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They were all in
agreement about what

we could do for Charlie,
what the treatment

options were, there was drugs,

and there was brain surgery

and you're out of luck, and so,

It was a while ago but [chokes],

So Charlie was born
March 11th, 1992,

and he had a pretty
normal first year

and then right around his first
birthday a little before
his first birthday

I was actually pushing
him in a swing one day

and he kind of threw
his arm up in the air

and twitched his head
a little bit

and I didn't even
think much of it

and I asked my
wife Nancy, I said,

have you seen anything like that

and she said yeah,
I've seen a bunch of it,

So that was the beginning and we

started seeing neurologists,

[woman] Okay, Charlie, okay,

[Matt] The seizures
increased in intensity

and in duration, he
wound up having seizures

in the arms of the Chief
of pediatric Neurology

at Boston Children's
Hospital, Seattle

Children's Hospital, UCLA,
LA Children's Hospital

so we tried all the drugs
that were available

at the time, Charlie
had a brain surgery

a horrendous brain
surgery and nothing

really stopped his seizures
and we lost hope

we were basically
told there was no hope,

And one day after
the visit, I stopped

at the Medical Library, As
soon as I started researching

pediatric epilepsy,
one of the first things

that came up was
a ketogenic diet

and was kinda
shocking to me because

what it said was, uh,
that about a third

of the kids with epilepsy
as bad as Charlie

um, who go
on a ketogenic diet have

their seizures go away,
and another third

are significantly
improved, and for a third

it doesn't work, and
yet all of these folks

that we had taken Charlie to see

never mentioned
a word about diet,

[Vinnie] Nutrition information
can be so confusing and as
advanced as we are medically

and scientifically, the question
remains what foods should we
eat to achieve good health?

[dramatic music]

[Vinnie]
We're in a war for information

and the fallout
affects all of us,

[trumpets blare]

The media's just gonna sell what

people are gonna
buy and if people

knew the truth, they would
know what to ask for,

My name is Vinnie
Tortorich and I've been

in the health and fitness game

for the better part of 40 years,

specializing in weight loss,

Over the years, I've seen
everything come and go

at least a hundred times,
but as a country,

we've only gotten fatter,

What should I eat, what
pills should I take,

should I take a pill, what
about those protein shakes?

We all know someone who's
trying to lose weight

and most of those
people don't realize

simply losing weight
doesn't mean good health,

My mother, for
instance, she was always

on some diet, one week
it was the Cambridge Diet

the next week it was
the Scarsdale diet,

the next week it was
the Cabbage Soup diet,

But wait a minute, the next week

she ate nothing but bananas,

Where did that come from?

I always wonder about
things like eight,

eight ounce glasses
of water per day,

Really, where did
that come from?

High blood pressure,
your doctor will say

oh, you have high
blood pressure,

stop drinking coffee, really?

These are all just myths,

[dramatic music]

The myths have become ingrained

in our society far too strongly

for people to realize
they're myths,

[Vinnie] What are some of the
health myths we hear every day?

Grains are good for you
and fat is bad for you,

Obesity is an energy
balance disorder,

Calorie in, calorie out,

Calories in, calories out

as long as you're burning
enough calories,

you can ingest
whatever you want,

That you have to exercise
to have better health,

Saturated fat is the cause
of heart disease,

A low fat diet is
a healthy diet,

We saw fat in the
coronary arteries

and that must come
from ingested fat,

[overlapping chatter]

A growing number of
doctors are learning

that almost everything we're
taught about nutrition is wrong,

And I realize there was
this incredible story

that we had gotten
it pretty much

completely upside down
and backward on fat,

[Vinnie] Believe it or not, the
story of how we got to where
we are today, started in

the 1860s, with the
Seventh-day Adventist Church

and a woman named Ellen White,

Ellen was a higher
up in the church

and she would have
these premonitions

and one night she had a dream,
that God came to her

and said that we
shouldn't eat anything

-with a face,
- I was taken to another place

high above this world and I

I-- I heard a voice,

There started
modern-day veganism,

It really didn't exist before
then, there were other
religious groups

who were more vegetarian,
they would eat eggs

and dairy and so on and so forth

and as a matter of fact,
God also told her

that coffee and tea were bad,
which made no sense

because both of those
are vegetation,

Not long after in our
history, there was

a man named
Vilhjalmur Stefansson,

He also believed,
to a certain extent

that a vegetable heavy
diet was mandatory

for good health,
he was an explorer

who ended up living with Inuits
in Canada in 1906 and
in that time and place

he was forced to
adopt a new diet
due to the lack of options,

He made a discovery
that will change
the way you look at food,

Now this raises the whole
question of food, then,

You yourself must have
longed for a green

-vegetable once in a while,
- Well, I did at first,

At first his
preconceived notion is

I'm gonna die, there
is nothing green here,

There is no
vegetation, they simply

eat fish and drink water,

[Nina]
It was unlike anything that
he'd experienced, right?

Completely unlike
the Western diet,

it was probably 70 to 80% fat,
the Inuit lived

half the year on
caribou [gunshot]

And half the year on whatever
they could fish out of the sea,

For four and a half months,
I lived on literally nothing
but fish and water

and at the end of four and
a half months, I was healthier
than I'd ever been before,

And this is on an
exclusive meat diet?

[Stefansson] That was
exclusive fish in this case,

On this diet, they
were perfectly healthy,

I mean, Stefansson
was somebody from

the medical world and
he knew what cancer

looked like, he knew what
heart disease looked like

and he did not see
anyone suffering

from ill health
in that community,

When he came back to
the United States,

no one believed him, of course,

what, people eating
nothing but meat and fat,

how could that be, they
certainly would die,

[narrator] Dr, Charles Norris,
Chief Medical Examiner

does not approve of
an all meat diet,

We have a weakness
of not learning

from the natives, but
rather teaching them,

You see everything through
the colored spectacles

of your education,
your bringing up,

We go through this
whole idea of green good

red bad, Greenpeace,
a light turns green

it means go, eat your
greens, yet when you look

at red, well red means
stop, blood is red,

it doesn't take long
for media to pick up

on these thing and we don't
realize it's happening

but it's happening
right in front of us,

[upbeat music]

[announcer] It's 10 p.m.
do you know where

your children are?

[people yell and punch]

[Vinnie] Back to Ellen White
and her visions,

Ellen was having
these premonitions

and all of this was
happening, the rioting's

were happening,
in the mid-1860s,

but ten years earlier in
1856, a 12 year old boy

came to work with the
church, his family

was in a church and
that was John Kellogg,

John, by the time he
was 16, was writing

and putting out
literature for the church,

He would go on to share
some of the most bizarre

beliefs that Ellen White
and the church had

including the idea
that masturbation

and sex were off limits,

Excuse me, Ricky,

To stave off these
sins of the flesh,

you should never eat
meat because meat

increases sexual desire,
Well, this is what

eventually led to Cornflakes,

That's right,
Cornflakes were created

by Seventh-day Adventists
to curb sexual desires,

He was the guy who
figured out something

that he termed
dextrinization, it's when

you cook down grains
so much it turns

into dextrose, it
turns into a sugar,

[drum beats]

Today when you see
dextrose in a product

you should run in the
opposite direction,

It's as bad as seeing
high-fructose corn syrup,

It's used for bacon,
it's used in salami,

all the luncheon
meats that you get

includes dextrose
nowadays because

it gives it a shelf
life, it's a way

to cure it fast, it's
cheap, it's easy to do

so something that
John Kellogg started

way back in the day
has also seeped

across to the other side,
into the meat industry,

[Gary] There are two issues,
there's always

multiple questions, one
is if you switch from

a standard American
diet of processed foods

and sugary beverages
and, you know, for lack

of a better word,
we'll call it junk

and switch to a vegan
diet with healthy

vegetables and beans
and legumes and fruit

you're getting rid
of a lot of crap

that's probably bad for you,
which is the sugar

and the highly refined
processed foods,

You would expect
somebody to feel better

if they did that,
the second question is

if you did that and switched to

a whole food diet that
was animal food based

rather than plant
based, would you be
would they be healthier?

I have spent aggregated
more than six years

on red meat that is
seal meat, caribou meat,

muskox meat, polar bear,
grizzly bear, so on,

[Vinnie] The Stefansson diet
was considered

an all meat diet, so what he did

in 1928, was subjected
himself and a friend of his

to living in a hospital,
being monitored

for an entire year
eating nothing but meat

fish and water, and that became
the famous Bellevue Study,

[narrator]
The studies on Stefansson,
which were intensively made

from every clinical angle,
started on February 13th, 1928.

Stefansson was tested
during the experiment

with an excessively high
protein, minimal fat diet

and as a result, became ill.

Stefansson said the only
time that he felt ill

was when he ate
too much lean meat

not accompanied by the fat,
but that some thick steaks

made him feel better
again [laughs],

You have to have
fat with the lean

as lean and fat together
make a perfect diet,

At the end, there were six
publications that came out of
that experiment

by different doctors looking at
whether or not they got enough
vitamins and minerals

and everything
they could possibly
measure and they were found

to be in perfect health,

I wanted to try to
dispel from the world

the same misconceptions
which I had

of the Arctic when I went north,

I used to think that
I was well-informed

on the Arctic
before I went north,

and-- but I concluded
eventually that out of

ten things that I
believed about the Arctic

before I went north,
about six were wrong,

[piano music]

The medical community
has been promoting

saturated fat as
being the bad actor

for heart disease mainly
and that really

came from weak science
called epidemiology,

Experimental evidence that shows

that that's actually
true has never been done,

For example, you
could radio label

saturated fat in
the food and see

if it shows up on the arteries,
That's never been done,

The entire teaching
about saturated fat

being bad for the heart
is not really

founded in good science,

[Vinnie] It's not that the
information is not out there,

I remember early on
when I was in college,

I had a college professor
explain to us

that fat was our body's
preferred source of energy,

Okay, fat is a very
good way to have energy

and that same professor
a couple of weeks

later said, our
bodies prefer sugar

when we do exercise,
Weren't we talking

about fat just a
couple of weeks ago?

Yeah, forget about
all that, it's sugar,

So, the message even
in top universities

right here in the United States

are a bunch of mixed messages,

[dramatic music]

[Vinnie] Do I think there's
a big responsibility

for media to do the right thing?

Yes, I do, you know, we have
three big networks,

the big three, ABC, CBS and NBC,

Whatever they told us,
we went with,

Hell, when I was a kid,
there was still

even cigarette
commercials on the air,

At least we figured out
that that was a bad idea,

♪ Don't settle for
some of the taste ♪

♪ Some of the time ♪

It's very easy to
see how someone

can think something
or just say something

and that becomes a reality,

[narrator] Breakfast,
no eggs or fatty meats

instead, eat grains and fiber

that actually lower cholesterol.

[Vinnie] How about the
term heart healthy grains,

We've all seen it,
many people believe it,

After all, the terms come from
studies that prove it
to be true, right?

Those were studies
looking at whole grains

versus white processed
flours and grains,

So of course, when
you're comparing it

to something like
white processed flour,

it's going to be better,
but does that mean

it in and of itself is
therefore heart healthy?

You could make the
argument that whole grains

are less bad for you
than refined grains

but that doesn't make
whole grains good,

Oatmeal, or oat bread,
or an oat muffin

or oat bran that can
either incorporated

into some other cereal product,

It's like cigarettes,
you can have

cigarettes with a filter on
and they're less

bad for you perhaps than
unfiltered cigarettes,

Doesn't make the
filtered cigarettes good,
It just means they're less bad

and the same thing is true for
whole grains, They are less bad,

We should put more emphasis on
our vegetables we should think
about the vegetables

we're gonna have for dinner
rather than the meat portion,

[Vinnie] Listen I'm not
a doctor, I'm just a guy

with a physical education degree

who became a trainer and somehow

found myself in the
world of modeling,

Before I became
a trainer to the stars

and eventually, a
best-selling author

and podcaster, but
when I started modeling

in LA in the early 90s, I
realized that the media will
sell us anything

to make a buck, regardless of
whether it's healthy or not,

Let's face it, every
beer commercial

you've ever seen is a
bunch of ripped-up guys

on a beach playing
volleyball because

that's what beer
drinkers look like,

[intense music]

If you have ripped up abs
or you have

a nice set of shoulders,
they want you

modeling everything
in the infomercials,

It was the heyday
of the infomercial,

[male announcer] If we
think fat, then we are.

[woman] Fad diets,
powders, pills,

still my weight's been
up and down like a yo-yo

until the Ayds plan
taught me how to

take off weight and
help keep it off,

Just 20 minutes a day will turn

your body into a
calorie burning furnace,

We were coming into
this age of, hey,

if you just do what I tell you,

you can look like this guy
or this woman in just
a few weeks,

Dexatrim did it, I lost
weight and feel great!

Nobody wanted the truth,
they just wanted

a lie that they could
get everyone to believe,

[man] Now you can
lose weight without diets...

No, this product
really doesn't work,

,..without pills.

No, that product
really doesn't work,

,..without exercise.

Well, what does work?

[man] Now you can lose weight

just by watching television.

So I learned very
quickly, be careful

as to what you advertise,

[upbeat music]

The 1920s and 30s it
was a lot different,

we were learning a lot
of things back then,

We were discovering
vitamins for the first time,

Uh, we also learned
that food could heal

and a lot of these
therapies are what

were being used to heal people,

They were using non-starchy,
non-sugary diets

to starve cancer in
the 1920s and 30s,

Take Otto Warburg for instance,

He was doing cancer
studies on rats,

[jaunty music]

He thought that the
outcome would be

that oxygen was what was fueling

cancer cells to grow
and what he learned

with rats was that it
was actually the sugar,

♪ Eat an apple everyday ♪

His discovery was well known as

the Warburg Effect and
it was shown to help

in somewhere near
80% of the cases

of people who had cancer,
Why does it feel like

no one knows this information?

-[jaunty music]
-[liquid bubbles]

We were making
these discoveries,

So what else contributed
to them not taking hold?

We had a Great
Depression and then
we had a war,

a lot of people were having
trouble putting food
in their mouth, period,

so I don't think people were
caring that much about their
health, people were just

trying to eat anything,
people didn't eat out as much,

We made home-made dressings,
you didn't have

dressings that were
full of processed oils

and we weren't adding
high-fructose corn syrup

to everything that we ate,
we ate real whole foods

that were cooked at home,

Even fast food
was different back

in the 1940s and 50s,
If you had french fries

they were made from
rendered animal fat,

Basically beef tallow,
which was a better way

to cook junk food,
so even our junk food

was better in the
1940s and 50s and 60s,

[dramatic music]

It wasn't until we
got to the 1950s

where people start to
become more prosperous,

We saw the advent of TV dinners

and other stuff and more sugar

and processed foods
came from everywhere,

But what really happens
happened in 1955

when one of the most popular
presidents of our time,

Dwight D, Eisenhower,
had a heart attack,

[reporter] News of
President Eisenhower's

sudden illness,
described by his doctors

as coronary thrombosis, came as
a severe shock to us all.

Films of President Eisenhower
made just before
his heart attack

are dramatic evidence of the
suddenness of the illness that
shocked the nation.

[narrator] President
Eisenhower's heart attack...

[typewriter clacks]

Well, if he could die, what
could happen to me?

You have to understand,
this is a period

in the 1950s when America is in

a complete panic about the
rising tide of heart disease,

Before that, we never
thought about heart attacks,

we never thought about
health and fitness,

we didn't think abut
the food we were eating,

No one back in the 1950s
knew what

their cholesterol
score was, much less

even knew what the
world cholesterol meant,

[jaunty music]

Cholesterol is kind of
a fat type molecule,

it's in all of our cells,
30 trillion cells,

Cholesterol is
actually so important

to the body that
it actually makes

the majority of cholesterol
that's in your blood

right now, most of the
dietary cholesterol

you eat will go through you
and very little

actually gets absorbed,
and of that cholesterol

you find in the blood, most
of it was made by your liver,

[narrator] It is an essential
of nerve tissue for instance,,,

If you eat more cholesterol,
your body will make less,
if you eat less

your body will make more,
which makes it very interesting

that it was maligned in
the past few decades,

Heart disease had been rare in

the early 1900s and
had really risen

since the late 1920s
to be the number one

killer disease by the 1950s,

We took a collective gasp
in this country,

We didn't wanna have another
president die in office,

Just imagine your
president not being

in the Oval Office for
ten days and he's in bed,

Besides, this guy
was very popular,

people wanted to find out
what caused it,

Could it have been
his diet, and if so,

what was he eating and
how can we change it?

This is also the time when the
media was more prevalent,

[narrator] Motion picture
cameras join newspaper reporters

in the old
State Department building

for an historic
Presidential press conference.

The first ever filmed in
sound by newsreel cameramen.

I see we're trying
a new experiment

this morning, I hope
it doesn't prove

to be a disturbing influence,

[jaunty music]

The power of media,
you can't really

tell that story without telling
the story of Oprah Winfrey,

It was 1993 and by
happenstance, I was put
up for an appearance on Oprah,

They needed someone the next
day, They were looking for
younger men who were dating

older women and since my
girlfriend was seven years older
at the time, I was invited on,

I wasn't into it, I had no idea
what really happened on Oprah,

but I was told no,
you have to do it,

it'll be great for your career,

So they fly me
to Chicago and I get

to the green room,
I was introduced

to a woman named Doe,

The theme of the show
was younger men

who were dating older women,

Older women having the courage

to live their dreams and fulfill

their fantasies and
live their lives

exactly the way they wanted to,

including dating younger men,

Doe said that I
would have to pretend

that I was dating her and I said
what are you talking about?

My guests today,
they're all members

of a provocative new
kind of dating service,

[Vinnie] I told her that I
would not go on stage

and lie, that I
would go on stage

and sit next to Doe,
but I would not say

that we dated,
I quickly realized

that I had been
bamboozled, because Doe

introduced me as her boyfriend,

I'd like you meet
Vinnie Tortorich,

he's a Beverly Hills
fitness expert,

he's hot, sweet, he loves women

and he's emotionally accessible,

- Ah, get out of here,
-[audience laughs]

I couldn't believe
what was happening

and at that moment,
I said to myself,

I'm gonna turn this
into not the Oprah show
but the Vinnie show,

Number one, women don't even hit

their sexual prime
until they hit 40,

they don't even know what's
going on until they're 40!

[audience cheers]

I've been dating older women--

- Gee, I'm only 39!
-[audience laughs]

I'm gonna make this show so bad
that they won't possibly

be able to run it
on national television,

You wanna be with an older
woman, it's the difference
between riding in

a Volkswagen and a Cadillac,
If you wanna ride
in a Volkswagen,

go right ahead, if
you want the Cadillac,

-go for an older woman,
- Well, now--

[audience cheers]

It turned into a circus,
the people

in the audience actually
believed all this,

Doe and I had just met,

It was like the audience
was participating

in this huge game of Mad Libs,

Two different generations,

How was school, oh I
learned arithmetic,

I don't see how two people
can have something in common

if they're not the same age,

It seems like people are
treating this

like some sort of fetish,

What could you possible

have in common?

Let's say Cher

walked into the room

and said she had to have you,

[audience laughs and cheers]

Sally, get Cher on the phone!

I ended up asking
Cher out on a date

-during the show,
- Cher is on the phone,

Cher, my name is
Vinnie Tortorich and,,,

[audience laughs]

I wanna say this in front
of the whole country,

- Is the camera on me?
- Yeah, the cameras on you,

Cher, I live in Beverly Hills,
let's get together

and have lunch, I'll have my
agent call your agent,
and we'll do it

because we'll have a great time,

No matter how outlandish I got,

they seemed to enjoy it
more and more,

What I wanna know
is from the ladies

in the audience, should I
have lunch with this guy?

As a matter of fact,
you can see Oprah,

Oprah started dancing
in the aisles,

[audience cheers]

The show ended
and I went back to LA

and I just assumed, well
that show's gonna bomb,

As of last year,
it was the seventh

highest rated show
in Oprah's history,

people still recognize
me for it today

and virtually none
of it was true,

I took that
realization that media

can change everything,

Eisenhower has a heart
attack and he wants

the whole country
to know that this

-was a real issue,
- I am happy the doctors

have given me at least
a parole if not a pardon

and I expect to be back
at my accustomed duties

although they say
I must ease my way

into 'em and not
bulldoze my way into 'em,

But the media had other ideas,

They have their own agenda, ah,

he had the common
cold of heart attacks,

he didn't really have a bad one,

The media was trying to show him

on the golf course, having
a great round of golf,

[balls whack]

It was thought that diet was
the cause, He was also like
a four pack a day smoker,

[laughs]
Which may very well have
given him his heart attack,

[narrator]
Yes, according to this survey,

more doctors smoke Camel
than any other cigarette.

Try Camels yourself.

Right around that time,
enters Ancel Keys,

[Nina]
Ancel Keys was a pathologist

at the University of Minnesota,

He got the idea in the
1950s that saturated fat

and cholesterol were what
caused heart diseases,

It strikes without warning,
Of ten men, we can
expect five to get it,

[thuds]

But we can't say
who or when or why,

Ancel Keys was this
incredibly persuasive person,

He had a really outsized
belief in his own ideas,

[Ancel] The facts are simple,
you know the chief killer

of Americans is
cardiovascular disease.

Disorders and degeneration of
the heart and blood vessels.

Here are vital statistics.

They show that this
problem here in America
is the worst in the world,

Ancel Keys was
famous for something

called the Seven
Countries Study,

This is where he
went and studied

seven different countries
and came up with

this hypothesis as to
how we're supposed to eat

based on correlation,

Ancel Keys is the
one who proposed

what he called the
Diet Heart Hypothesis

and that was that saturated
fat and cholesterol,

dietary cholesterol would
give you a heart attack,

especially saturated fat,
like hot oil

down a cold stove pipe,
it would just

clog up your arteries and
give you a heart attack,

The problem is, he cherry picked

these countries
to fit what he was

trying to hypothesize
and set out

to prove that the
more calories you got

from fat, the better
chance you had

of getting heart disease,

It seemed like a
straight line between

the least fat consumed
and the most fat consumed

with the US at the top,

The only problem is,
Key studied 22 countries

and if you factor in
all of those countries,

the results are
all over the place,

He just took the seven countries

that proved his point that
fat causes heart disease,

This study made Keys
the temporary savior

of the medical community,
and therefore, the world,

Such that he was able to get on

to the American Heart
Association Nutrition Committee

and he turned the whole
Association around

in one year and
got them, in 1961

to recommend that all Americans

restrict saturated fat
and cholesterol

in their diets in order
to fight heart disease,

This is the first advice
anywhere in the world

telling people not
to eat saturated fat

and cholesterol to
fight heart attacks

that's like the
beginning of it all,

That is what just
blossomed, bloomed,

grew into the giant oak tree
of advice that we have now,

We have no credible
evidence to say

that saturated fat
causes heart disease

and that sounds crazy
to say when you look

at our Government guidelines
and our dietary guidelines,

but there is no high level,
credible evidence

to show that saturated fat
causes heart disease,

The interesting
thing about Key's

he got virtually
everything wrong,

but it never infected
his humility,

[epic music]

We're living in a time right now

when we've had a
narcissistic term

people are very primitive
and narcissistic

a lot of injuries in childhood,

and it has caused us
to, umm, perhaps not

have the most
secure sense of self

and identity, people
attach themselves

to one particular
approach to diet

and it develops into an identity

around which people
maintain a religious

intensity, they
defend it as though

any question in
their dogma is like

you're questioning
their religious dogma

or threatening their very sense
of the fabric of reality and so

we start looking around for
things to attach ourselves to
and political groups,

religious organizations,
different diet fads,

We attach ourselves
to these groups

and we look to the groups
for our identity

so our going forward
in life is somehow

threatened by somebody saying,

hey maybe fat's
not so bad for you,

It's positively comedic but
it's becoming ridiculous,

The United States'
coronary heart disease

is so common that you
all wanna have to do

to study the complete
natural history

of the disease is to
take a sample of men,

any sample of men that are known
healthy follow them, wait
a little while,

and a lot of them will have
coronary heart disease,

But it wasn't very long
before it appeared

there was some
connection between

coronary heart disease and
cholesterol in the blood,

No question, we hear over
and over and over again

that cholesterol
equals mortality,

We've seen it in
the commercials,

Fleischmann's margarine!

It's the only leading
margarine made

from 100% corn oil,
it has no cholesterol!

[Dave] We've heard about
it from our doctor,

[Doctor] Over time, the build up
on the walls of
veins and arteries

helping to clog them,
restricting blood flow,

it's what causes heart
attacks and strokes,

We've heard about it plenty
of times from our friends
and our family,

and because of that,
we tend to think
it's just simply the truth,

It certainly has the degree of
repetition that we would expect,

In the 60s and 70s
we were focusing

more on the specific
types of cholesterol,

LDL and HDL and LDL became
known as the bad cholesterol

and all of a sudden,
medicine was focused on LDL,

It was noticed that
higher cholesterol

in the blood
appeared to correlate

or track with higher
heart disease rates,

[man] Cholesterol is carried
in the blood by proteins
called low density lipoproteins,

or LDLs, the more
cholesterol we eat

the more the number of LDLs,
and that's dangerous.

So essentially, the
idea was developed

that the higher
cholesterol was getting

in to your arteries
and was causing

the arterial disease,

Because the higher that
lipoprotein level goes

the greater the risk
of heart disease,

There are some studies
that show a correlation,

Does that mean
causation, and this

is a very important
differentiation

that is too infrequently made,

Because something is correlated,

doesn't mean it is the cause,

So if high
cholesterol is present

in people who are
having heart disease

we have to look a little further

as to why that is and if
there are other factors,

When you really
look at the studies

and you crunch the
data, LDL is not

the best marker
for heart disease,

What's even more
powerful, are your ratios,

So whether it's your total
cholesterol to HDL ratio

or your triglyceride
to HDL ratio,

Those have better predictive
value than LDL itself,

The ratios indicate your level

of insulin sensitivity
or insulin resistance

so the best cholesterol measures

are not actually
even talking about

a cholesterol thing,
they are indirectly

talking about insulin
resistance and health,

A lot of the fat research, well
look we saw fat in
the coronary arteries

and we thought that fat must
be coming from somewhere,
it must come from

circulating fat and
that must come from

ingested fat, it was a very
simplistic kind of idea,

The contrary opinion,
the alternative hypothesis

which has been
around for, ooh, a couple

of hundred years,
is that we get fat

because we eat
carbohydrates like pasta

potatoes, bread, they
used to be called

simple carbohydrates,
uhm, now the terminology

is changing to
adjust to the fact

that a lot of people
think maybe these

starches as my
mother called them

are not quite so good for us,

We focused in, just
by timing and bad luck

on this idea that saturated
fat causes heart disease

and we bought into
it even though

the evidence ultimately
didn't really support it

and we made everything
else we believed

about diet have to be
reconciled with that,

[narrator] Dr. Keys
singling out of excessive...

In front of us, day by day, are

increasingly more and
more very tempting foods,

In the mid-1960s, John Yudkin
comes on the scene, he's
a British scientist,

He thinks sugar's the problem,

[jaunty music]

When people have heart disease,
they don't just have
elevated cholesterol,

In fact they often don't
have elevated cholesterol,

they have a whole cluster
of metabolic abnormalities,

10, 15, 20 things
you could measure

and Yudkin was saying
if I feed animals sugar

or I feed college
students that I'm using

in my experiments,
sugar, I could cause

pretty much all of these things

just by giving them
a lot of sugar,

[jaunty music]

So you're apt to say
2 or 300 years ago,

the average consumption

of sugar in this
country was about

four pounds a year and
that's splendid,

I'd be very happy
if everybody had

four pounds of sugar a year,

They eat a hundred pounds,

[typewriter clacks]

[narrator] Moreover, many sugar
containing foods,
cakes, candies, cookies,

chocolate, ice
cream, various kinds

of puddings, also contain fat.

You always eat some fat,
so if you eat

high carb foods, you
raise your blood glucose

you raise your fat
storing hormone insulin

and you're gonna store
the fat that you eat,

It's all individual how much

you can tolerate,
but if you eat more

than your body can
tolerate, then you will

most likely gain
weight, gain fat,

[typewriter clacks]

And instead of looking at it,

Ancel Keys just jumps
right on top of it

in the media and turns
this guy into a nut job,

Keys was really a bully
when it came to

trying to quash anybody
who opposed him,

Ancel Keys wasn't
gonna let anyone

come in and rain on his parade,

He published a
nine page rebuttal

in a journal called
Atherosclerosis,

in print, he said Yudkin is
a "mountain of nonsense,"

[typewriter clacks]

...in the etiology
of heart disease.

Keys and his colleagues managed

to paint Yudkin as a quack
and portray Yudkin

and his sugar theory as quackery

and to say there is absolutely
no evidence to support it,

[typewriter clacks]

Keys was more-- had more
political influence
and more savvy maybe

than Yudkin and somehow,
this dietary, and we were

spending money testing
the dietary fat hypothesis

so even though the tests
weren't confirming it,

the more money they spent,
the more people

were wedded to the hypothesis
having to be right,

These studies are
extremely expensive

and there have been
enough good studies done

to support our
moderate approach,

which is looking
at balanced foods,

vegetables, fruits, grains, and
lean meat and dairy products,

The argument once again
is it has to be tested

when you believe it's
wrong, prima facie,

you're not gonna spend
the money to test it,

Why are these
nutrition scientist

just not more curious
about other ideas?

I was at a conference recently

where we talked about
a low carb study

where they reversed
the diagnosis

of diabetes for, it was a
large university-based study

in just one year, on
a very low-carb diet

and one of them said wait
what, diabetes reversal,

wow, how'd you do that, can you
just explain your study
a little bit to us

because that's what we,
as nutrition experts

we really need to do in America,

[laughs] And I
actually got up to ask

a question from
the audience I said--

I said, did you hear that,
that was 60% reversal

of diabetes, should that
not be headline news

and should you not be curious?

Why are you not even
curious about these ideas?

[Vinnie] You know it makes
you think of stories

like the McKenzie family,

parents in South
Dakota who realized

they had to take matters
into their own hands

when their son lost five
pounds in five days,

I called the doctor that morning
and I explained that
I thought my son

had rapidly lost weight
and something was wrong

and we knew within five minutes

of him doing
a urine analysis test

that there was
sugar in his urine

and we were escorted
to the hospital

to learn how to
manage our new life,

[upbeat music]

[Matt]
We both concluded that we were

gonna make drastic
changes in our diet,

reducing carbohydrate intake,

Shortly thereafter, we were told

that we didn't need to do that,

that we could feed our
son recently diagnosed

with Type 1 diabetes
whatever he wanted to eat,

Take a look,

[Bethany] I'm trusting these
people, who are now

in charge of caring for my son,

and they're telling
me give him pancakes

and give him french fries
and cupcakes

and pizza, because
now that your kid

has this disease, his life
is pretty crummy already

and the worst thing you could do

as a parent is to try
and change his food,

I fed my kid the exact
prescribed amount

of carbohydrates, I
pre-bolused his insulin

I put a continuous
glucose monitor on him

I bought him a
diabetes alert dog,

I literally did everything
in my own capacity

to follow the guidelines
and manage his disease

and I failed miserably,

-[Matt] Riv?
-[kid wails]

Do you want the yogurt,
the tablets, or the gel?

[Bethany]
I put a big message out
in the social media groups

that I'm connected to in
the diabetes community

and I asked, how are
you people achieving

normal blood sugars,
what are you doing?

And about every fifth
answer I got

was that these
people were changing

their children's
diet and implementing

a very, very low carb diet,

We removed
all the processed carbs,

the flour, the sugar,
the grains, the fruit

anything that would
spike his blood sugar

and so the next
appointment we had

with our endocrinologist
I skipped in there

like I had won the lottery,

Oh my goodness, I stumbled upon

a low-carb diet and look
at my son's blood sugars

and during that
appointment, our very

kind-hearted doctor looked at me

and told me my son
was going to resent me

for the rest of his life,
that this way

of eating is not
sustainable, that I'm

subjecting my son to
an eating disorder

and he also handed me
a business card

to go see a therapist,
uhm, because he thought

maybe I was struggling
with some things

and had some issues
for wanting to do this

for my son and to
change his diet,

And I'm told to follow
these guidelines

because without
those carbohydrates,

my child won't grow properly
and his brain function

will be compromised,
so when you're a parent

of a Type 1 and you're told

the American
Diabetes Association,

this large governing body,
that must know

exactly what we're up against,

they're recommending this,
that's intimidating,

We either had to
either make a change

or accept mediocre care,

I'm an orthopedic
surgeon, it seems now

as if it's the patients
that are trying

to make the medical
community aware

of what they
already know of what

the patients know,
because they have tried

to follow the rules as given
to them and they failed,

When somebody comes
to me with the belief

that they-- and they tell me,
I believe your son

is gonna do better
if you feed them

more carbohydrates,
I know they're wrong,

And when it comes to
my son, I'm gonna do

what I know as opposed
to what they believe,

Our son went from
taking 45 to 50

units of insulin every day
to maybe 15 units of insulin,

If you extrapolate
that over every child

with this disease,
you're gonna understand

that that's gonna
have a marked effect

on the profitability
of the disease,

I think we underestimate
peoples ability

to make a change, and
I think if there were

doctors and nurses
and dieticians

who were willing
to give patients

that option, I think the face

of diabetes would be different,

We're a very weird
culture, because

we have an endless
amount of energy

to talk about almost everything,

but when it comes
to the core issues

and the ones that just
effect everything,

such as family or such as diet,

we have-- you know, just went
through an election,

We talked about
everything, but no one

ever talked about diet or family
or any of this stuff,

Now you have kids
with Type 2 diabetes
you have fatty liver disease,

you have sleep apnea,
none of this stuff

existed before and if you
think it's just old people

using this, it's getting
younger and younger

-and younger,
- It's an epidemic

and it's one of those
things, like hey,

powers that be, hey
folks in charge,

let's, this is gonna
break the bank,

How do people scream
all day about Medicare

-and this doesn't come up?
- It never comes up,

Because it's not sexy,
it doesn't work,

You want votes, telling people

like hard news, like, hey mom,
you're poisoning your kid

get your shit together,
no votes for you,

The current recommendations,
it started in

the late 60s in response
to a documentary

that aired on CBS News
called Hunger in America,

[reporter]
This spring, a private agency,

The Citizens' Board of Inquiry,

released an exhaustive
report claiming

that serious hunger
exists many places

in the United States,
out of a total population

of 200 million,
the report states,

30 million Americans
are impoverished,

With family income
below $3000 a year,

Five million of these
people are helped

by two existing
Federal food programs,

Now, a new figure must be added,

Of the 30 million
who are impoverished,

10 million Americans,
whether or not

they are reached by
Federal aid, are hungry,

The Federal food
program might be

better administered
by the Department

of Health, Education and Welfare

or by a special commission
whose only concern

would be to see that
hungry Americans are fed,

This leads right to 1968
and the McGovern Committee,

public calls to
address the issue

of hunger had been
building, ever since

Robert F. Kennedy had
toured the devastated

slums of Mississippi,

It's obviously as
great a poverty

as we've had and
they're going to lead

a very difficult, unhappy life

for the rest of their existence,

[Vinnie] But it was George
McGovern, the Senator

from South Dakota who
would head a committee

that started in 1968,
privy to the poverty

that the nation
was now aware of,

the former director
of Food for peace

in JFK's administration
was intent

on bringing change that would
eventually effect all of us,

It's always bothered me
to see hungry people

in the world, I like to eat,

If we are to save
ourselves in this country

it seems to me that
a radical restructuring

of our policies and priorities
is absolutely necessary.

[solemn music]

[narrator] There is nothing
more to say, really.

Senator Kennedy died
at 1.44 this evening.

[gunshots]

We've got to draw
the line at violence,

so I have mixed emotions,
I'm supporting

the president as he tries to
bring this war to a close,

[Paul] It was quite sad,
really, to break up

with the Beatles, 'cause to see
it just fall apart was sad,

[reporter]
We have a mystery story

out of Washington, five people

have been arrested and
charged with breaking

into the headquarters of
the Democratic National

Committee in the
middle of the night.

When you think of 1972, 1973,

we're still in Vietnam,
it's not a popular war,

-[crowd chanting]
- Then 1972 comes around
and we have Watergate,

people have got to
know whether or not

their president's a crook,
well I'm not a crook,

people were just in
a haze about diet,

No one was really
paying attention to
this McGovern Committee,

we had bigger problems,

-[crowd cheers]
- This complacency at the time

is what allowed these
health myths to seep in,

As you know, I
represent all sorts

of delicious things,
greasy bacon,

potato chips, french
fries, potatoes,

fatty meats and gobs of
butter on everything,

-[crowd cheers]
- Now as you know, us fats

separately are just little guys,

but put us all together
and what do you have?

You have millions of calories,

that's what,
I have to store those

calories as fat and I
can't take it anymore,

I'm getting bigger
and bigger and bigger!

And the bigger he gets,
the harder

his heart cells have
to work, Mr, Fat,

you're a real killer!

[Vinnie]
You know, I don't know
the answer, but why is it

whenever a new study
comes out, it's always

talking about how food
is gonna kill you?

I think that's a
major misdirection

to what we should be focused on,

Food should be used
to prevent illness,

not to just help reverse
it once it's too late,

One of the areas we
haven't talked about

until recently, is
how food can affect

your brain health,

[Dr. Ede] I became interested
in mental health

and the connection
between mental health

and diet after I
had developed a lot

of my own health
problems and had changed

my diet and discovered that diet

had a lot more to do with health

and mental health than I had
ever been taught that it had,

In my early 40s,
about ten years ago,

I developed a number
of mysterious symptoms

that I think a lot
of people, especially

middle aged women
will identify with,

so things like chronic
pain, fibromyalgia,

IBS, chronic fatigue, migraines,

uh, lots of different
symptoms that all

of my very smart
Harvard-affiliated doctors

couldn't help me with,
After about six months

of trial and error, I
arrived at this diet

that was completely upside down

from what I had been
taught was good for me,

It was basically a
mostly meat diet,

high in meat and
fat and cholesterol

and when I arrived at that diet,

all of the symptoms
that I had been

struggling with
completely went away

and I thought, you know, this
diet actually is also

improving my mental
health and I'm

a psychiatrist,
the most powerful way

to change your brain chemistry

would be through food,
because that's where

brain chemicals come from
in the first place,

If you're getting
most of your sugar

and most of your
glucose from the

outside of the body,
you run the risk

of getting spikes,
uh, peaks and troughs

in your blood sugar
and insulin level

and those can destabilize
brain chemistry,

so those can create mood swings,

insomnia, irritability, changes

in appetite throughout
the course of the day,

When you eat a ketogenic diet,

you're using fat
primarily for energy

and the brain is using,
to a large extent,

ketones instead of glucose,

Today, if you're
anywhere near Google

you will learn that [laughs]

This is known as
dietary ketosis,

[somber music]

Most healthcare professionals
are familiar with ketoacidosis,
and that's a state

where the body is
out of control,

Diabetes it out of control,

Blood glucose is
through the roof,

insulin is not able
to keep up with

this glucose derangement
and so that's

a life threatening
state when you're

a Type 2 diabetic of control,

Nutritional ketosis is
quite a different scenario,

Blood sugar's
absolutely under control,

the patient is healthy
in every single way

electrolytes, insulin, glucose,
perfectly, perfectly controlled,

We have now trained
the body to switch over

from burning carbohydrate
as the primary fuel,

Now the individual
becomes fat adapted

and they use fat as the
primary source of energy

and that's really
the difference between

a very unhealthy and
a very healthy state,

[beeps and breathing]

We had a scientific question in
the 1960s where the researchers
asked the wrong question,

but they were questions
we needed answered,

We know that the
way you gain weight

is you take in more calories
than you don't-- than you burn,

And those calories
can be fat or they

can be carbohydrate,

And so they get this hypothesis

which sounds reasonable
that fat people

get fat because they
accumulate a little

of extra calories every day
and we could get

back to this by
not asking how much

extra calories, they
don't have to really

confront the problems
with the hypothesis

and that becomes the
theory ever since,

The history of
science once again,

is full of common sensical facts

that turned out to be dead wrong
when we did the science,

You're certain, you use
words like it proves

when you look at the data, it
either isn't there, or we
just didn't do the experiment,

[Vinnie] Speaking of
experiments, here's a timeline

of events that happened
with the McGovern Committee,

After a year of
fighting for funding,

the committee operations
began in 1969,

There were Democrats
and Republicans

including future
presidential candidates,

George McGovern, Walter
Mondale and Bob Dole,

The initial goals
of the committee

centered around hunger
and malnutrition

and this led to the
legislation in 1970

with principles of
free food stamps

and nationwide standards
for eligibility,

It was in 1971 that
the committee expanded

to focus on eating habits
in poor neighborhoods,

but in 1972, this
extremely pressing issue

was put on hold so that McGovern

could run for president,
When he lost 49 States

to Richard Nixon,
who would eventually

resign and be
replaced by this guy,

it was back to fixing
America's health,

Unfortunately, dietary
guidelines, were based

on the singular focus
to lower cholesterol,

Why we're treating heart disease

by supposedly lowering
bad cholesterol,

we're gonna help
people lose weight,

[Vinnie] If you tell a public
of 250 million people

what they're eating
is gonna kill em

they're gonna probably listen,

And the unintended
consequence is that

someone is gonna step in
and take advantage

of these people when
it doesn't work, right?

[dramatic music]

Coincidentally, drug
companies were spending

millions of dollars developing
drugs to target LBL,

[Ivor] In the 80s and 90s,
a class of drugs

was invented called the statins,

and these drugs did
lower the cholesterol

very effectively and
they also were shown

to lower heart disease rates,

But the question
that's probably more

interesting to me,
that I think should be

more interesting
to you, is does it
help you live longer?

It might reduce heart attacks

by 20 or 30 percent at best,
and it doesn't

really reduce mortality much,

We like simple
answers that we have

treatments for, but
that's not where

the best evaluation and
treatment for heart disease is,

[Vinnie] It's absolutely
amazing to me,

the trajectory of
statins and low fat diets

with everything
we have today stem

from a Committee
that was focused

on poverty and
people who weren't

getting enough to
eat, And somehow

cholesterol got into the
mix, thanks to Ancel Keys,

- And in a complete U-turn,,,
-[car screeches]

,,,in 1974, they
expanded the committee

to focus on overnutrition,

The very recommendations made

led to people
eating way too much

of the wrong kind of food,
so now we have

just the opposite problem,
we don't have

a hunger problem, we
have an obesity epidemic,

-[solemn music]
[narrator] The Senate Committee

finally issued a
set of dietary goals

in December 1977, the
McGovern Committee

issued a set of
nutritional guidelines

for all Americans,
intended to battle

heart disease, cancers, strokes,

high blood pressure, obesity.

In the dietary
guidelines for Americans,

they recommend fewer
calories, less fat,

less saturated fat,
less cholesterol,

more poly-unsaturated fat.

All in favor of nominating
vegetable oils, say aye,

[all] Aye,

[narrator]
Less sugar, less salt,

more fiber, more starchy food.

The Committee's original report

urged Americans
to reduce the risk

of heart attacks by
reducing their intake

of cholesterol, down
to the equivalent
of about one egg a day,

[Vinnie] This great
experiment we were doing

with tax dollars
seemed to have one idea

repeated over and over,
cholesterol is bad,
cholesterol is bad,

On its own or in conjunction
with other things,

One way to look at it, is that

saturated fats are healthy
when you're not

eating carbohydrates,
or that saturated fat

was never unhealthy all along,

but that gets you into the realm

of you're telling people that
what they've believed, is wrong,

[Vinnie] As time has
gone on, both doctors

and private citizens have
done their own experiments,

As a software engineer,
I look a lot

at networks,
Networks are basically

objects talking to
each other and a lot

of understanding a
network is kind of like

understanding a brain,
no one cell in the brain

controls your whole body,
and actually

cholesterol was part of a larger

network of objects and how it is

that they can move about to
provide us with what we need,

[Vinnie] Another thing we
don't talk about

is how complicated
the human body is,

For the Government
to even recommend

what you should be
eating in the first place

is one thing, but
for them to do it

in such a simplistic
way, is another,

There were certain
scientists that

had some hypothesis
and they said

well some of the
stuff we're looking at

is leaning towards
red meat might be

bad for your heart, the
Commission would say
well, what do you think?

[reporter] Doctors took issue
with that at the hearing

saying that eight
studies involving

five thousand patients
failed to show

hard medical evidence that diet

has anything to do
with heart attacks.

I pleaded in my report
and will plead again

orally here for more
research on the problem

before we make announcements
to the American public,

[Vinnie] Yes, before you make
announcements to the public,
you should have data

that proves what you're saying,
Maybe like Dave Feldman did,

My story's a bit interesting,
I found that I could
move my cholesterol

up and down with the
dietary fat that I ate,

The more fat I ate,
the lower my LDL-C,

The less fat I ate,
the higher my LDL-C,

[dramatic music]

[Vinnie] On a three
day diet of over

5000 calories and
450 grams of fat,

he lowered every
marker of cholesterol,

I eventually got a number
of other people

to replicate this,
the success rate

is somewhere around
85% of those people

when on a low carb
high fat diet,

Fatty cheeses, fatty
meats, fatty nuts

and in doing so, even
though their calories

increase substantially,
even though

their saturated fat just
jumps through the roof,

their LDL-C and their total
cholesterol plummeted,

It's a very unintuitive,
but sure enough

the more fat they would eat,
the lower their LDL-C,

[Vinnie] Dave Feldman
is not a doctor at all,

This guy took all of the
science that was available

and figured it out, yet members

of a publicly funded Committee

took ten years to
find nothing and when

they were pressured to
change recommendations

with no science to back it up

they ran around in
circles for a while

and came out with
the same report

but this time they
said, oh, you can

have some meat and some salt,

I would only argue that Senators

don't have the luxury that
a research scientist does

of waiting until every last
shred of evidence is in,

[Vinnie] So there you have
it, the national advice

that everything you
see today is based on,

That report was then taken over

to become Government--
official Government policy

so it went over to the US
Department of Agriculture

and by 1980, they came
out with the policy

which was the dietary
guidelines for all Americans,

I think it's audacious
that the Government

based on very weak
evidence should tell

Americans what to eat, a
healthy population at the time,

[Vinnie] How do you tell some
guy from the Midwest

who's been living on
beef his entire life

to start eating vegetables,
especially at that time

you couldn't get em
year round, you couldn't

get fruit year round, it
wasn't like it is today

where we refrigerate and ship
fruits and vegetables
around the world,

You're telling people
from different parts

of the United States what to do,

how to do it and everyone's just

throwing their hands up, going,

I'm gonna do the best I can,

Do I think the
Government was complicit

in causing this problem, yes,

Do I think they meant to
do it, absolutely not,

I think McGovern's heart
was in the right place,

they just went the
wrong way about it,

But we went on that experiment
and the Government put us

on that experiment, they didn't
ask us about it,
they didn't

ask our advice, they just told
us how to eat, then they
told the food industry,

uh, asked the food industry to
produce low fat food products,

[narrator] Industry
slowly is responding

to it, producing
foods that are lower

in salt and fat and
so on and people

are beginning to
get the message,

Low cholesterol, no cholesterol,

- lowers cholesterol,
- Good fat, bad fat,

- low fat, non-fat,
- Milk suddenly came

in, you know, a bewildering
number of varieties

all of them reduced in fat
and whether or not

it was a result
of the experiment,

this coincided with
the obesity explosions

in obesity and diabetes
we've been seeing today,

[dramatic music]

The 1980s brought in all
sorts of brand new foods,

[commercial] There's a
Dannon body in everybody.

Unlike some yogurts,
it's low in fat.

[All] Wow!

The whole thought pattern was,

if you didn't eat fat,
you couldn't get fat,

Not having fat does
not automatically

make something health food
and that's where

we get into this
debate about is it just

calories in, calories out,
does it not matter

what we eat as long as
we're burning

enough calories to burn it off?

We still don't know if
eating a low fat diet

is a good thing, some of
the smartest scientists

and the president of the
National Academy of Sciences

in the late 1970s called
this a huge experiment

in which the American
public were the subjects,

[typewriter clacks]

Let's examine why
there is so much

confusion about good nutrition,

One reason is that
we have been given

a lot of misinformation, usually

by those looking
to make a profit,

-[jaunty music]
- Today, there are still

many unusual ideas as
to what you should eat,

people tend to believe
that just because

it's in print or on
television, it must be true,

The 80s also
brought in all sorts

of new fitness trends,

[upbeat music]

[commercial]
Make the commitment now

and watch how fast
you see results.

Are you ready to do the workout?

We couldn't get enough
of fitness in the 1980s,

but although we were
doing all of this,

we weren't getting any thinner,

Sugar consumption increases

in part with the introduction of

high-fructose corn syrup
and that's

an unintended
consequence of these

Government actions,
it's arguably the case

if they had done
nothing, we wouldn't

have had this epidemic,
we might have had

it anyway, but they probably,

almost assuredly, made it worse,

For 25 years we've been pushing

a low fat dogma, that
said eat less fat

first it said eat less
total fat and you'll have
less heart disease,

- less cancer and
you'll weigh less,
- But that's not exactly true,

This started because
there's incontrovertible

evidence that
saturated fat is bad

and that is well established
in long-term trials,

You build up in a
community, institutions

organizations, everybody
collects to them,

people who think
just like they do,

Like we like each other,
we respect each other

'cause we think alike
[laughs] you know,

I know nothing about
you other than that

you think like I do,
so I respect

the way you think and
institutions do this

and then somebody
else comes along

from the outside
and says, oh you guys

all got it wrong, look,
here's the evidence,

all these obese diabetic
people neck-deep

in obesity and diabetes,
we got to change everything,

It's hard to accept,
it's hard to back out of,

There's no way to back out of it

that doesn't destroy
your credibility,

[woman] In this country, we
have freedom of choice

to say what we wanna say,
we have freedom

of choice to print
what we wanna print

we have freedom
of choice to think

what we wanna
think, but we do not

have freedom of choice
for our own healthcare,

Why, I guess profit
and politics and power,

The MDs and nutritionists
and all people

need to work together
for the total benefit

of this country's health,

So in 1992, we did
the most brilliant

thing we've ever
done as a country,

We started the food pyramid,

Now, this is so ridiculous
that I can't even

ever remember--
because in my own mind

it makes no sense,
I always have to

read it off of a piece of paper,

The pyramid at the base,
the biggest part

was bread, cereal and rice, six

to eleven servings,
not per week,

hang on folks, per day!

If you went to the
maximum vegetables,

that's five vegetables a day,

Five servings, and
fruit, if you went

to the max, that's four,
that's 20 servings

of carbohydrates
every day and then

when you get into
milk and dairy,

milk has carbohydrates,
there's lactose in milk

that's like drinking sugar,
and on meat?

The most you can have
in any given day

is three servings,
Now it gets even worse

because we start wondering this,

what's a serving, what's
a serving of meat?

They didn't tell you
how many ounces,

Well I could tell you
it was two to three

ounces per serving,
but who knew that?

[Timon] You got to
eat the right stuff.

Start with a little meat,
a little dairy,

you got to add a bunch of fruit.

You have Timon and pumba
telling people

-to eat more grains!
- Bread, cereal, rice,

-noodles.
- And eat a whole lot less fat

and if you thought
that was ridiculous,

the servings ad they did give us

with the food pyramid
did not match

what the Government told us
that servings should be

on the packages of food,
those servings,

which are also mandated
by the Government,

were completely different
from the servings

that we heard about
when it came to

what was on the pyramid,

The new food label represents
nothing less than a major
victory for the consumer

and for the public health,

[man]
When you're given a percentage

and you see that this
is 50% or this is 10%

of your expected daily total

then you know very
quickly that this food

either contributes a lot of fat

or a little bit of fat
and how to plan

the rest of your diet
around this particular food,

This food label which
will be on virtually

all foods, will be a
benchmark for nutrition

information well into
the 21st century,

[Vinnie] The Government makes
the manufacturers

put the product ingredient
list and the amount

in which it appears on the
package, If the number one
thing is grains,

you will rice first, if
the second thing is sugar
you will see sugar second,

These companies got
really smart at some point

and figured out
hey, wait a minute

we can't do it this
way because people

are seeing sugar,
sugar, sugar, sugar,

so what they do is they name
the sugars other things,

At last count, we
were at 70 names,

70 different names
for sugar on packages,

Let's say you're
diabetic, Type 1, Type 2

it doesn't matter,
if you don't know how

to read these labels, your
life hangs in the balance,

This is the world
we live in, this is

our society, this
is our community

and if we don't fix it,
who will? No one will,

The food label has become
a veritable minefield

of misleading and
downright false claims,

And many in Congress
feel the same way

they're concerned
that any confusion

over the truthfulness
of health claims

could be dangerous because
the potential benefit

of displaying important
health information

on food labels would
be lost if consumers

lose confidence in what
they're being told,

When I was a kid
in the late 70s,

the term metabolic syndrome
did not exist at all,

Metabolic syndrome
is not one thing

it's several things,
it's fatty liver disease

it's Type 2 diabetes,
something else

that barely existed in
the 70s, we have people

on statins and
metformin, none of this

existed in this quantity
in the 70s,

We've gone from here to here
in just a few short years,

So the same foods in
my mother's generation

grew up believing would
go right to their hips,

You know, by the 1980s,
we were being told

to eat six to eleven
servings per day

they were the base of
the food diet pyramid

in the 1990s and they coincided
with this obesity epidemic,

I mean we couldn't
have screwed up

the science of obesity more
if we had tried,

We don't know what to do,

Nutrition experts,
the establishment,

the orthodoxy, just
doesn't know what to do

so they continue raising money

for the American
Heart Association,

the American
Diabetes Association,

but they don't
have any new ideas,

They keep saying just keep
applying the advice
that we've given you

and somehow, it'll turn out
different this time,

One of the things
that I always say is

why not just be
open to new ideas?

Like, here's some other
ideas coming along

let's just consider them,
Don't we have

an obligation to the
public to consider

at least, other ideas?

[reporter] You're about to meet
a father who refused to give up,
a man who defied

the doctors and went
looking for a miracle.

[Vinnie] My generation remembers
Jim Abrahams quite well,

He did some of our
favorite movies

like Airplane! and
Hot Shots! and all

of these funny movies
in the 70s and 80s,

Well it wasn't very
funny when Jim Abrahams

had a 16 month old son
who was having

seizure after
seizure after seizure

and he was going-- because he
was a big producer

and he had the means,
he went to the top

doctors In the United States,

And at the time,
Charlie was averaging

about a dozen seizures a day,

He was on four
anti-epileptic medicines,

If you have a
critically ill kid,

what would your choice be?

Do you wanna drug him, do
you wanna cut his brain

or do you wanna
change what he eats?

And it just seems obvious to me,

This is not to blame doctors,

Doctors are spread
really thin and they have

to try to do the best they can,

but it was Jim who
figured out on his own

by going to a library
in the hospital

and just happened to open a book

to a page that showed
the ketogenic diet

as being the best way to deal
with seizures in infants,

The book claimed
that experts here

in Baltimore were
perfecting something called

the ketogenic diet,
a diet consisting

largely of something
most doctors

-tell us to avoid,
- I called Dr, Freeman

from Johns Hopkins,
told him about Charlie

and he said, send
his medical records,

we did and he said,
well bring Charlie

out to Hopkins and
we'll try the diet

and we started the diet
and in two days

his seizures were gone,

-[interviewer] Two days?
- Two days,

[reporter] Jim was angry
and puzzled that none

of the six doctors
he went to for help
ever mentioned the diet,

What has stopped
Charlie's seizures

has been in existence
for 70 years,

it's been sitting there,
it was waiting for him,

You had some knowledge
that this diet

was probably working
back at Johns Hopkins

and yet you dissuaded
the Abrahams from attempting it,
How come?

Well, because I don't think we
had exhausted all of the medical
approaches yet,

Uh,,, There were actually
still other medications
that we hadn't tried yet,

Dr, Freeman tells us
that 50 to 70%

of the patients that
come through his doors

and get put on a diet
have success,

Can you think of any drugs
in these hard cases

that have 50 to 70%
success rates,

probably not anything that
comes up to that level,

In another month, Dr, Freeman
weaned him off

all four anti-epileptic
medicines and

Charlie went from a
prognosis of a lifetime

of seizures and what they
call "progressive retardation"

to we got our son back
and his smile is back

and he was happy again,
and our family

could go on with life,

This is Charlie Abrahams
and his mom, Nancy,

I've known him since
birth, I watched

his delightful
personality emerge

through a normal first year,
I witnessed

his debilitating
battle with seizures

and medicines, I
rejoiced with his family

when the ketogenic diet
stopped his epilepsy

and now I derive
strength and joy

like so many of
his other friends

as we watch him begin
to develop again,

It's too early to tell
whether the nine months

of pummeling from
seizures and medicines

did any permanent damage
to Charlie's brain,

If he has anything
to say on that matter

I know they won't,
however, it's not too early

to tell that had
Charlie's parents

been informed about
the existence of

the ketogenic diet
when he first got sick,

and about the success
they've had with it

at Johns Hopkins,
a vast majority

of Charlie's seizures
would not have occurred,

And most of his $100,000
worth of medical,

surgical and drug treatment
would not have been necessary,

[solemn music]

Even today, 1,5 out
of every 10,000 people

with epilepsy who would
benefit from a ketogenic diet

are using it today,
Doctors are not taught

diet therapy or even
nutrition in medical school,

they just simply aren't,
Try an informal

survey on your own,
next time you see

a doctor, your
doctor, any doctor,

say, "When you were
in medical school,

how long were you, how much time

did you spend
investigating and learning

about nutrition
and diet therapy?"

I didn't really have
much nutritional
training like most doctors,

In four years of
psychiatry training,

we didn't talk about food once,

The extent of my training,
I got in nutrition,

let's see, year one,
two, three, four

then four years of
residency, zero,

Zero, I got zero
in addiction too,

Zero in nutrition,
zero in addiction,

We were-- we were so damn busy
taking care of sick

taking care of
illness and trying

to push that back and save lives

that trying to prevent illness

was not really on our radar,

I feel anger, I'm pissed off

and again, I think
that part-- that the reasons

that the diet hasn't
become more popular

has nothing to do
with efficacy at all,

It has to do with
revenue sources

that are more lucrative,
The ketogenic diet

isn't that expensive,
the problem is

it doesn't generate revenue
for the medical world,

There are powerful
forces at work

in our medical system
that have nothing

to do with good health,

My patients have
been getting fatter

and sicker over
the last few decades

and in particular,
we're starting to see

diabetes out of control,
and that changes everything,

I used to see the
occasional person

who needed diabetic
foot ulcer management

and needing an amputation,
and it started becoming
virtually weekly,

When you come into a clinic
and there's patients

with, you know, rotting flesh
and it is rotting flesh

and it smells bad, it looks bad

and all you're doing
is just trimming

off a little bit of foot,
starts with a toe,

starts with an ulcer,
then it moves up the foot

and sometimes you know,
you get to a point after
doing two or three operations

it's been going a couple of
months and then the decision
is you've actually

got to chop that leg off,

[sawing through bone]

There's something
which really upsets me

and that's when you
actually amputate

someone's limb, there's
a sound of actually

dropping that leg into a bucket,

[thump]

I don't want anyone to hear
that, you know, that noise,

it's just,,, Yeah it's just
sickening, I started talking

to my patients
about reducing sugar

and the benefits were immediate,

Not only would the peoples
fatty liver disease

get better, not only
would all of their blood

numbers get better, but in fact,

he would not have to end up
chopping off a foot or a leg,

I then went to the
hospital dieticians

and said hang on, this
is really exciting

this stuff about sugar,
started talking about it

to the staff and then
I started implementing

a sugar reduction
for my patients,

only to find out
that I was starting

to tread on some big toes,

The dieticians then
started kicking up

a stink about that involving
their parent organization,

the Dieticians
Association of Australia

who started becoming
involved into pressuring

the hospital into silencing me,

We received evidence in Sydney

from a medical
practitioner in Tasmania,

Dr, Gary Fettke,
he gave the evidence to

the Committee in the
morning of our hearing

in Sydney, three hours
later, he received

an official caution from APRA,

The first time I heard
this story,

I just thought it was a joke,

The Boards actual
statement requires

that doctors double check
that their personal beliefs

don't compromise care,
that they don't put

their commercial interest
in front of patients

and lastly, doctors
should provide

appropriate dietary advice,

Ultimately, the Medical
Board made a ruling

that I am now the only
doctor as far as we know

in the world to be
banned from advising

his patients to reduce their
sugar and junk food intake,

And if that sounds crazy,
then that's what it is,

We recognize that uh, the--
being subject

to the notifications
process for a practitioner

can be an extraordinarily
stressful, uh, thing

because there are pretty
serious issues at stake

ultimately in terms
of their practice

-of their profession and--
- And their reputation,

And their reputation
and, uh, despite the fact

that we are not
punitive in our focus,

we are protective in our focus

and our mandate is a
public protection focus

we understand and
appreciate that it may not

feel like that for
the practitioner

involved in the process,

For a long time, I
couldn't actually

work out why there
was anything actually

against what I
was talking about,

everything about reducing
sugar and carbohydrate

is basic biochemistry,
it's in the first

hundred pages of textbooks,
so there's nothing

extreme about it, once
you see the results

of reducing sugar and carbs,
particularly in diabetes,

you can't unsee them,

You know, at this point,
I think there is active

suppression of this science,

and this has been
going on since the 60s,

One of the things I found
in my research,

the biggest ever test of
Ancel Keys' hypothesis

was something called The
Minnesota Coronary Survey

it was on more than nine
thousand men and women

in five Minnesota mental
hospitals, which was a really
well-controlled study

because somebody in a hospital,
you can control everything
they're eating,

They gave half the people what
was considered the normal
amount of saturated fat,

regular milk, regular meat,
cheese, butter etcetera,

The other half they
gave 9% saturated fats

soy-filled milk,
soy-filled cheese,

soy-filled burgers, they
found that the people

on the vegetable oil,
soy-filled diets

there was no effect on
cardiovascular mortality

or total mortality, That study

was not published for 16 years,

One of the principle
investigators,

Ivan Frantz was
asked by a journalist

why did you not
publish this study?

He said well, there was
really nothing wrong with it

we were just so disappointed
in the way it came out,

Well that's basically
scientific fraud,

not publishing your results,

I started to ask the
question what got in the way?

What's withholding the message?

Well, there is a
pharmaceutical and medical

device industry
that makes billions

selling their
products to doctors

who have no interest
in diet therapy,

There, uh, is a sugar
industry that adds

sugar to all of
our processed foods

that has no interest in
promoting a sugar-free diet,

There is a cardiology
community led by

the American Heart Association

that has been spreading
misinformation

about a high-fat diet
based on flawed science

for over 70 years,

Those diets have
been used in children

for many years who have epilepsy

and those children show definite

cognitive dysfunction,
also those diets,

Which means they don't
think as clearly,

- That's right,
- Those children are also

children who have as
many, they're intransigent

childhood epilepsy,
they have as many

as 400 seizures a month,
they're untreatable

by drugs, they go on
the diet, and the diets

I think it cures 33%
of them, cures them,

The epilepsy and then
they aren't able to think,

Today Charlie is a
elementary school teacher

a certificate in early
childhood education,

he boxes, he plays
piano, and we are

beyond grateful every day
for his outcome,

I'm not sure what
would have become of me

if my family hadn't
found the ketogenic diet,

But I doubt that today,
I would be an A student

in high school with
lots of friends,

I doubt I would have been
playing piano

for the last eight years
and I doubt

I could hit an 8 iron
a 160 yards,

And they just couldn't accept
that they were
dealing with these

intractable conditions
and not just pediatric

epilepsy, but obesity is
an intractable condition,

diabetes, Type 2 diabetes
is an intractable condition,

Type 1 is, and here
you have this diet

that appears to put these
conditions into remission,

The establishment here,
represented

by our friends, its
a little too dogmatic

and that we may
never know the truth

unless we acknowledge that
there is a counter-theory

that has never been
tested and that

that theory more and more people

are beginning to accept
parts of the theory,

as being legitimate
and that it could

answer a lot of problems
and it could

even make it easier for
Americans to lose weight,

people are able to
reverse diabetes,

people are able to lose
weight sustainably,

Most, if not all
cardiovascular risk factors

are improved along
the way on a lower

carbohydrate diet, That diet
ought to be at least considered,

If it turns out to be true,
I'll be the first

to change my mind,
but show me the data,

[Vinnie] Well, here's
just one study that says

that long term ketosis
reduces body weight,

triglycerides, LDL,
and blood glucose

and shows that it's
safe to use a long term

-ketogenic diet,
- You can lose weight on

a plant-based diet,
you can lose weight

on a ketogenic diet, but are you

mortgaging your health
when you do that,

and the answer is yes,
the ketogenic diet

when you look at the
arteries of people

or animals that go
on a ketogenic diet

they tend to be more clogged,

even though,,,
[music drowns out talking],

[Gary] Imagine someone who spent
his whole career getting the
wrong answer,

and not only getting the wrong
answer, getting the wrong

answer that dangerous,
that actually

may have killed
tens of thousands

of hundreds of
thousands of people,

Millions of people
prematurely, there's no

way to tell, then
these outsiders

come along and say you're wrong,

not only are you wrong,
you're completely wrong

or not even wrong
it's so senseless

what you've been doing
and you're killing people

and you have to switch,
I don't think

any human being, I mean
were just not wired

to be able to say oh
yeah, that's a good point

I get it, I see
what you're saying

and I'm sorry, And if
you're an institution

like the American
Heart Association,

I mean imagine the press release

you would have to write,
"Dear American public

we're sorry if we
killed prematurely

your loved ones and your parents

and maybe we're killing
you, but in retrospect

we shouldn't have given
the advice we did,"

-[somber music]
- You know, we think

about corporations are--
our Government

which is a corporation,
and the first question is

do we blame them?
Well, you can't hurt

the Government's feelings,
you can't hurt

the corporations'
feeling because

corporations and
governments are not people,

They're machines, they're
just big giant machines

and any person in that
machine is just a cog

and there's no way to
hurt anyone's feelings

or to get on anyone's bad side,

It's just a machine
that keeps running,

[Dwight D, Eisenhower]
Decisions of a nation,
and of a Government

that at one time could tolerate

three or four weeks
of study, now demand

almost instantaneous a reaction,

The people of the United States

recognize one by one,
thousand by thousand,

million by million
that this I a problem

which solution is long overdue,

[Lyndon B. Johnson]
Long before Lyndon Johnson
came into position

of power, our leaders
were recommending

great advances in the
field of civil rights

and great advances in
the field of health

and things of that nature,

Uh, I just happened to
be the catalyst,

We're living in a fast age
and all of us

are rather impatient,

I am proposing today a new
national health strategy,

Emphasizes keeping people well,

not just making people well,

I do envision the
day when we may use

the private health
insurance system,

to offer more middle
income families

high quality health services
at prices they can afford

and shield them also from
their catastrophic illnesses,

Today I'm proposing
to the Congress

a national health plan,
this major initiative

will meet the most urgent needs

in health care of
the American people,

Our Administration will
propose to Congress

a comprehensive plan to
cover catastrophic illnesses,

I am proud to have been
part of an Administration

that passed the first
Catastrophic Health Bill,

Whatever form it takes,

a catastrophic
illness costs money,

[Bill Clinton]
There are some little
known but very important

provisions in this
new balanced budget

that will take us
a tremendous step

forward in our fight
against diabetes,

These investments
total more than

two billion dollars over
the next five years,

We must remember that the
best health care decisions

are not made by Government
and insurance companies

but by patients
and their doctors,

[audience applauds]

[Barack Obama]
Because you're eating healthy,

and you're out there
active and you're playing

sports and you're
out in the playground

and doing all those
things, not only

are you gonna have
a better life,

but you're also
helping to create

a stronger, healthier America,

and that saves us money,
it means people

are not sick as much,
it means that

our health care costs go down,

When you roll up at a McDonalds,
what does Donald Trump order?

A Fish-O-Filet sometimes, right,

The Big Macs are great, the
Quarter pounder with cheese,
I mean there's great stuff,

Do people at the windows
be like, "What?"

I think all of those
places, Burger King

McDonalds, I can live with them,

I had the other night, I
had Kentucky Fried Chicken,

not the worst thing
in the world,

If you think it's up to
Government, you're wrong,

if you think
it's up to industry,

you're wrong, it's up to
you, And if you're gonna

make a change, if
you're watching this,

change right now,
tonight, don't wait

until tomorrow, if
it's a Friday night

don't say Monday
you're gonna start,

start now, there's no
time better than right now

to get your life in order,

[dramatic music]

[somber music]

I've been doing a
podcast with Anna Vocino
for about seven years,

When we first started
the podcast, uh,
nobody was listening,

Someone's gone, alright,
I wanna lose weight

wait, that steak
is 1200 calories,

This bowl of pasta
is 500 calories less?

And, as a woman, you're told

don't eat more than
1200 calories a day

if you wanna lose weight,
so you think

oh, I can't have that steak,
because that's my whole day!

We started attracting
the attention

of people in the
low carb community,

doctors, authors,
like Gary Taubes

and Nina Teicholz,
it's important for us

to have the experts on,
'cause we're like see

what that guy said [laughs],

Anna also, turns out,
is a great cook,

[Anna] As a person who works
with food a lot,

I get asked many questions about

fake sweeteners or
fake this or fake that

and I personally think
it's gonna have to

go in an even more
natural direction

to where we just have
this return to just

eating food in its
most natural state,

Vinnie and I are very passionate

about this topic,
let's say you watched

this documentary,
let's say you watched

the others and you're
like, this is it,

I'm gonna do this,
I am going to give up

the processed sugars and grains

and I'm gonna go for a
high-fat, low-carb diet

and which you should,
do it, try it,

It can't hurt to not
have sugars and grains,

Like just try it,
When that happens

and there's an adjustment phase,

all of us in this country,
myself included,

have been in the diet mentality,

If we can peel back
that diet mentality,

it would be amazing,

♪ ♪