say you know if they they did so they say okay you replace you know you're having kids eat the exact same thing but the fruit just they're getting is from you know fruit or honey source as opposed to you know some refined sugar and you try to sort of balance out the other nutrients so there aren't confounding factors you could do that and if he wanted to do that i'm sure he could but you know i don't he's he's postulating at this point that you know there's you know that that is going to be safe in that context and he wants other people to you know to prove him wrong it's like well no you know the burden burden of proof hangs on you at the moment because all the studies right now actually suggest that projects is bad for you and so if you think that in that certain context they're good for you well then you know you need to back that up you know you're just saying that the absence of those studies you know proves it its existence that does not does not hold water questions question for you sad standard american diet versus carnivore plus fruit which which one are you choosing um well i mean yeah i mean sort of carnivore plus fruit obviously but you know it depends on how much fruit okay um depends on what kind of fruit you know um that's sort of a thing but you know like the fruit we have nowadays are not in any way resembling the fruit historically you know they're you know like if you look at what an original mango was yeah or mango yeah you know like like mangoes are intensely sweet um they were not always like that they had mo it was mostly seed it was very fibrous and you know just sort of dully uh sweet you know uh you know dr pran uh uh jaganathan like uh who we both know you know he grew up in in sri lanka and africa and he actually saw like original mangoes and he was just like they are nothing like mangoes now and um interesting yeah yeah and so you know the you know if you talk about you know eating to an ancestrally appropriate diet or or similar diet you're not going to eat mangoes you're not going to eat apples you're not going to eat kiwis you're not going to eat any of the actual fruit that exists today because they did not exist when we were when we were you know growing up evolutionarily now honey honey's honey uh probably i don't know of any any reason to suggest that honey would have been different um but you know this is not something that we were going to get every day and this is not something we're going to get at all during the ice ages it just wasn't okay um moving on to the fifth reason um to be perfectly honest this is not something this is kind of a bit over my head but it's to do with mineral balance and he says one of the potential issues with only consuming red meat is phosphorus accumulation studies show that excess phosphorus increase increases parathyroid hormone has plot pro-inflammatory effects and can suppress vitamin d activation fructose is protective against excess phosphorus and can help deplete levels additionally some studies show that fructose can help with mineral retention like magnesium mineral balance dr schaefer what are your thoughts okay well again you know if if our minerals were going to be all out of balance like we wouldn't be here you know um because you know we made it through the ice ages and you would still exist you know they don't have general imbalances so again this is yeah in the maasai as well you know and uh you know just you and i who've just been doing this for several years and there there are many many you know long-term carnivores over the army going around 10 years now and uh literally never felt better um so you know we you're not gonna live generationally if you're deficient in any in any single metric and so you know that that doesn't really [Music] make sense to me from an evolutionary standpoint or just a survival standpoint um you know we have people that are live today that live generationally just eating meat um you know there are there are no biochemical processes that require fructose none a single thing in your body requires fructose there's no such thing as a fructose deficiency but you know carnivorous would suggest that there is that you know if you don't have fructose fructose is going to balance out your um you know your your your minerals and so forth and without this you're going to have a deficiency and you're going to have a problem uh but you don't you know and this isn't this isn't what happens so you know carnival really is you know i think he one of the articles i read from him he was saying that this affects your thyroid health damages your thyroid like we mentioned and that you need to eat fructose in order to do that again there are no there's no such thing as a fructose deficiency um so adding in fructose isn't going to do anything for you from a deficiency standpoint um thyroid so he and and others you know like like dr scholars you know really like organ meats and that's fine i i don't have a problem with organ meats i don't eat them myself the inuits don't eat them and they just give them to their dog so they just say a skeletal muscle and this is something that's well documented and recorded going back you know at least a hundred years and so you know but it was also well recorded that you know liver especially has a lot of vitamin a you know certain animals have so much vitamin a that you can die from eating their liver like like a polar bear and so forth and and too much you know seal liver soil you're going to get into big trouble there so hypervitaminosis a that's that's too much vitamin a to the point of toxicity this uh can actually suppress your your thyroid stimulating hormone so this is going to suppress the hormone that that you know stimulates your thyroid to make thyroxine and so forth so that's going to suppress your thyroid so you're going to get thyroid issues if you're eating too much vitamin a and so that could very simply be the problem we also know that the ingestion of carbohydrates actually makes your vitamin and mineral requirements go up okay so this is completely theoretical which is something i was just sort of tossing around in my head you you're eating a whole bunch of liver and you're getting hyper vitamin minosa that's boxing your thyroid you start feeling like crap and maybe this is doing some some things your other organs as well and then you say okay i'm gonna incorporate back in carbohydrates carbohydrates raises your requirement for vitamin a and other things and now all of a sudden you're at a new normal and the too much vitamin a that you're having is actually okay now um that's completely theoretical i'm not i'm not their doctor i haven't seen any of their labs i haven't spoken to them specifically about this but this is something i've sort of knocked around in my head as a potential issue um either way i don't think that that carbohydrates are essential and fructose certainly isn't um and biochemically carbohydrates aren't because you know we're making all the carbohydrates we need you know i think that was one of the things that carnival really said you have to have glucose to do x y and z in these pathways we make glucose we make glycogen it's rock solid it's always at a proper level if you're eating a species appropriate diet um you know the other argument is um if you're metabolically healthy it's okay to eat some fructose okay i mean what what are we defining as okay i'm i don't go by okay i go buy optimal is it the right thing you're drinking alcohol every now and then if you're not an alcoholic and you don't have cirrhosis is okay is that a benefit to you probably not you know and i would say the same thing uh with fructose because fructose causes metabolic syndrome that was something that dr lustig showed showed causation um of fructose causing metabolic syndrome i mean and removing it reversing metabolic syndrome in people in isocaloric studies in iso weight studies so they stayed the same weight they had the same calories and they weigh themselves every day they have these kids weigh themselves every day and if those kids started you know lost a pound they might eat more today they would have them eat more you know so they did not want them dropping weight because they wanted to show that this had this was independent to weight loss and so you know we have that you know we have very strong evidence high very high level evidence showing that that fructose causes harm um so i yeah i think that that there are other explanations for for thing you know the different sorts of observed phenomena and you know we don't see that observed phenomena in everyone and everyone in the carnivore community we have a lot of long-term carnivores who have never eaten carbohydrates and don't eat fruit anything like that and donate a lot of organ meats and and they don't have any problems i just i just spoke with kelly hogan the other day she's been an 11-year carnivore 11 years straight she hasn't eaten anything from plants in 11 years so she's been carnivore much longer than both carnivorous and dr saladino combined i would say and and she's doing fine so something different is happening with them um and you know i don't think it's you know uh you know just comparing those two examples um you know it's not the carbohydrates because she's not eating carbohydrates i'm not eating carbohydrates i'm certainly not eating fructose um and so i think that that something else is going on there to cause the the specific issues that they've uh been addressing by eating carbs okay interesting um yeah i suppose from their perspective they're seeing a net benefit incorporating fruit into their diet um you know if that's if that's working for them power to them uh well they're well they're also saying that you're you can be deficient in carbohydrates you can have a deficit in fructose because that you'll you will get health issues if you don't incorporate carbohydrates that's something specific that that dr saladina has said that you know you have different organ dysfunction you don't make new hormones properly your testosterone goes down and all these sorts of things uh if you don't get enough carbohydrates to fructose so forth but you're making it very clear that they are not a requirement that is not something that we as humans need yeah we don't need fructose but only carbohydrates no absolutely not no no no and you're that that's just from what i've seen uh in in the literature and you know by studying biochemistry and uh and just you know in my experience with myself and people that i know and and you know hundreds of patients and so forth and they're just thousands and thousands and thousands of people all over the world that have been doing this for you know many many years some of them multiple decades and they're not seeing the problem that dr salvadino and they're probably strict carnivores they just meet saltwater exactly yeah and they're not they're not you know downing whole bunches of of uh uh organs and so forth and they're doing just fine okay um now the sixth point is is kind of along the train of what you were just saying it's about glycolysis so if you avoid glucose entirely it opens you up to problems with glucose metabolism over time all in all there is now some evidence i've reviewed that fructose can help with glucose metabolism and actually lower blood sugar um well i'd have to see the studies that he's talking about and the context that they were they were performed in are these being done in you know carnivore populations and long-term or long-term ketogenic populations at the very least um or is this just you know a normal population because you know fructose has been shown to have a lower glycemic index and this is why when people knew literally nothing about type 2 diabetes they put all the weight on the glycemic index and basically this assign a number uh to a food stuff that you know you ate this thing and this would correlate with a with a raisin your blood sugar to a certain degree and so if you had a higher number in the glycemic index that means this would raise your blood sugar higher and faster than other things would so glucose is obviously very high on that because it just goes in and just goes straight into your blood bloodstream it has blood sugar fructose is much lower it's much lower on the glycemic index well that's because it goes to your liver and gets turned into fat you know that's not that's not too hard it also replenishes your liver glycogen so if you're doing uh you know a big marathon or something like that and you're really just you know hounding yourself and you eat some fructose it'll it'll fill up your glycogen your liver glycogen quite quickly actually so you know maybe maybe in certain contexts you could do that but i actually find that you know this this while it will raise your your glycogen um you're also going to box yourself because you're also going to raise your insulin because you know fructose by and large comes with glucose and it will uh in and of itself raise your blood sugar and uh and insulin anyway and once your insulin goes up it completely blocks off your fat storage so yeah what you do your your your liver glycogen went up but and you can use more of that but you completely blocked off your entire fat store and you have way more energy uh stored in your body and fat than than you ever will in your in your liver glycogen so i think you're shooting yourself in the foot on that one um [Music] so god i lost my train of thought where were we going with that we're in glycolysis uh oh yeah so the glycemic index right so um so yeah so we know that that fructose has a is lower glycemic index than than glucose and so forth so yeah if you're if you're eating more uh you know you know fructose containing things you're not going to have the same spike in blood sugar that you will if you're eating you know starch and glucose products so it may be that that's the study he's looking at and he's extrapolating way too much uh out of that than he should um but either way again if if fructose conferred an advantage that's one thing but if fructose was a necessary part of life that's a completely different thing he's not saying it's a necessary part of life yeah he's he is acknowledging he can totally live and thrive um i think for him personally he's his net benefit um yeah i don't i don't yeah i mean i don't yeah i don't really get that then you know because he's saying that this confers all these advantages and especially with a thyroid i mean you're gonna get if you're gonna get low thyroid like you just you're done you know you're you're in trouble and you know long-term you know being long-term uh you know ketogenic you know ketosis if that's if that's a problem then you know why are the inuits still here why are why are 66 percent of all species of animal carnivore why are they even alive you know because they're always they're always only eating meat and fat they're not eating in carbohydrates and then they're not really eating fructose really you know i don't see too many lions you know you know attacking the apple tree um so you know maybe maybe it's specific to us you know this is just a requirement to us you know that that's fine there's things like that but again that doesn't make sense uh in the people that don't do that and and cannot do that because you can you can people can argue well you know the maasai drink milk or maybe they're just eating more sugar you know more honey than you think they are the inuits are not yeah living traditionally up in the north pole there's nothing for them to eat there's no sea honey that i've ever heard of i don't think that you know um that you can argue that you know having a com a complete absence of fruit and honey you know uh is is is a bad thing if you have these populations um who who don't have access to it and have never had access to them for their entire lives and generationally done so so you know and i don't i don't really see why it would confer an advantage maybe it's an advantage if you're eating a whole bunch of other crap maybe you know maybe if you're eating carbohydrates and you're eating sugar and you're eating when you're eating fructose anyway getting that that same isochloric um you know amount from honey and from fruit yeah maybe that's better than getting it you know from a donut maybe i mean show me a study that says that though that'd be nice um but then i don't care anyway because like i don't think that either of those just because you know something's better you know the lesser of two evils doesn't mean that it's good and doesn't mean that it's optimal you know i have not seen any study from from either of those two showing that fructose consumption is optimal in the population of carnivores well said yeah i think the way that i've been trying to make sense of it in my mind is that the message that yourself and sean baker kelly hogan strict carnivores are putting forward is largely about healing people who are unwell and the way that i see this man this message landing from carnivore md and kind of aurelius is that it's about people who are already healthy or reasonably healthy and um and they're looking to eat basically a more whole food diet which probably which definitely has more mainstream appeal than than the message of how you've got diabetes you've got really bad autoimmune issues you've got dementia you really need to get onto a you know an elimination or a carnivore diet so that's that's kind of the way that i sort of make sense of it in my mind i'm not sure if you've thought about it i've seen you know uh dr saladino you know talk about he was having health issues and um he was on i forget that show he was on but he was talking about how he was having health issues and you know his testosterone was going down these different sorts switch markers were getting worse and he was just like oh okay what's going on he looked into it and said oh okay well you know sometimes you know getting more you know glucose in this and the other can help this and he said okay you know more fool me like i just you know i made a mistake i can admit my mistake and we need carbohydrates so he actually is saying that you need carbohydrates need carbohydrates and i don't think that that's justifiable you know given just given the inuits and given the fact that we've been through several ice ages and just starting there i don't i don't think that that you can go forward from that um and i think there's a lot of other ways of arguing that as well but i think that's just very conclusive i don't think you need to go past that you know another thing with with sugar and fructose in particular is that it's addictive you know it gives a dopamine response the addiction centers of your brain just like cocaine heroin and methamphetamines and there are mri studies dr lustig talks about these in his various works in his book and so forth and his talks showing mri studies showing that people who are addicted to sugar and metabolically unhealthy um they kill the same areas of your brain as as methamphetamine-addicted people to the same extent as these meth addicts as well okay so this is this is a this is a devastating drug and as we know from the biochemical evidence from ucsf this this affects your body in the same way as alcohol so it's killing your brain an addictive like meth and it destroys your body like alcohol okay this is one of the worst drugs that exists and for decades researchers and scientists and doctors were saying that and we're railing against the the opposition research from uh you know fraudulently put forward by the sugar companies which is all you know been uncovered from the journal american medical association dr lust has written a whole book about it and other people written books about it as well citing you know original source material from the sugar companies saying yes we did this we paid these guys off to to uh falsify this crap and you know people who can look at my um uh episode on on cholesterol uh and my debate on cholesterol that i did with the australian college of um nutritional environmental medicine if they want to sort of get more details on that and i have i have links in there um so people are railing against this stuff for decades and decades and decades and you know showing like hey look this stuff is really bad it does really bad things to yourself there's a dr judkin um you know who was completely discredited after the usda declared that you know cholesterol causes heart disease without you nut teachers you know weighed in therefore you must be wrong um he was right and he wrote a book called you know pure white deadly you know story about sugar um now some people that that say that the evidence against fructose is faulty then actually you know make straw man arguments and say well they go back to like the 70s and 60s and even 50s at these studies that were very preliminary looking at fructose and so forth and looking at animal models and you know epidemiological data and so forth saying ah this is really weak stuff okay that's not what i'm referring to i'm referring to dr lustig's work i'm referring to the more recent work since 2009 that is very very very high level evidence you know it's like you know level one evidence and uh and you know showing causation in human populations okay and and your biochemical uh data sets from the university of san francisco uh university of california san francisco which last time i checked was the number seven medical research institution in america which makes it you know probably top 10 or there or close to in the world so this is a very very serious research institution [Music] and and so there's very very very high evidence high level of evidence showing that the fructose is a problem and yeah okay if you eat just a little bit of it is that a you know is that going to be as bad as if you eat a lot of it no if you smoke two cigarettes a day that's better than if you smoke two packs the problem is when you start smoking two cigarettes a day eventually it generally leads to two packs today until you just say oh that's it i'm off of this stuff so you know why start an addiction you know why start something that's not beneficial to your body well i start something that that confers a brief benefit you know a moment on the lips forever on the hips you know that's saying that that was always funny but like you know if this is a relationship that we have with drugs we have an unhealthy relationship with food and particularly with sugar that we would with drugs alcohol and cigarettes and there's a you know there's you know something that we like we have we have a temporary um effect that we like like you know we feel good from smoking we feel good from drugs or drinking um and we have this nice taste and flavor from food or we have a nice feeling from sugar because it gives a dopamine response makes you feel good that's temporary you know we you know some people will go and do drugs and drink and smoke and so forth because they know it's bad for them but they're like it's worth it to me because i like the effect and you know that's what we're doing with food as well we're saying well i like the effect i like the taste and therefore it's worth it to me uh to get the you know the the health detractions i just don't think they don't they really realize just how big of a much attraction it is on their health um when i found that out i was like get that the hell away from me even though i like this stuff i enjoy it i enjoy drinking i don't do it because like i you know i would rather feel like a superhero 24 7 than feel drunk sometimes and i just certainly rather feel like a superhero than then you eat something nummy every now and then as well i mean like who cares you know that's not that's not a big sacrifice for me anyway um and so you know i think that um you know when we're talking about optimal nutrition we're talking about optimal diets um you know that's that's how i look at it and then you go away from that you sort of you're sort of doing something that you know causes harm or if you know enough about it you know causes harm but you want the effect that's that's an unhealthy relationship with food you're treating it like a drug and so i i try to sort of steer away from that if you want to do that that's totally fine i just want them i just want them to be clear on the on the facts as they are available and make their own decision if people want to eat fruit go ahead i mean like if solidino enjoys fruit and enjoys uh honey and he feels good and he's getting good workouts and and he likes it more power to him like that's fine you know i prefer you know being pure pure pure because i just really really like how that feels and i like how my body responds because of that excellent awesome all right so some of the key points that you raised was humans don't need carbohydrates fructose or glucose from plants to be optimal or to be healthy so that means that physiologically biologically we do not need to eat fruit if we were to eat fruit uh eating the whole fruit is better than drinking the juice because when you eat the whole fruit you get the fibre and then that blocks nutrient absorption and blocks how much fructose is you're actually absorbing into your system did i get that one right yeah and you're also just getting a hell of a lot less fructose yeah yeah of course because you know they eat like two apples before you like that enough but yeah exactly i mean it's probably gonna be like ten apples are gonna go into a glass of apple juice yeah so like i i don't i don't see too many people eating 10 apples in just you know one go or they might drink down you know five glasses of orange juice or or you know i think actually cargo really is actually does and he was talking about in one one article that he gets like 40 of his calories from orange juice so yeah yeah so you know and any and he feels better and he likes it and that's fine you know but you know if he did cocaine every day too you have a lot of energy he'd feel fantastic you know for a time and then it's going to catch up to him and i think this will catch up to him too you know he's he's eating a lot of meat he's not eating a lot of other things so you know he's going to be you know uh you know cushioned from this a bit but i think it will catch up to him i think it will cause him harm unfortunately i hope that i hope that he uh gets away from it before anything too bad happens yeah me too um and uh eating a small amount of fruit is obviously even better than eating a large amount of fruit but to your point earlier about sugar being addictive fruit can be addictive too so you know you can easily eat a giant plate of fruit and then an hour or so later go back again um so you know to what i was saying before like i think the carnival community is really important for people who are unwell people who are sick and personally i think it can be confusing for people if you then say then hey you can get your sugar or your energy spike you just can't do it through eating you know lollies or the crap that you're eating before you have to you know you can actually get it through eating honey and fruit i think that can kind of contribute or help to fuel that addiction they already have to um to these sugary foods uh so that that can be you know it can make things even worse yeah i i i've actually spoken out about this before when the last time i was on you know dr baker's uh podcast um you know i i this is when i first sort of started hearing about these guys saying that fructose was not only okay but it was good for you and you needed it um and so i i did a whole you know hour with with dr baker talking about this and i did not think that that that was the case um since that since that podcast i had a lot of people reach out to me and message me on social media and so forth um just basically telling telling me that that in their experience that what i had said you know wrong wrong true and had been a problem for them because they they said oh i can eat honey i can eat fruit and so they did so they started eating it started out as a little and then it was a little more and a little more and it was a lot more and they said within six months they were eating pizza and junk food and and they drained all the weight and they had all their health problems back again and then they sort of had a wake-up moment you know for some of them that was you know my talk with dr baker was like look this stuff is really bad and i sort of you know had to come to jesus moment going like oh crap that's what happened to me i need to just go back just pure i can't eat any any um you know any sugar at all um you know some people aren't going to have that problem some people don't have that that issue with food i mean i i love sweets but i certainly didn't need a lot of them and you know when i did it would sort of be at a time but i almost never ate sweets and um and and so i didn't have that problem and that you obviously exercise you know extensively uh you know with with my athletic endeavors and so forth and then playing professional sports but um you know not everybody has that and a lot of people come to that like you say you know because they're having health issues or or weight management issues and so they've had they've had a very unhealthy relationship with food they've had these food addictions they've treated food as drugs and and specifically you know we talked about comfort foods this makes us feel better that's a drug you're self-medicating you know we have people with um you know different sorts of issues and they're eating this food because it makes them feel a little better so you know we are really using this stuff in the wrong way and so for those people in particular if they start reintroducing fruit and honey even if they're now in a state of metabolic health they're going to you know be at high risk that's the gateway the gateway back to the old habits yeah exactly and you know again it is addictive it's addictive because it is a drug and so you know again you know saying that you can drink if you don't have cirrhosis yeah you know it's it's it's less bad for you if you don't have cirrhosis but this is what gives you cirrhosis you know one of the things that gives you sugar also gives you steroids so you know it's um i don't i don't think that that's that that's a good thing to recommend people for health you know obviously you can caution them and say look if you really want to just be careful with it you know it's you know it's going to cause harm but you know if you don't do too much of it it's not going to cause a huge amount of harm you can say that you know that's going to be more accurate but you know what people are saying now is you can eat all the fruit and honey that you want it's not a big deal and it's and more than that it's good for you and you have to have it that it's vital but it's not it is not vital you there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate these things are not essential they aren't you know you do not need them and i would argue that you do not want them unless you're starving to that they will confer benefit if you're dying and you know you need it to to stave off death i think that's the only benefit i think that's the reason that this stuff tastes sweet to us and that we you know we can we can eat this in a while because you know people that were able to eat this stuff um historically during lean times were the ones that survived and so but that's a survival mechanism that's you know when you're you're in a really bad state that is not optimal that is not necessary okay now talk to me like i'm five you mentioned earlier about the organ consumption and you were talking about how organs like liver are really high in vitamin a and other nutrients and by eating by consuming a lot of these organs it can mean that kind of like our base threshold of how much we need uh increases uh and that that can sort of be related to requirements for eating carbohydrates could you reiterate that point before that that you were saying i might have done a botched job of summarizing it there yeah not that no that's pretty accurate like well you know as i've said before you know depending on what you eat you need a different constellation of nutrients you know i i talk about some of my blog posts and so forth this is a really interesting point because it just goes to show that you know it's this diet and nutritional input is not the same for everybody so you know like reading the back of a pack and comparing that with someone else as you say it's contextual it depends on what else you're putting into your body so yeah yeah it really does you know i mean think about people who drink coffee this saps your body of magnesium and so forth so you're going to need more magnesium than other people will so you know that's just a very simple example but um you know you know i talk about this with you know vitamin c and this is something that you know people have talked about before and i have a blog post on it um when you eat carbohydrates this blocks out vitamin c absorption in your gut but it also uh you know blocks out vitamin c in your systemic system when your blood sugar goes up this can can suppress your utilization of vitamin c so you need more and more and more vitamin c uh to get the same same results so this this goes across the board you know we have negative nutrients and so forth and different you know like tannins bind onto proteins and different sorts of nutrients and lectins do as well and so your body's not going to absorb all these things so you're putting this stuff in your mouth but it's not actually getting into your body and then other things are going with it and they're disrupting your body as well so you need a very different constellation of nutrients to go in your mouth to actually get them to go in your body and do the job that they're supposed to depending on what you eat and so carbohydrates do this as well so when you're eating carbohydrates when you're eating these sorts of things you you will need more of certain vitamins and so forth now again this is this is as far as the vitamin a uh and and and people you know organ sort of thing that's that's complete supposition i'm just sort of spitballing there but you know these are our two phenomenons we are aware of that you're eating carbohydrates and so forth this will increase your requirement for certain vitamins and minerals and you know and and organ meat has sometimes too many vitamins you know we look how much organs uh or or how many pounds of liver meat exists to how many hundreds of pounds of skeletal muscle and fat you know it's it's one two hundreds so you know you're going to be in a situation in the wild where you hunt an animal you take it down most of what you're eating is going to be skeletal muscle and you're going to have a bit of liver and and some of the awful and so forth um the majority of it's going to be skeletal muscle and fat and so [Music] that's going to self-limit it but also the inuits did not eat organs they didn't eat the liver they didn't eat these sorts of things and you know even the you know the hadza and so forth that you know dr uh saladino talked about you know they showed video of this stuff that you know you pass it around and you know they take a little bite and all there so uh you know they're in awe of this sort of thing because yeah it's very nutritious uh but it can be too nutritious it can cause problems you you can have a problem with two too many vitamins too many minerals and so forth and so you have all these hundreds going around doing this thing they each get one bite of the liver you know that's very different than you know say someone who has access to a grocery store and is just eating you know half a pound of liver every single day which some people are doing because they're hearing this or you need liver or they're taking supplements and they're eating liver and they're doing these sorts of things you can definitely run into problems doing that and so it could be that these people when they incorporate you know different plant material and carbohydrates and sugar back into their diet this rearranges the amount of vitamins that they require and how they're utilized in their body and so now their threshold goes up they have a higher vitamin requirement and so now their hypervitaminosis is normal it could be that's it's completely theoretical and just it's just something i'm thinking about but these are a phenomena that we are aware of and this could be what's happening it does describe you know the observed uh phenomena it may be completely wrong but you know it's it's something that could be happening and it and it is an alternate uh for the fact that you have a you know or or you have a carbohydrate and fructose deficiency which we know is wrong because i don't have a carbohydrate or fructose deficiency inuits don't you know generational peoples through the ice ages didn't so we know that you don't require fructose or exogenous carbohydrates we know that for a cold frozen fat so it's something else you know and that and and you know how i explain with oregon meat and carbohydrates is a plausible explanation uh for that and i would be interested to see if they just stopped eating organ meat would their problems go away i i would i would arg i bet that it would a very interesting theory so it's it's sort of like somebody does carnivore and then they start incorporating a lot of organ meat particularly liver then they get uh did you say hypervitaminosis yeah yeah hypervitaminosis just means you have a toxic level of vitamins uh which is becoming toxic but then you start incorporating some carbohydrates in the form of fruit uh which means that the rate of vitamins that your body is absorbing goes down so then consuming all these organs doesn't seem like or doesn't do this the same sort of damage that it maybe was before when you didn't have the fruit well you could yeah you can it could potentially reduce your absorption of it but also increase your requirement of it and and reduce your body's utilization of it in your in your you know in vivo so it could it could do a number of different things the end result being that you need more vitamin a than you would otherwise you know and if you're getting more vitamin a and that was you know here for causing a problem you know that may now just be normalized potentially again this is yeah it's all through purely just yeah but at the same time i do not see these problems in in my patients or myself or my friends or my family who've been long-term carnivore and have absolutely no carbohydrates or fructose in their bodies not to mention the hundreds if not thousands of case studies that sean baker has collected through rivera probably tens of thousands sorry tens of thousands yeah it's a lot um and none of them are sort of reaching out for fruit because they're really unwell and carnival and and the inuits no i mean just never forget the inuits you never forget the ice age is you know this is this is fundamental and this is something that you know maybe if dr saladino uh sort of looked at it from that point of view he might he might agree with because you know he does talk about this he likes to come from an evolutionary background you know first principles um and so forth and and you know that's uh that's an example of that that you know fundamentally we you know evolved during the ice times and we you know existed during several iterations of ice ages and we have people still today living in the arctic north or the you know the arctic tundra and and uh where they don't have access to uh these sorts of plant materials and you know if you go far enough north they're on their own ice ice drifts and things like that yeah yeah there's there's no base there no it's not even any grass no vegetation yeah i mean your your example okay the inuit's it's pretty concrete um but even reading like western a price's literature when he talks about the native diets he's not talking about honey he he very i don't even know if i remember him mentioning honey maybe maybe he does but i i think the the amount of honey and fruit that uh that these guys are postulating that native groups were eating i i really think that's been exaggerated um as you said before it's like it's like a fallback nutrition in an emergency situation now certainly about 40 of your calories a day in orange juice i mean i don't know how many i don't know how many uh how many native groups had uh had you know abundant modern oranges and how i mean how long their teeth lasted i mean just now you know like that's um yeah no i don't i don't think that that's uh in any way shape or form representative of the available data and just look at the stable isotopes of studies and so forth you know if these guys were getting you know 40 of their calories from you know you know glucose and sugar and so forth you know we'd see that and we don't you know and you know we saw it like you know you did uh stay western studies with you know the mummies in egypt you know it's thought that there are more mummies buried around egypt than there are people alive today everyone was mummified it wasn't just the royalty and so it was just just everyone that's just how they buried the dead and and preserved the dead and so they looked at you know pharaohs and so forth they found oh they had you know evidence of heart disease and arthritis and tooth decay probably because they were you know they were rich and they ate all this fat well actually they had uh all the you know peasant stock and so forth all also had the exact same degree of heart disease obesity arthritis and tooth decay and you know even their statues you know displayed this when they had you know men with gynecomastia and pot bellies and so forth and they found that from the stable isotope study these guys were eating you know a lot of wheat that that was there a lot of grain and that the you know the royalty the nobility were probably had more access to it had were eating more of it but they were all eating it they were all eating grains and they all had the same diseases and by the according to the stable isotope studies that they did um they found that everyone was eating the same thing and they were getting these these problems from eating plants and so forth so um you know we would have seen that you know if we we looked at uh you know the you know prehistoric man you know and they were getting an abundance of their of their calories from you know plant sources or honey we would see that in these studies and that's that's very hard science you know maybe there's maybe there's a you know you know they can dispute that and for for one reason or another but but at the moment that's that's uh the best information that we have and that's as hard as we get to counter that i think um saladino and aurelius would say uh you know any these sort of like you know ripped uh images or statues or remnants of of our ancestors you know they'd say oh they were eating fruit and meat and fat well the ones like the greek gods and things like that like maybe yeah maybe you know i mean you can get you can get you can get ripped either way you know and again by the time we had statues and so forth i mean this was an exaggeration happening well it could be but it's also the dawn of civilization and you know and we've and they would have had agriculture at that point and so you know you know i'm sure that they were eating that stuff but they were also eating a lot of meat milk and so forth this was this was a very important staple anybody who studied you know ancient greek uh greece and rome would know this but um sure i mean they would they would have had sort of other things as well but you know really seasonally and generally just the you know the wealthy uh aristocratic sort of class would have access to these things uh more often but again seasonally um but either way you know you can't really argue with the ice ages like they are you know they're they're you know they're pretty unmoving and um and so you know again with you know the inuits and so forth you know they live way up north there's no there's no plants there's no honey there's no fruit and so if this was a vital necessary essential nutrient they would all have died out they would not exist and they do exist and we exist and we made it through the ice times to be here and just to talk about it is is hard proof that you don't need fruit and glucose and and carbohydrates and sugar you do not you just don't and i would argue that they harm you for many many reasons excellent all right i think that's a good way to finish things um yeah dr chafee that was fantastic um you know maybe we'll get a response from dr saladino and carnival aurelius which would be really interesting to see well i mean it'd be interesting yeah well they're both they're both really you know smart people and they are both very well versed and you know and in various studies and so this is this is exactly what you're supposed to do you're supposed to have you know you know reasonable people coming together with differences of opinion and you discuss it and debate it and then you sort of you know just you know just talk about it and then maybe you leave you both leave going well but then other times you know you you you come to an agreement go like oh crap i never really thought about it that way um and then at least you know people can can look at this and and sort of decide for themselves you know what they think is is right for them and and that's really all it's about is just you know giving people enough information so that they can they can uh make make decisions uh for their own life and and try to do what's right for them i think that's really well said even in 2022 we can have you know a debate a conversation where you know two different sides are presented and you know it's amicable it's just difference of opinion yeah it used to be such a normal thing you know you had classes in high school and things like that um you just go back and you just have public debates people would talk about these things this wasn't this this murderous political you know emotional yeah we're just trying to go for each other's throats it's all negative campaigning and so forth you don't need that um that's a that's a very um well yeah many people do it forever but you know it's not it's not as beneficial and it's certainly not as civil and so yeah we just uh hopefully uh that that that's not dead i don't think that it is but um it'll come back everything's cyclical it's kind of feels like it's dead for now in the mainstream but you know fast forward faster over 20 years yeah well you do see something you know you know i talk to people and they and they um you know they're quite you know uh combative at first and then you just you know call me just talk to them and make your appointments make your cases and a lot of them will just kind of go oh crap yeah i really didn't think of it like that as long as you don't just bark back at each other then obviously you know if someone's yelling at you you're not really going to pay attention to what they're yelling yeah and so you know and vice versa but you know if you can just sort of just keep it keep it uh calm then you know you can you can have a pleasant discourse and you know just display your your arguments and so forth and and uh it still works i've seen it and uh hopefully continue awesome all right well thanks mate appreciate it today yeah thank you man good to see you