I am delighted to have Dr. Ken Berry returning to the podcast for his fourth appearance today. He is a physician, bestselling author, and passionate advocate for health, known for his no-nonsense approach to wellness. Dr. Berry has practiced at the Berry Clinic since 2003 and is an active community member. He has a YouTube channel with more than 2 million subscribers- one of my favorite go-to resources for patients.
In our discussion today, we explore a recent Time news article and the growing concerns around the declining trustworthiness of media sources. We dive into the limitations of observational research, the problem with celebrity endorsements of ultra-processed foods, rising obesity rates in children and teens, and whether genetic factors are actually behind obesity, as highlighted recently in a 60 Minutes segment. We also discuss the impact of sugar, grains, and seed oils and the significance of visceral fat.
You will not want to miss this invaluable discussion with Dr. Ken Berry.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
Dr. Berry breaks down some deeper issues surrounding the recent Time article, where a lone registered dietician claimed that ultra-processed foods are acceptable.
How media sources are losing their credibility
The vital part social media plays in changing the narrative and holding media sources accountable
Why consumers must stay informed and be proactive in their health choices
The health implications of eating ultra-processed foods
Dr. Berry shares his concerns about the American Academy of Pediatrics recommending drugs like ozempic for children.
The benefits of eating whole foods
Dr. Berry shares his three rules for a healthy diet.
Why we need to avoid sugar and seed oils
How following a low-carb diet can help to reduce visceral fat.
Dr. Berry introduces the American Diabetes Society and explains its mission.
Bio:
Dr. Ken D. Berry, MD, is a licensed family physician, best-selling author, and leading advocate for the Proper Human Diet (PHD). With over two decades of clinical experience, Dr. Berry specializes in helping patients improve their health through low-carbohydrate, nutrient-dense eating. His best-selling book, "Lies My Doctor Told Me: Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health," and his popular YouTube channel, which has over 3 million subscribers, provide accessible, evidence-based guidance on nutrition and wellness. Dr. Berry's mission is to empower individuals to reclaim their health by debunking common medical myths and promoting sustainable dietary and lifestyle changes. He is also a member of the Diet Doctor low-carb expert panel and an active participant in the keto and low-carb communities. Dr. Berry lives with his wife Neisha, and their children on a farm in Holladay, Tennessee.
“There would be a lot of hungry people if all ultra-processed foods got taken off the supermarket shelves because that's 90% of their diet.”
-Dr. Ken Berry
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Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Dr. Ken Berry
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.
[music]
[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of reconnecting with Dr. Ken Berry. He is joining me for our fourth podcast together. He is a physician, bestselling author, and passionate health advocate with a no-nonsense approach to health and wellness. He has been practicing at The Berry Clinic since 2003 and is an active community member. He has written multiple books, he has a YouTube channel that is prolific, serving over 2 million subscribers, and he's one of my favorite go-to resources for patients.
[00:00:57] Today, we dove deep into a recent Time news article and how media sources in many instances are no longer as trustworthy as they once were. But the beauty is that our voice matters. The limitations of observational research, why celebrity endorsements of ultra processed foods is problematic, obesity rates in kids and teens. is obesity genetic? this is from a recent 60 Minutes presentation, the impact of sugar, grain, and seed oils. And lastly, the importance and significance of visceral fat. I know you will find this to be an invaluable conversation with Dr. Berry.
[00:01:39] So, Dr. Berry, always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. This is our fourth podcast together. Always a fan favorite. We talked earlier this year and we had such an amazing conversation, I knew that I needed to bring you back. Let's today start the conversation around this recent Time article that not only elevated ultra-processed foods as being acceptable, this was written by a lone registered dietitian, Jessica Wilson. But because Time got so much feedback, predominantly negative, they went ahead and changed the title of the article, not per se, the content.
Dr. Ken Berry: Yeah, yeah, when I first saw this article, I was like, “Oh, here we go again.” But I think there's several deeper issues about this that we really need to break down. So, first of all, we have to think about the media source, Time, Time Magazine, time.com. Think about this. For the average person who's over the age of 40, they're 50, 60, 70, Time Magazine, in their heart, in their mind, that's a magazine of record. I mean, Time Magazine, I grew up, I had a subscription to Time in my teens and 20s, and I trusted it above almost all of the sources that in the National Geographic. This is reality, this is fact. If they say it in Time Magazine, you can put it in the bank. And so, I think that's a very important thing to understand.
[00:03:13] So, I think our most important question should be, after you've read this article is “What the hell happened to Time Magazine? What happened to time.com?” They are obviously no longer a journal of record. You cannot trust them anymore. And I think a lot of people now have started to understand this since the pandemic just because that newspaper or magazine or television news show that you used to just trust blindly and that served you well for decades, maybe you could trust them blindly because their reputation was so important to them, they would never put something out that was half researched or half fact checked. And that's what was just yelling in my ear when I was reading this article is, “What the hell has happened to Time?” They've given up on the being trustworthy. They're literally trying to sway people's opinion.
[00:04:07] And then you would ask, “Well, why in the world would they do that?” And I think it's because journalism has changed so much since the Internet has basically taken over all things. It's all about clicks now. They've got to get clicks and also they've got to get ad dollars. And so, in order to get the ad-dollars they have got to get lots of clicks on an article. And people need to spend at least a few seconds on that article because the advertisers can see that on the back end. “How many clicks? How long did the person stay on this article?” When you read this article, it is immediately obvious to anybody with an IQ above 100 that this is-- I don't know what the proper adjective is for this. Their second title is much more factual.
[00:04:51] Here's the opinion of one dietician based on no research whatsoever. Based on nothing really. We just decided to interview this random dietitian who has some very unorthodox opinions about nutrition advice and we decided to just post that with this very misleading article. And I think the initial title to the article was a hat tip to their big food manufacturing advertisers. This is the big tobacco playbook. Let's introduce some uncertainty here. Let's muddy the waters. We're not really sure. I mean maybe ultra processed food is healthier than we think. Well now who stands to benefit from that title? Obviously not the average consumer's health. That's not who stands to benefit? Who stands to benefit from introducing uncertainty around ultra-processed food? The ultra-processed food manufacturers, that's who's going to directly financially benefit from that title.
[00:05:50] And so in the past this article would have come and went and they would have gotten lots of clicks and they would have gotten some good ad dollars from the advertisers. But I think the conversation has shifted so much. So, many people listening to your podcast and listening to mine, what I put out, they're like, “No, this is bullshit.” And we're not going to just quietly take this anymore. Because in the past, people would read that and be like, “I don't think that's right but whatever.” Now people are much more militant. They're like, “Enough of this foolishness. Enough, I'm not going to sit quietly and let you just inundate me with effectively big food advertising.” That's what this is. And so many people flared up on social media, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, just call bullshit for what it was.
[00:06:39] They're like, this is bullshit. This is not worthy of being under the masthead of time. “What is wrong with you?” And they got so much kickback that I think it was, what, two hours later-- two hours and five minutes later, they changed the title from what if to the opinion of one dietitian. And I'm sure you might share those, the before and after title with your viewers. And I actually talked about this yesterday on my YouTube Live. I'm like, “You guys did this. You did this.” Don't think you're powerless when you get a news story like that that's just obviously bunk. Call it out verbally, loudly, retweet it, share it, and say, “What is this crap?”
[00:07:28] The more we do that, because you actually have more power now, thanks to social media, than we've had as consumers ever in the history of the world, we actually made time.com change the title of this. There was a time when Time Magazine, time.com they had fact checkers that actually checked for actual facts. And they probably had a science medical nutrition editor who once this was written, that you would submit that to the editor and then they would just red-pin the hell out of this. Like, “This is foolishness. What is this?” No, back to the drawing board. We're not going to put this under our masthead. This is embarrassing.”
[00:08:08] But they've lost that gatekeeping ability because they're in such financial trouble that their current profit model is get as many articles up and out as we possibly can and try to help our advertisers try to get as many clicks as we can. And I think that's what this is the perfect example of several things. The perfect example that even the bigger, more trustworthy news outlets that you used to really trust, you cannot trust them anymore. That's the first lesson. Never, ever again should you just read a headline or a subtitle from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, US News, and World Report, you can't just blindly trust what they say anymore. You have to now have the filter of an informed, interested consumer. You can't just consume this stuff. You've got to kick back and push back. That's the first lesson.
[00:09:02] The second lesson is your voice matters. If enough of us stand up and verbally protest on social media, you can actually affect the conversation. And that's exactly what happened here. And I think people should take heart at that second part, but also the first part you should be very wary. And then here's the third thing that everybody needs to understand. Very often when a news organization like Time, when they put out an article like this, that's in your wheelhouse, you know it's bullshit, because you study that stuff, you and I both are constantly in the nutrition research, the medical research, the anthropology, the historical research. We just immediately recognize.
[00:09:49] But here's the danger, is that everything else Time puts out, since it's not in our wheelhouse, since we're not interested in it, since we're not actively researching it, we still just blindly believe that. I think everybody should go, “Huh. so, you're saying that maybe they're doing this same kind of thing when it comes to other topics as well?” Yeah, probably why would they just choose nutrition to do this? Why would they just choose that? And then on everything else, they're 100% factually accurate. But when it comes to nutrition, they've lost the plot. That doesn't really make sense. Time has a board of directors. They have whatever few editors they have. This is a systemic problem with Time. And I've seen the same thing in National Geographic. I've seen the same thing with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Times.
[00:10:40] Like, I could just go on and on and on. Because I read media every morning over coffee. I read at least 20 to 30 different newspapers, now news websites all over the world, not just US media. This is ubiquitous all over the world. And so, I think for some people, it's disheartening, Cynthia. They're like, “Well, God, how can we even know it's true or not?” Well, there's this thing that human beings have been doing since before recorded history, and that's looking for patterns, pattern recognition, doing personal experiments with your own life trying stuff out for yourself. And then now we have to consider the source. So, if the crazy person in your tribe 50,000 years ago came back and over the campfire that evening, they said, “Hey, if you eat the bark off this tree, blah, blah, blah happens. Well, that guy is not very trustworthy.”
[00:11:31] And so, everybody's like, “I don't know, I don't think I'm probably going to try the bark from that tree because everybody knows you're crazy.” Well, time.com just revealed themselves for what they are. And so going forth in the future, any Time Magazine article, you should be wary. They might be the crazy person around the campfire giving you bad advice. And so, you take that with a grain of salt and you maybe don't listen to them blindly anymore. And so, it is sad in a way, but in a way, it's also empowering because what it does ultimately is it leaves the consumer to their own devices. And for many people that's exciting. Like, “Oh, challenge accepted.” But for a significant chunk of people out there, it's scary, it's worrisome, it's depressing. Like “God, I can't trust anybody. This sucks. Who do we even believe anymore?”
[00:12:21] That's what you've got that thing between your ears for, is to keep learning, keep researching, keep doing little experiments on your own health. You got to figure this out on your own. Nobody's coming to save you, which is bad if you look at it from one perspective, but it's actually good from another perspective because now you have to actually stand up and be the human that you should have been all along. But this is an excellent opportunity for you to now say, “Okay, fine, I'll stand up and actually be a rationale, reasonable, logical human and I'll think through all this stuff instead of just blindly accepting this narrative.”
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:12:58] Well, it's so interesting to me because much to your point, I grew up, my dad had me subscribed to Time Magazine in my teens and 20s and that became a large imprint of additional ancillary information week to week because it came out every week. This is back in the days where I read the newspaper and watched the news and I ‘m going to date myself and say that this all preceded the Internet. Thats how we got most of our news. And things have changed so substantially since the advent of the Internet. And thinking about how what I would think years ago were powerhouses of this industry, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, etc., you start to realize that they are, becoming if they don't evolve, they will be gone.
[00:13:50] And so they're so desperate for ad dollars that they've lessened the quality control that they used to have, the editorial control. And that's where articles like this occur. Obviously, it's probably unprecedented that they changed the title of an article that quickly. It must have been a tsunami of feedback about this. One lone registered dietitian's opinion, her N of 1, about how she changed her diet to ultra-processed foods. And she felt fine, she felt better, she had more mental clarity. And I thought to myself, that does not resonate in any capacity based on any research or any experts that I've had the privilege of speaking to. And so, for everyone listening, trying to make sense in a nonsensical world, we are now forced to experiment, which is not per se a bad thing, but it also forces us to question rigid dogma.
[00:14:43] We see it on social media. People will-- they are not open to changing their minds. They are still practicing medicine the way that they did when they were trained. You and I probably trained in the same era. And I remind people I do not practice as a nurse practitioner the way that I did in 2000 and 2001 as I do now. We are designed as human beings to evolve and change our opinions. And that's actually a sign of critical thinking. A lot of what you are advocating for is helping people understand that there's this pattern recognition, the power of the N of 1. But also saying, if most Americans are not metabolically healthy, and we know most Americans, 70% of the food consumed is ultra-processed food.
[00:15:29] And we know that that leads to consuming more calories from foods that are hyper palatable, full of processed carbs, seed oils, etc. Shouldn't we be doing the opposite of what most organizations, individuals are advocating for. And so, I found it really interesting when-- I always find x for me or Twitter, to me is a litmus test for what is popular or what is resonating or what is creating conflict. And I've been watching this over the past week and I found it really interesting. I didn't actually realize you did a whole discussion on this last night, but it's interesting. You had a quote on Twitter that said, “Leading people to believe that observational research proves anything makes you either ignorant, lazy, or dishonest.”
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:16:20] Yeah.
[00:16:20] And so I think about how you are this profound beacon of hope, and in many ways, you're saying the things that so many other people are probably thinking but aren't actually articulating. So, this is a good example. This is observational, the N of 1 which in most instances, there's nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, I went from eating an ultra-processed diet to eating a nutrient-dense diet, and I felt better.” That's great. But you don't extrapolate and then say that when you're doing the opposite, that somehow, you're trying to convince individuals that they should lead-- It's like you're leaving breadcrumbs directly to the processed food industry, which is actually funding the newspaper/website that is publishing the same article.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:17:03] Yep. And so, here's what the average person does. When they're scrolling on the Internet they see, “Oh, here's an article from Time, something about ultra-processed food.” So, they see time.com. Okay, I trust them. Then they read the title, “Okay.” And then they probably read the first paragraph and then they get bored and they move on. Now, what just happened to that person? What message did they take away from this? They didn't read down to the point where her only evidence of this is that she was more mentally alert or had more mental energy or some foolishness. That was her evidence for this. They just get the takeaway message, which is exactly what was intended was, “Oh, ultra-processed food's not that bad. Okay, got it.” Next article. Next, whatever. Next Cute Cat video.
[00:17:51] That's exactly the goal of Kellogg's and General Mills and Mondelēz and Kraft Heinz is, oh, there's a lot of debate about whether ultra-processed foods are bad or not. So, it's probably fine. I'm going to have the Lucky Charms for breakfast in the morning. That's the goal. That was the primary goal of the big food advertisers. Because just imagine, Cynthia, if you started eating lots of dandelion greens out of your-- and you felt like your hair was more shiny, and you contacted Time Magazine, time.com, and you said, “Hey, I'm a, you know, here are my credentials. I've been eating dandelion greens and my hair is shinier.” And Time was like, “Holy shit. Fly Cynthia in. [Cynthia laughs] We got to interview her right now.” No, that's not how this is supposed to work.
[00:18:40] But that's exactly how it worked in this case. I don't know if she contacted them or they contacted her, but when you start looking into this dietitian, you immediately go, “I don't think that's somebody I want to take nutrition advice from because she literally says things on her Instagram like, all foods are healthy.” Never let anybody shame you. If you want to eat the donuts. The only time a doughnut is bad is if it's spoiled or moldy. Otherwise, a doughnut is good food for humans and you eat a donut when you want to. That's her message in a nutshell. I mean, how is she not visited by the dietitian board? I don't know, because that's foolishness. And I understand what her overall motivation is.
[00:19:24] But if you just read the first paragraph of this and you don't get down to what the nitty gritty of her argument is, you don't realize that she is very, very far removed from anything scientific or logical. What she's saying is social foolishness. She's more interested in talking about class and race and body inclusivity. She literally is not talking about your A1c or your insulin level or your triglycerides. She's not talking about any of that. That's not her goal at all. But yet, probably a million people read the title and the first paragraph and then moved on. And so, there's now one million people out there who think, “Oh yeah, ultra-processed food's not that bad.” That's a victory for Kellogg's and General Mills and Post. They won.
[00:20:11] Even though we forced them to change the title, they still won because they've got a million customers out there now thinking, “It's fine, I'm just going to have the cinnamon toast crunch or The Kelce Brothers' blend of two different shit cereals put together, it's fine,” [Cynthia laughs] because there's a lot of debate about this ultra-processed food thing. They won. And so, we did win a victory, but they're going to make more money because of this article in time.com.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:38] It's interesting because if you read farther into the article, which I know very appropriately said, most people probably read one paragraph and moved on. I read it twice. And there's Dr. Chris van Tulleken who is the author of Ultra-Processed People. There's some mention in this article that banning ultra-processed food, “Isn't practical” and would wipe out the modern food system. I read that and I thought to myself, it is a domino effect. It's like they will find the clinician to meet the narrative that they're trying to spout. And to me, ultimately, yes, there's varying degrees of ultra-processed foods, however, if we're somehow going to suggest that ultra-processed foods, if they were removed or banned, that somehow, we would have no food left is complete BS.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:21:27] Well, if you came in and you did it overnight, if a dictator took over the United States and said, “That's it, ban [Cynthia laughs] all ultra-processed food right now, like by midnight, I want it all off the supermarket shelves.” Yeah, there'd be a lot of hungry people, because we've went so far down this road for so many years that there are people that's 90% of their diet. So, yeah, there would be hungry people if that happened. No one is advocating that, that I know of, that we remove it overnight. What we're all advocating is, this bus that we're all riding on has went way too far down this road in the wrong direction. It's time to start turning that bus around and going back towards real food. Nobody's advocating junking all the ultra-processed food overnight.
[00:22:13] That's just like the factored farming. Yeah, grass-finished beef is healthier for you, and it's more ethical and more moral. Yes, but nobody is advocating shut down all the factory farming tomorrow that would be idiotic. We can't do that, but we can encourage regenerative ranchers and we can vote with our dollars so that one day a year, five years, ten years from now, most people will be getting regeneratively raised, ethically sourced meat, which is part of a proper human diet. Same goes for the ultra-processed food. I'm not advocating banning it. I'm saying let's help people understand that is less healthy than eating real food. And the more you eat ultra-processed junk food, the unhealthier you're going to become. So, let's start to minimize that. And that's the message that you and me and I think everybody's out there.
[00:23:05] But, like this guy, the ultra-processed people, which I've read his book, it was not a bad book. But who's advocating overnight just shutting down ultra-processed food? Nobody. So why would you even say that when no one else is saying that? Why would you put that up as, “Oh, here's the solution, that all these crazy people are saying is ban ultra-processed food. Oh no, no. Nobody said that.” But if you want to put up an argument, then you would say something like that if you're literally trying to help Kellogg's make more money.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:23:32] Yeah, I think Its a degree of fear mongering for people that, I trained Inner City, Baltimore. I know you trained in the Inner City. There are food deserts. There are people that their corner grocery is the only place they can get food. If we were to effectively remove ultra-processed foods, there would be no food in some of those locations.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:23:53] Absolutely.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:23:54] And I agree with you that helping people understand the value of eating some whole nutrient-dense foods is one that I think everyone ultimately benefits from. Now, because you brought it up, I'm going to bring it up. The Kelce Brothers, let's talk about how they are promoting the consumption of ultra-processed foods. And somehow, they're wanting us to believe that they themselves are consuming these ultra-processed foods and that somehow, it's beneficial.
[00:24:18] And I think for me, my teenagers are now at an age where they probably don't have them elevated in their mindset. But certainly, younger children, younger teens, they look at professional athletes and they hold them up to a probably unrealistic expectations, but somehow validating that these individuals, who are the best in their industry, they’re incredibly talented athletes, guaranteed they’re not eating that garbage.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:24:45] And one of them is dating Taylor Swift. So, there is that.
,
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:24:47] I know.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:24:48] Right. So, I will give you an example. When I was a young boy under 10 years of age, I don’t remember the exact year I wanted to be an athlete so bad. I can remember in fourth grade, I would get up before I had to catch the school bus, and I would run three or four laps around our yard, which is probably a quarter mile. But still, I was training. I was constantly training. Wanted to be in the Olympics so bad. And so, Wheaties was the breakfast of champions. That was in the name. But then all of a sudden, Bruce Jenner was on the box. And he was a pentathlete. He won the gold. I Idolized him. And let me just say, I'm speaking past tense here, so I'm not being insensitive. I'm talking about when I was a child. I wanted to grow up and become Bruce Jenner. That was my hero.
[00:25:33] I cut the front of the box out and put it on my bedroom wall. And I would do little pushups and sit-ups in my bedroom, and I would go run down the road. I was constantly training. And also, I was eating Wheaties every single morning. That granny Berry didn't cook bacon and eggs. And sometimes even when she did, I wanted to eat Wheaties, because that's what Bruce Jenner eats. In my child brain, that he 100% was the gold medalist because he ate Wheaties. Otherwise, why would he be on the box? That's how a child thinks. And so now looking back, that's obvious foolishness. He was probably eating steak and eggs for breakfast, like every other great athlete.
[00:26:13] But now we got The Kelce Brothers. And you can't tell me that there's not 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12-year-old young boys and girls who want to be an athlete. And here's The Kelce Brothers. It's all cutesy and all funny, like, “Oh, these are my two favorite cereals as a kid, and we're going to smash them up together, ha, ha, ha, ha.” When the epidemic of childhood obesity is raging out of control in the United States, the rate of childhood type 2 diabetes is off the charts. There's actually clinics set up now in multiple universities around the country for childhood fatty liver, which, when I first started training and first started practicing medicine, type 2 diabetes in kids, unheard of. That was just 20 years ago. Fatty liver in a child unless they had some inborn genetic error, they never had that stuff.
[00:27:06] And then, you know, when I was in third grade, that'd be about the time that Bruce Jenner was on the cover of the Wheaties box. We had one fat kid out of our entire third grade class. I remember his name. He was one of my best friends, and we're still friends today. We had one fat kid in out of 150 kids in all the different third grade classes. Now, if you go to a third-grade class, what's the percentage of obesity, of overweight, of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes in those third graders? It's egregious.
[00:27:35] Now, The Kelce Brothers are not medical or nutrition specialists. I understand that they're football players, but they have to be somewhat aware that there's a whole lot of fat kids running around, and they've got to be at least somewhat aware that ultra process added sugar cereal is probably contributing to that to at least some degree. They've got to be smart guys. They got through college. And so, whether they're academically smart or whether they're empathetic enough that they were able to use their football ability to get their professors to give them a passing grade when they didn't really earn one. Still, there's some degree of intelligence there. They got through the system. How are you going to take a check from General Mills to promote an obesogenic, diabetogenic fatty liver-promoting breakfast cereal as an athlete to children.
[00:28:33] And yeah, there's definitely a lot of adults who eat this crap too, but the adults after the age of 18, 21 somewhere in there, you've got agency. You're making your own choices, you're going to suffer from them. But little kids are going to be eating this stuff. And so, I've actually tweeted out a couple of times to The Kelce Brothers, me and [unintelligible [00:28:51] and several other people were like, “Dude, come on. Why don't you be a real hero to kids? Why don't you give that money back? Tell them to take your face off the box, take your name off the box, and tell kids to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, or at least eggs if you think bacon's magically dangerous. Why don't you do that? Then you would actually be a true hero to children.”
[00:29:14] And I think they answered a couple of people, like, “We eat this growing up, we don't think it's a big deal.” And, yeah, it's fine that they're grown adults. They can make their money however they want to. But again, they actually answered the claims. I don't remember if it was [unintelligible [00:29:27] or somebody else, but they actually responded on Twitter with at least some kind of an argument. And so, again, you guys got the power. If you started calling people out for foolishness loudly enough and long enough, you're going to have an effect. And this is the power of social media. The power of social media is not that you get to watch lots of cute puppy videos. The power of social media is that your voice, if you say something articulate and meaningful, it can get amplified far past anything that your mom and dad could ever have done.
[00:30:01] So, you need to start using that power, especially if you believe it strongly that every human on planet Earth deserves the health benefits of a proper human diet. Then you're a PhD warrior, and you can call out bullshit when you see it. Like this Time article, like The Kelce Brothers’ Cereal. And with a loud enough collective voice, we can hold these people to account.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:24] Without officially stating it, I think that social media is both good and bad, but this is a really good utilization of social media to actually actively involve individuals and provide the feedback. Now, you touched on some obesity statistics, and I pulled these up. Now, obesity in kids was 6% 25 years ago. Now it's 19%. In teens, 18% have fatty liver, 30% are prediabetic, and 40% are overweight or obese. And what is interesting to me, you have children, I have children, my kids because of choices that we have made, choices they have made. They have certainly been in a point of privilege that they have been informed about the value of nutrient-dense whole foods. What’s interesting to me is that I feel as if there is a vacuum.
[00:31:19] Its almost as if many people, it's such a degree of cognitive dissonance, that they're not willing to have those difficult conversations. And there's nothing more sad to me than when I see obese kids or kids that are clearly not metabolically well. Because if you are in elementary, middle, high school, even college age kids, you are setting yourself up for so many health ramifications. And that is what I found profoundly disturbing. I know when I initially trained as a nurse, even as a nurse practitioner, it was so rare to see metabolic disease in kids other than you see some type 1 diabetes, that's an autoimmune condition, that's very different. But certainly, as a parent, as a clinician, I think that if we aren't concerned about the health of our children, and that goes back to The Kelce Brothers, then we've got a lot of work to do.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:32:19] Absolutely. And then, you would say, “Well, who's the voice of authority when it comes to kids’ health?” Well, the American Academy of Pediatrics, that's who should be the voice. And some things they do get rights, when it comes to giving your kids fruit juice. Most people don't know this, but their official guidelines are, I think, up until the age of 2, kids don't need any fruit juice at all. And then from maybe 2 to 4 or 2 to 5 maybe 2oz a day max, they say the maximum. They don't say it's healthy to give them that. They say that the most you should give them is 2oz. And then for older kids 4oz. But nobody follows those guidelines.
[00:33:01] But they recently came out, as you know, Cynthia, and said that for kids 12 years and older, who have severe obesity, they actively recommend Ozempic injections, or bariatric surgery for kids as young as 12. And they're trying to change it to kids as young as 6. That is their first line recommendation is the GLP-1 injections or bariatric surgery. The American Academy of Pediatrics, when I saw their press release, I was speechless. like, “Wow.” The makers of Ozempic, Wegovy,and Mounjaro, they must have written you guys a check with a lot of zeros for you to say 12-year-old children need to use this weekly injection that we literally have no long-term safety data in 12-year-old children, zero, none.
[00:34:01] We recommend as The American Academy of Pediatrics, that you basically enroll your 12-year-old child in this trial, because that's what this is, this is a drug trial. The 12-year-old children are the guinea pigs. And we'll watch that cohort as they get older, we'll watch them and then if a lot of bad things happen to them, we'll be like, “Oh, we no longer recommend that.” I mean, that is almost Nazi Germany level stuff, isn't it? Like, let's just do an experiment on everybody's 12-year-old kids. We don't know what's going to happen.
[00:34:34] We think it's going to be fine, but we don't know because there's no long-term data proven safety at this dosage, because we've used the GLP-1 inhibitors for a while now for type 2 diabetes, what's been a decade, but it was at a lower dose for type 2 diabetes. Now this new higher dose for obesity, there's no long-term safety data in adults, definitely not in children, but they have made that their formal recommendation and there's no proof that it's safe. And now they're trying to lower that recommendation down to six years old. So, a 6-year-old who's been fed the Kellogg's, General Mills [unintelligible 00:35:12] diet for their first six years of life, their first foods were the little Gerber crunchy sugar-added crackers. And so, now, they're severely obese for their age.
[00:35:21] Instead of trying to counsel parents, “Hey, you know what? You're feeding them the wrong stuff. This is going to lead to terrible health complications.” The American Academy of Pediatrics is about to say, “I'm going to prescribe some Ozempic for your 6-year-old child who has fatty liver, prediabetes, and severe obesity. That's what we're going to do. And just keep feeding them The Kelce Brothers’ Cereal and we're going to start giving them a shot of Ozempic once a week, even though there's no data showing that that's safe. That's happening right now with 12-year-olds, and if they have their way, that'll be happening with 6-year-old children in the near future.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:36:01] Well, what I think is concerning is that there's certainly been plenty of research on tweens and teens about how effective a low carb, even ketogenic diet can be. I'm not talking about intermittent fasting, but just removing processed carbohydrates and really concentrating on quality protein and healthy fats. And to me, to suddenly jump directly to drug therapy is missing the point of why lifestyle is the first intervention that should be frontline therapy for everyone. And this is where I think that our current system is really devolved into. We're so focused on drug therapy to control symptoms as opposed to taking the time.
[00:36:44] And if it's not the physician or nurse practitioner, having someone on their team, whether it's a health coach or a registered dietitian, helping them counsel families on how to properly eat, that to me, seems to make much more sense and is probably much more cost efficacious than jumping directly to drug therapy. I was looking the other day for a family member who is appropriately in conjunction with lifestyle changes using tirzepatide, which is one of these second generation GLP-1s. And they know it's a short-term thing. They're going to lift weights or eat enough protein. They know it's a short-term fix.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:37:22] Sure.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:23] And they were talking to me about the cost of these drugs and how if you're not obese enough, you don't qualify, you have to pay out of pocket. They're exceedingly expensive.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:37:34] Yes.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:35] Somewhere between $500 to $1,200 a month for compounded varieties, maybe not even the regular run of the mill products. And all I could think of was, there's so many confounding issues related to this. If it's an appropriate decision and you're an adult, that's one thing, but keep your hands off the kids. That bothers me to my core as an individual, knowing that there's lots of good research about nutritional interventions and lifestyle interventions first, which have excellent data points on how health and metabolic health can be improved upon by changing nutrition and more physical activity, high quality sleep, etc., to somehow to jump to very, very expensive drugs without the long-term effects in a child, I think, is setting people up for potential problems.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:38:33] Yeah. And make no mistake, this is happening in adults as well. One of the leading experts on obesity treatment in the United States, I forget her name. I think she was on 60 Minutes and she effectively said that obesity is genetic, that there's really nothing that people can do about it, that you just need to take the injections. And, there was a Time, 60 Minutes, another great example. There was a time when they would have fact checked that in one second, they would have pushed back, they would have had a follow-up question. They just accepted it because they are also in trouble financially, and they've got to get the views, they got to get the clicks, and they've got to get the ad dollars from guess who's advertising against their show, I don't know, I'll let you take a wild guess.
[00:39:21] And so this leading doctor in the world said obesity is genetic. Now, every doctor who has two brain cells should have immediately been up in arms, like, “Why would you say such an ignorant thing?” So, exactly what's happened is this is what you would expect if this were a playbook. So, the leading obesity doctor says that, and there's not a lot of kickback, and they're like, “Aha, okay, we're good to go.” Then a few months later, The American Academy of Pediatrics comes out and says, “Oh, yeah, for 12 and up, we're going to start making this our recommendation.” The obesity expert, if she had just been smothered with doctors and dietitians saying, “What the hell is wrong with you?” on social media, everywhere, letters to the editor, call your congressman.
[00:40:16] Like, literally, if there had just been a huge revolt against her statement and she was forced to retract that statement, I bet the AAP would have been like, “Yeah, we're not going to make that our official stance yet. We're going to wait for more research” Which is what they should have done, but they didn't, because her statement, although ignorant and false, was accepted. Like, “Okay, yeah, okay, obesity is genetic.” There you go. Now, that's in millions of people's heads who have overweight obesity, severe obesity. It's genetic. Nothing I can do about it. So, I can just eat whatever I want, aka Kelce Brothers’ Cereal, and I'll just take this injection once a week. There you go. It's not my fault. There's nothing I can really do about it.
[00:40:58] Now I hear all these keto people out there, humming and hawing, but the leading obesity researcher and doctor in the world said, “This is genetic.” I'm not going to listen to some random keto carnivore doctor on YouTube, some redneck from Tennessee, I'm not going to listen to him.” The leading doctor who takes care of people with obesity said, “This is genetic.” So, there you go. Okay, I'm done. So, I can eat all the cereal I want. I'll just take this injection. That's exactly what they wanted to happen. And that's exactly what's currently happening. And it's sad, it's disappointing. And all you and I and others can do is just keep pushing back and saying that's actually incorrect, it's actually probably dangerous because think about the average patient, Cynthia. They're eating a junk diet.
[00:41:46] They just read this time article saying, “Maybe ultra-processed food is not as bad as we thought.” They didn't see that the title got changed later. They just saw that. They see The Kelce Brothers, they hear the world leading obesity treater saying, “Obesity is genetic.” Now, Ozempic is approved for 12-year-olds, so it's got to be safe. When you see all this, just as a normal patient, you're just like, you or I go into their exam room and we're like, “No, no, no, no, no.” We sound like the crazy people. Even though what we're advocating is just a real whole food diet, go outside and play in the sun, get sweaty, have fun, go outside and play and eat real food. That's our message. We sound like the kooks, the inversion that's happened.
[00:42:33] I mean, it's a master stroke of propaganda and a master stroke of advertising. I mean, it's brilliant. Somebody should win whatever award you win for ad campaigns. This is the best one ever because everybody fell for it. But the really worrisome thing is a lot of doctors fell for it.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:42:55] I think it's so interesting because it puts patients in a position where they feel powerless. If it's genetic, then I can't do anything about it. Therefore, prescribing x, y and z drug therapy is the only way to address this. Now, what was interesting is I was preparing for our conversation, I started looking at some statistics. When we think about ultra processed foods, we realized that this is the conduit to high fructose corn syrup, processed sugars, seed oils. In the United States right now, we are consuming 77 to 152 pounds of sugar a year. That's quite a range, not to mention the seed oils. And this is where, when I posed on my X account/Twitter, people were asking, “Is it really true that seed oils are problematic?”
[00:43:44] And so I got, I don't know, 10 questions in my DM's and one frontward facing on that post. And so, when you're counseling, talking to your patients from where you're promoting your message, what do you think is worse? Do you think it's the sugar, the seed oils, a combination of both, where do your thoughts lie?
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:44:03] So, back in 2017, when I started doing this social media thing, my three rules were, eliminate sugar from your diet. Number two, eliminate all the grains from your diet. Number three, eliminate the vegetable seed oils from your diet. And so, we've had so many thousands and thousands of people reverse so much chronic disease by that. And then 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10 that we talked about in other videos. But I'd say 80% of people, if you just do those three things, your health is going to turn around. For many people with prediabetes, just following those three rules, you're going to reverse your prediabetes, your blood pressure is going to come down, you're going to lose 20 pounds. Like for 70% of people, that's going to fix you metabolically. You don't have to get off into the keto and carnivore weeds for many, many people.
[00:44:49] I'm not sure how big of a deal the vegetable seed oils are. When you look at just the association between the rates of increase of chronic disease and the rate of increase of seed oil consumption, they go hand in hand. But that's an association, right? There are several people online, Tucker Goodrich, who's a friend of mine, he really digs down into the mechanisms of how seed oils could be causing harm. And I don't disagree with him, but I agree with Dr. Eric Westman. I think that the research about sugar and total carbohydrate intake is so much more robust that I can make that recommendation with no reservations whatsoever. If you're eating added sugar foods, you're going to have hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, you're going to store more fat than you should. The following things are absolutely going to happen.
[00:45:45] We understand the mechanism and we've got the research that shows us that's what happens for the majority of people. But when it comes to seed oils, just my personal belief, they've only been in the human food supply for a few decades. We haven't had time to adapt to that as a species. And so coming from biological principles and from evolutionary principles, there's no way that that's a good thing. Now, maybe we just got lucky and that it is a good thing and it's actually a healthy thing, like many dietitians would promote. That doesn't make any sense how we got so lucky that we just happened upon this source of fat that turns out, luckily was just super healthy for us and also super profitable for the big corporation. Maybe, maybe that happened, but I don't think so.
[00:46:38] But I'm the first to admit that our evidence against vegetable seed oils is not nearly as robust as our evidence against added sugar, against simple carbohydrates, ultra-processed carbohydrates. That stuff's making you metabolically sick, no doubt. But Dr. Westman said this recently at our first board meeting with the American Diabetes Society. He said, “If you just tell people to cut the carbs, what's going to naturally happen is they're going to quit. They're going to not be eating as much ultra processed, pre-prepared food, which is going to naturally slash their ingestion of vegetable seed oils. And so, we decided as the board of the ADS that we're not going to talk about seed oils at least for now, because the research is not as robust.”
[00:47:21] But effectively, if you follow step one and step two, stop eating anything with added sugar and stop eating grains, you're going to cut your vegetable seed oil consumption by somewhere between 50% and 75% right off the bats because everything in the supermarket that contains sugar and wheat, sugar and corn, right, like all the cereals is going to also have vegetable seed oil. And so also you start cooking at home more. When you stop the sugar and you stop the grains, you're like, well, “What am I going to eat? Okay, vegetables. Well, I probably should cook them and then meat, okay, okay, I probably need to cook that, don't eat it raw.”
[00:47:57] So, you're going to start cooking at home and then you're going to have leftover beef tallow, you're going to have leftover bacon grease, you're going to have butter because you're cooking in every recipe. You need a little butter. And so now you've got these healthy fats at home and you've cut your seed oil intake by 50% to 70%. Thats a net victory for the health of that person eating that food.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:48:17] Well, that’s one of the messages that I appreciate the most from your content as well as Dr. Westman is just really keeping things simple, no sugar, no grains. Lastly, I’d love to touch on visceral fat. I know that Dr. Sean O'Mara is doing a really great job making people more aware of deep visceral fat, are you a fan of obviously, runs the gamut from bioimpedance scales to looking at Texas to, if you have the financial ability, doing an MRI, which I have not yet done. But there's lots of things that you can do way ahead of that expensive testing. Are you looking at visceral fat metrics for your patients or are you trending where their body composition is shifting?
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:48:58] Well, in the interest of keeping things simple and keeping things inexpensive, because most people appreciate both of those things, if you follow the guidelines that I lay out for you, stop all added sugar for sure. And most naturally occurring sugar, stop all grains stop vegetable seed oils. Your visceral fat is going to go away. So, even if you currently have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease or metabolic-associated fatty liver, it's going to go away. That's one of the very first things that goes away when you adopt a very low-carb diet, when you adopt a proper human diet. Dr. Jason Fung and I have talked about this at length. That's fatty pancreas is probably the most dangerous visceral fat you can have, is fat that's deposited inappropriately in your pancreas. The next most dangerous is fatty liver.
[00:49:50] Your body's not an idiot. Your body is very wise and very intelligent. As soon as, you cut the carbs in your diet enough, the first fat that your body's going to get rid of is the fat in your pancreas. Before anything else, then it's going to start working on the fat in your liver as you're losing other visceral fat, because a lot of it is just omental fat around the organs. There's also fatty heart, fatty kidney, fatty lung, fatty tongue. These are all real things that cause problems in people, but they've never heard of that before, and many doctors have never heard of that. When I was first starting to do this years ago, I came upon fatty pancreas. And I'm like, “I've never ever heard that in my life as a doctor.”
[00:50:31] I started looking into it, and there's a radiologist on YouTube, he's like, “Oh, you can see a little fatty streaking in the pancreas.” Now, that's so ubiquitous. We don't typically report. We don't even comment on that in the radiology report. We send back to primary care and I can imagine, it's like, “Oh, my God, that is the worst marker you can possibly have.” And radiologists don't even comment on it. Unbelievable. And so, I love Dr. Sean O'Mara. I've interviewed him on the channel. I think he's exactly right about virtually everything. But there's a lot of people that definitely can't afford an MRI. Because you're going to be paying cash for that. That's going to be, I don't know, $500, $750.
[00:51:11] A lot of the scales that you can buy on Amazon where you hold the handles and they're supposed to tell your visceral fat are notoriously inaccurate. And if anybody has those scales, I'll tell you a quick way that you can prove to yourself that they're inaccurate. Is to do it and then drink a glass of water and then do it again. Drink 10oz of water and then do it again. Immediately, you're going to like, “Okay, so that's not actually measuring visible fat at all.” Okay. So, it confuses a lot of people and it's too expensive for many people.
[00:51:47] And if you follow what Dr. Westman or Dr. Fung or I or you or any of us, if you follow what we recommend, you probably do have fatty liver right now, but it's going to be gone in a few weeks or a few months. Just follow the guidelines, save your money, use your money that you would have paid for that MRI, use that money to buy better quality food.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:52:04] Yeah. And it's so interesting to me because as soon as you started talking about streaks in the pancreas, I thought, gosh, in cardiology we got a lot of diagnostic modalities because most of our patients were hospitalized. And even back when I was still practicing in cardiology, I see the streaking in the pancreas. And at the time, it didn't resonate. We saw plenty of fatty liver. I mean, tons and tons of fatty liver. But having said that, I love the message. Keeping things simple, keeping things affordable, that's how we make impact. Always a pleasure connecting with you, Dr. Berry. Please let listeners know how to connect with you, how to listen to your incredible YouTube channel, get real access to your books, learn more about your work.
Dr. Ken Berry: [00:52:45] Yeah, so I have three books available on Amazon, Lies My Doctor Told Me, Kicking Ass After 50, and Common Sense Labs to help people understand what's going on with their health and with their food. I've got a YouTube channel. I've got, I think, over 1200 videos. And so, a great way to use my YouTube channel is whatever you suffer from, let's say it's psoriasis. Just go to my YouTube channel and there's a little magnifying glass icon. Click that and just type in psoriasis or whatever you suffer from. Or you can just go to YouTube and type Dr. Berry hypertension, Dr. Berry fatty liver, Dr. Berry fatty pancreas. And any videos I have will pop up because nobody needs to watch all 1200 videos.
[00:53:29] And I do want to take this opportunity to introduce every one of your listeners to the American Diabetes Society. This is something that me, Dr. Eric Westman, Professor Ben Bikman, Dr. Tony Hampton, Dr. Mariela Glandt, Dr. David Cavan, and then Michelle Hearn, a Registered Dietitian, Temple Stewart, a Registered Dietitian, and a couple more dietitians have come on board now. We started a diabetes society because we're sick and tired of the American Diabetes Association doing exactly what the Time article did, which is muddy the water like, “Oh, people with diabetes, you can eat grains, it's fine. You can have some added sugar. Just don't-- you know, eat it in moderation.” Knowing that so many of these people are sugar addicts have carb addiction, knowing that a lot of the foods they're recommending are hyperpalatable. There's no way you can just eat one tiny serving the size of a die that you would play Monopoly with. Nobody can do that.
[00:54:31] So, the ADS is going to be giving people with diabetes good nutrition advice, common sense, affordable nutrition advice. So, if you have type 2 diabetes, you can completely reverse that. And if you have type 1 diabetes, you can have a normal A1c and use 80% less expensive insulin. The American Diabetes Society, we've got a webpage that's live now. I'll send you the link, Cynthia. We've got a Twitter account, we've got a Facebook account, Instagram, TikTok, and we're building up a LinkedIn account right now. And we're going to start putting out guidelines for practicing physicians and advanced practice nurses so that you can say, “Okay, here's how I should treat and talk to somebody with type 2 diabetes or type 1 diabetes or LADA or MODY.
[00:55:21] Here's how I, as a healthcare provider, can actually help my patients get healthier. We're going to have hundreds and hundreds of recipes on the American Diabetes Society website that will actually lower your blood sugar and lower your A1c and will not sell Splenda or other big food products like the ADA does. It's actually in our articles of incorporation that we'll never ever accept a single penny in the form of a donation from any big food manufacturer or Big Pharma manufacturer. We will never take money from them.
[00:55:53] So, you can always trust our message to be clear, concise, affordable, and it will actually improve your health and decrease how diabetic you are. That's the message of the ADS. And so, thank you so much for having me on.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:56:09] Of course. Always a pleasure.
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