Pod Insights Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee BITESIZE | 3 Foods to Avoid for Better Brain Health (& How to Reduce Them In Your Diet) | Max Lugavere #669 About this episode Today’s guest believes brain decline is not inevitable, we all have agency in how we age, and the secret lies in our food.
Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.
Today’s clip is from episode 330 of the podcast with science journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Max Lugavere.
Max is passionate about helping people improve their brain health, their longevity and how they feel by optimising their diet.
In this clip, he shares three food types that he believes are worth reducing or removing from our diets, and explains why doing so could have many benefits for our health.
Max’s message is one of balance and realism. We can all make choices every single day that set us on the path to better health, even if we’re only taking baby steps. Making small changes could have a meaningful impact on our health.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:20 Rangan Chatterjee? See all details at drinkag1.com/livemore. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 330 of the podcast with science journalist and New York Times bestselling author Max Lucovin. Max is passionate about helping people improve their brain health, their longevity and how they feel by optimising their diet. And in this clip, he shares three types of foods that he believes are worth reducing
2:04 Rangan Chatterjee? or removing from our diets and explains why doing so could have many benefits for our health.
2:14 Rangan Chatterjee? I think many of us are aware now that the foods we're consuming are hugely increasing our risk of getting sick in the future. In your view, with all the research you've done, what do you think of some of those common foods or types of foods that we should think about cutting out or at least reducing to reduce the chance that we're going to get sick?
2:44 Speaker 01 That is a great starting place. At this point, what I've come to realize is that one of the biggest food issues related to disease and our predisposition for any number of non-communicable so-called diseases of civilization, including Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, is the preponderance of ultra-processed foods in the food environment. So this is a category of foods, and these are foods that you couldn't make in your own kitchen. These are foods that typically line our supermarket aisles. They're the foods now that make up 60% of the calories that Americans are consuming worldwide.
3:22 Speaker 01 And these foods pull the trigger, in many ways, on our predisposition to non-communicable chronic diseases. Every 10% increase in ultra-processed food consumption has been associated with a 14% increased risk in early mortality and a 25% increased risk in the development of dementia. These are the foods that are typically shelf-stable, they have long ingredients lists, they don't rot, they're not the kinds of foods that have immediate shelf lives, and they typically have a number of different characteristics that make them, in particular, dangerous.
4:03 Speaker 01 There's nothing about them that is inherently toxic, but it's the confluence of variables that make them a driver of this epidemic that we're talking about. One of those factors is that they tend to be hyper-palatable. When you consume these types of ultra-processed, packaged-processed foods... That are hyperpalatable, it pushes your brain to a bliss point beyond which self-control is nearly impossible. I mean, some people can do it, right? But I think a very common experience that most people have, you know, for example, with ice cream is that they open up the pint of ice cream intending to have, you know, one spoonful. And before they know it, they're looking at the bottom of the pint.
4:40 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
4:40 Speaker 01 And oftentimes, we feel a sense of moral failure when we're not able to moderate our consumption of these foods. But these foods are not designed to be consumed in moderation. So it's not actually a moral failure. It's something that these foods are quite explicitly designed to do.
4:53 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah. One of the key points there for me was the fact that these foods are hyperpalatable. And I think everyone will know that feeling, you know, they've tried to embark on a new eating plan. They've tried to, you know, exercise self-restraint. Yet, if those foods are in their house, you know, many people really, really struggle to stop. How do you tackle that, though, for people? Because they are everywhere. And they're foods that are absolutely contributing to how sick many of us are getting. Yet, many of us just don't know what to do about that.
5:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, there was actually a project done by a photojournalist. I don't, I'm not sure the name, but people can go to Google Images and look for a week's worth of food, like a typical week-long shopping haul, from both an American family, a family in the US, as well as in the UK. In the UK, it's a Caucasian family. In the US, it's an African-American family. But you can see the week's worth of groceries typically consumed in both countries. And you have to use a magnifying glass to find the fresh perishable food. It's primarily ultra-processed food, or these mixed dishes, which combine fat, sugar, and salt, the so-called Dorito effect, that make foods not just difficult to consume moderately, but incredibly calorie-dense. So as I mentioned, it's not that these foods
6:16 Speaker 01 are innately toxic or innately fattening, but they are obesogenic, meaning they do drive obesity and metabolic dysfunction, because we tend to overconsume them. When eating To the point of satiety, we tend to overconsume these foods. And this was proven in a very elegant study funded by the NIH, actually, led by a well-known obesity researcher named Kevin Hall, who found that when people are given access to ultra-processed foods and told to eat to satiety, as a human does, right? Like, we like to eat to a point of satiety, of fullness. That when allowed only to consume ultra-processed foods,
7:00 Speaker 01 people ended up eating a 500-calorie energy surplus, right? So, an energy surplus is the way, that's why we store fat, essentially, right? It's like the law of thermodynamics. So, these foods, by the time we've eaten to satiety, we've already overconsumed them. But in this crossover trial, what they were also able to show was that when you give the same people access to minimally-processed foods, these are the kinds of foods that you are potentially able to cook in your own kitchen, depending on food access and availability, you know, all important factors, that they ended up eating to the same degree of satiety, but they came in at a 300-calorie energy deficit. So, that's an 800-calorie swing. That is a significant amount of calories,
7:45 Speaker 01 determined purely by the quality of the food that these people were eating. So, oftentimes, somebody who's overweight, they get told by their doctors to just eat less, move more, right? To moderate the quantity of the food that they're consuming. But here's the kicker. The quality of the food that a person is consuming dictates, or at least influences, the quantity.
8:02 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah, that's such a key point, isn't it, for people, Max? Whether it's to lose weight, reduce their risk of disease in the future, to help them lower their blood sugar, you know, whatever their health goal might be. You know, a lot of people these days, they want to find a way to eat less. They don't want to be consuming as much as they're often consuming. But a lot of people still don't realize that actually, the quantity... Often is downstream from the quality. Get the quality bang on, then often, not always. I know it is possible to overconsume good quality food. I've certainly done it myself, but it's it's just a lot less likely, isn't it?
8:42 Speaker 01 It's a lot less likely, and that's we attribute that characteristic to the food matrix. So there are three factors. We're getting a little bit off topic, but I think this is important to the three foods, the the types of foods that people should generally avoid. But I think it's really important for people to understand the qualities of the whole food matrix. So the the qualities of whole foods contrasted to these ultra-processed foods that make a food satiating. And so the problem with these ultra-processed foods is, aside from the fact that they tend to be hyper-palatable, they are very calorie-dense typically, and they are minimally satiating. So the three factors that make a food satiating are, one, its protein content. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient.
9:27 Speaker 01 So when we talk about macronutrients, what we're referring to is our protein, carbohydrates, and fats. But more, much more so than carbohydrates and fats, protein is the most satiating, meaning it's the most likely to fill you up and to turn off those signals and cues related to hunger, right? And so the problem with ultra-processed foods is that they tend to be diluted of their protein content. This is for, I think, many reasons. One is that protein just tends to be expensive. So when you remove the protein from a junk food, you increase the margins. So this is something that's very attractive to food manufacturers, right? This is why ultra-processed, you know, the foods that your grandma would look at and say, that is junk food. These foods tend to be some combination of carbs and fat, right?
10:12 Speaker 01 They tend not to be high-protein foods. Protein is the most satiating of the macronutrients. So if you're hungry, you want to look for foods that are high protein, which tend to be whole foods.
10:24 Speaker 01 The other factor that makes a food satiating is its fiber content. So when food gets processed and processed and processed and removed from this food matrix, what you lose, among other things, is the fiber. And fiber, we don't have a biological requirement for dietary fiber, but it does seem to improve life. It does seem to be associated with lower levels of inflammation and increased longevity. And it does support the gut microbiome, which you've talked about many times on your podcast. But the reason why fiber is satiating is because mechanically it stretches out the stomach. So it turns off the release of a hunger hormone called ghrelin.
11:05 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
11:06 Speaker 01 And it does so by absorbing water in the gut. And then the third factor that makes a food satiating is its water content. Now, why are ultra-processed foods deprived of water? Because water impedes on a food's shelf stability, right? And so you remove water from an ultra-processed food, that just further depletes its satiety index, its satiety value. And water is satiating because we can go a few days, weeks maybe, months for some of us without food, but only a few days without water. So water is of utmost importance to the physiologic functioning of the human body. But when water ceased to be available for one of our hunter-gather ancestors, where
11:48 Speaker 01 would the next best place be, right, to find water? It would be in food.
11:54 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
11:55 Speaker 01 So a lot of times, our hunger cues are just the crossed wires of us just requiring a little bit more hydration.
12:01 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah. Brilliant, Matt. Super, super useful. So one food group that we want to think about avoiding are these ultra-processed foods. Any other foods or food groups that you would encourage us to look at and go, you know, just be careful there?
12:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, definitely. So this is a bit more controversial, but I think it is probably worthwhile to minimize your consumption of grain and seed oils. These unsaturated grain and seed oils, and specifically what I'm talking about, are industrially-produced, refined, bleached, and deodorized grain and seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, grape seed oil. And I think it's very much worth, in accordance with the research, swapping these oils for extra virgin olive oil, which has a ton of evidence on being cardioprotective, being neuroprotective, on being supportive of metabolic health. And so I make that recommendation for a number of reasons.
13:01 Speaker 01 One, the preponderance of evidence really does support that extra virgin olive oil has myriad health benefits.
13:08 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
13:08 Speaker 01 Right? It's anti-inflammatory. It's got a very cardioprotective fatty acid profile. So it's rich and heart-healthy, monounsaturated fat. It's chemically stable, which is not the... You can't say the same thing about these refined, bleached and deodorized grain and seed oils. So you can actually cook with it. You can use it as a sauce. And we have, whether it's animal research, observational level data, like looking at people who adhere to a Mediterranean dietary pattern or the MIND diet, which is protective of brain health. Extra virgin olive oil is the only oil that's recommended in the MIND diet and in the Mediterranean dietary pattern. This is, I think, crucially important and tends to be overlooked.
13:52 Speaker 01 They're not recommending that people ingest more canola oil in these dietary patterns that are associated with reduced risk for dementia, for Alzheimer's disease and other chronic conditions.
14:02 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah, I mean, even when you describe those oils, you use three terms: refined, bleached and deodorized. If we just take a step back for a minute, those are three terms that I don't think many of us want to associate with the food that we're putting inside our bodies.
14:20 Speaker 01 Exactly.
14:21 Rangan Chatterjee? You know, it's that stark when you describe it. Where does sunflower oil, for example, fit into this paradigm here?
14:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, great question. So there are different types of sunflower oil. You can actually find on the market a variant of sunflower oil because sunflower oil typically is one of these kinds of oils that I'm suggesting that people minimize their consumption of. But you can often find... Especially now, a variant of sunflower seed oil called high oleic sunflower oil, which I think is actually okay to use. It's still not as good as extra virgin olive oil, but it is primarily oleic acid, which is a very abundant type of fatty acid found in nature. It's chemically very stable. And so it actually has a fatty acid profile that
15:13 Speaker 01 looks quite similar to avocado oil. And so I think that that's fine. But yeah, you're you. It was so great, Rangan, that you that you teased this out because we know that ultra-processed foods, as I've mentioned, is associated with all the bad things that you don't want, right? That we should. There's no health expert out there, no nutrition expert that would say we need to consume more ultra-processed foods, right? Everybody's saying we need to consume less. So why do these refined, bleached and deodorized grain and seed oils get a pass? They are the very definition of ultra-processed. You couldn't make them in your own kitchen if you tried. They didn't exist in the human food supply prior to 100 years ago.
15:52 Rangan Chatterjee? That's a really key point for me when we're looking at these modern foods, or certainly these modern food-like substances. If there is any doubts with evidence, if there's conflict, if there's debate on both sides, I think a reasonable thing to look at is how long has this been in the human food supply for? It's not the only thing, but I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to look at and go, well, it didn't exist 100 years ago, 150 years ago. I think that note of caution is pretty reasonable because it is really, really divisive at the moment, this whole vegetable oil thing. Some people are saying there is no evidence at all for people to be reducing this in their diet. Other people are saying we should never be touching these things at all. And, you know, I think you're
16:36 Rangan Chatterjee? making a very strong case that I think for most of us, we should absolutely be limiting them.
16:41 Speaker 01 You know, I think like the moderate message is that, you know, the dose makes the poison. And if if we're talking about the oils that you're bringing into your house, I suggest not doing that. But it's not going to kill you, right? Necessarily to have a little bit in your house here and there. Most people, when they cut these oils out, in fact, they end up cutting out ultra-processed foods in general. And so they see they'll inevitably see a health benefit to doing that.
17:05 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah, I appreciate what you said there about the dose making the poison because frankly, it's very hard for people to avoid those oils 100% of the time unless they're gonna just stay at home, cook all their meals with extra virgin olive oil. You know, it's gonna probably be impossible to avoid those things all the time. Any other foods that we should think about sort of reducing and cutting out of our diets?
17:29 Speaker 01 I mean, I think it's always important to underscore the insidious nature of added sugar today in Western diets.
17:36 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
17:37 Speaker 01 So I would say that added sugar is something that people need to become as well more mindful of and to do their best to minimize. Today, your average adult consumes about 77 grams of added sugar, sugar for which we have no biological requirement. That's about 19 teaspoons. And when you consume that amount of sugar, first of all, sugar, again, dose makes the poison, as with most things. It's not inherently fattening, but it does contribute empty calories to the diet. It contributes to the hyper palatable characteristic of most ultra-processed foods, you know, the added sugar component. It tends to be hidden, whether it's in commercial
18:17 Speaker 01 bread products or sauces, added sugar seems to be everywhere. We know that glycemic variability is associated with increased feelings of hunger. So eating a high-sugar snack or meal could actually perpetuate feelings of hunger as opposed to satiate, to reduce feelings of hunger, which is, you know, kind of ironic and counterproductive. We know that high-sugar boluses, meaning in one single meal consuming a very high amount of sugar, has been associated with a drop in testosterone by about 25%. We can see that high-sugar boluses increase systolic blood pressure, and this seems to persist for hours after ingestion. We know
19:01 Speaker 01 that high blood pressure is a risk factor for not just stroke and cardiovascular disease, but also for dementia. And one of the big problems, I think, and contributing to this insidious nature of it is that sugar tends to go by many different names
19:14 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
19:14 Speaker 01 in the food supply.
19:16 Rangan Chatterjee? You can see on the labels here in the UK that there is added sugar. It sneaks in everywhere. Whatever you buy, if you're not careful, you will be having more sugar than is good for you. There's no question about that.
19:28 Speaker 01 It's a big problem. I think it has to do with the fact that sugar is cheap. Again, it contributes to hyper palatability, which makes repeat customers for the food industry.
19:36 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
19:36 Speaker 01 And yeah, we just, you know, we love, we love sugar. I mean, we've, we've evolved to like sugar. When sugar is in the body, it causes the hormone insulin to become elevated, which tells our body to store fat. Right? It not only tells our body to store fat, but it keeps our fat siloed away. So that we burn sugar instead of our hard won fat stores, which back prior to the ubiquity of food stability. Right? When food scarcity was a real problem for most people, being a better fat store was actually an advantageous physiologic phenomenon. Right? And sugar is the primary food ingredient that tells our bodies that essentially it's summer. Fruit is ripe.
20:20 Speaker 01 Gorge yourself on fruit and store fat. And so that today has become hijacked by the modern food supply. And it's not to say that sugar is the primary driver of obesity. It's not. It's, it really comes back to ultra processed foods, hyper palatable, mixed dishes and the preponderance of these oils and the like. But sugar, when consumed, especially in the quantity that is consumed today, it contributes.
20:48 Rangan Chatterjee? So we have covered these three big categories of foods that if we can, you know, reduce them at least in some way from our diets, we're probably going to experience benefits straight away and reduce our risk of getting sick in the future. If you were to share just a few.
21:10 Rangan Chatterjee? Final practical tips to my audience to help them start living better lives immediately. What would some of your top tips be?
21:19 Speaker 01 Wow, well, I think we can't let perfect be the enemy of the good. I think there is this tendency to want to live perfectly and to adhere to some, oftentimes, somebody else's ideal of what perfection looks like. And I think this can be perpetuated by, you know, whether it's social media or Netflix documentaries or the like. I think we have to be really kind and gentle with ourselves. We live in crazy times and many of us have lots of obligations on a day to day basis that we have to tend to, whether it's our social lives, our romantic lives, our professional lives, and these are all important, right?
22:05 Speaker 01 But for me, sometimes, you know, even being able to pull myself to the gym for a 20 minute workout, right?
22:14 Speaker 01 Is better than not having gone at all, right? So I think we have to not be perfectionists about this and be able to recognize that, you know, sometimes it's the little gifts that we give ourselves over the course of the day that ultimately will add up to make a big impact, right? And it doesn't have to be these extended hour and a half long workouts, for example, or a complete revamp of one's diet, right? Incrementally, if you, for example, reduce your intake of ultra-processed foods, even just a little bit, or reducing your intake just a little bit of the, you know, the grain and seed oils or the added sugar that we were talking about, or maybe using a little more extra virgin olive oil, or you'll see a benefit.
22:57 Speaker 01 And in my world, dementia, this is a condition that takes decades to manifest. You have decades of agency to change the course of your cognitive path. And I think What's so crucial about that is that you have choices that you make every single day, right? Like, we eat three times a day, if not more. And why not make a decision that is hedging your bets to some degree, but also makes sense through the lens of evolution, right? These are conditions that, for the most part, were rare in antiquity, right, throughout human history. And now they're increasing in their incidence, right? So I think a very small proportion of people have deterministic genes,
23:40 Speaker 01 but this makes up only 2% to 3% of Alzheimer's cases. So I want the people that are listening to this to know that you have a degree of control in terms of your cognitive destiny. And food plays a major role here. Genes are not destiny, right? Your genes may load the gun, but it's your diet and lifestyle, ultimately, that pull the trigger on this condition for many.
24:04 Rangan Chatterjee? Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.
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