Here's my list of inaccuracies from this video:
First of all, this guy is an anesthetist. Not a nutritionist. Not an obesity or nutrition researcher. Yes, he's a doctor, but nutrition is far from his specialty. I also found it very interesting that he makes several references to his treatment of patients and prescription of medication. I'd like to know how he was doing this since his residency would have been in anesthesiology rather than general practice.
1. In his discussion on the patient's blood sample, he mentions that the patient had a cheeseburger and milkshake before his appointment. He then goes on to quickly state that the fat he was seeing in the vial was from the fat in the burger and the milk fat in the shake. One problem with this theory though, for starters, it takes more than four hours for fat to be processed in the small intestines, so it couldn't possibly have gotten into his blood stream that quickly. Second, you'd be hard pressed to find a fast food joint that serves ice cream milkshakes. Most are made with custard, which is 98-99% fat free, and made mostly of sugar.
2. This condition of lipemia is blamed on the fat intake. Small problem. Lipemia is caused by high triglyceride levels, which are a result of triglyceride production in the liver, not triglyceride ingestion. When fat is ingested, it is bonded in the small intestine with bile salts and then hydrolyzed into free fatty acids before being absorbed into the blood stream. The fatty acids must be esterified to form triglycerides, which only happens in the liver or adipose tissue.
3. Comparison of vegetable and animal fats. He claims that because saturated fat is solid at room temperature, it is not processed and this is why it ends up in your bloodstream and eventually stuck to your arteries. Again, there are major holes in his claim. The enzyme, lipase, hydrolyzes fats before they are sent to the small intestines to be made into salts and absorbed into the bloodstream. The actual difference between saturated fats and unsaturated fats is simply a lack of double bonds in the saturated fat molecule. This makes digestion slower due to the lower availability of the electrons for enzyme breakdown, but they are still broken down.
4. He touts the benefits of linoleic acid which comes from vegetable oils while emphasizing the effect that arachadonic acid has on inflammation through the increased production of prostaglandin. Guess what. Arachadonic acid is synthesized by your body from linoleic acid. This is actually why many scientists won't list arachadonic acid as an essential fatty acid, because your body produces it naturally.
5. This may be my favorite of all of his statements. The fat on the guy in the picture isn't even his own fat. It is the unprocessed animal fats that he has eaten. Tryacylglycerol production (body fat) begins with free fatty acids. They are then bonded with a glycerol molecule that is provided by insulin and and therefore stored within the adipose tissue in a process called esterification. TAG's cannot even enter (or exit) the adipose tissue because they are too large to pass through the cell wall. It is chemically impossible for your body to store unprocessed animal fats.
6. Here's another funny statement. Eating lots of fats stimulates the male to form hormones called androgens, which cause the prostate to enlarge. This would be an interesting statement if that same hormone production from fat intake weren't also responsible for fun things like testerone, vitamin k, estrogen, and progstin. Another fact that he conveniently leaves out is that the same process that produces androgens (which, by the way, are responsible for the human develpment of all sexual characteristics) also makes adrenalcorticoids which maintain electrolyte balance, control glucose metabolism and counteract inflammation. Sounds like pretty unhealthy stuff to me!
7. Fish fat is unhealthy and there's nothing necessary to your health in animals that you can't find in plants. Again, untrue. He likes to tout benefit of linoleic acid, which comes from vegetable oils. Well, guess what. There are two essential fatty acids (essential meaning that your body needs it, but can't produce it, so it must be acquired in the diet) and he ignores linolenic acid, which comes from animals (mainly fish) and not from plants.
8. I love this statement. The breakdown of protein in the liver produces all kinds of toxic byproducts like urea, ammonia and amino acid fragments. First of all, your DNA is made from those ammonia and amino acid fragments. Also, you can't store protein? Sure, this is true, but you sure can use it all. I think this guy needs to review the Krebs cycle. This is funny because he later references the Krebs cycle stating that your body burns carbohydrates, not fat. Has this guy even looked at the Krebs since his sophomore year of college?
He also says that the size of protein is a problem. Bullshit, this is actually the advantage that animal protein has over non-animal protein. Non-animal proteins are not in a form that is usable by the human body and must be broken down significantly before they can be processed into usable proteins, which consumes tremendous amounts of energy. Meanwhile, animal proteins, are large and contain all of the essential amino acids. This makes for a much smaller required breakdown and more efficient use.
His statement of fiber being in vegetable protein is also ridiculous. Sure, fiber is helpful. But isn't this argument against fats and animal proteins? If he wants to go there, maybe he should compare the absorption rates of carbohydrates (with or without fiber) to that of fat and protein, which are naturally much, much slower.
9. Another fun statement. Cows chew plants all day long so they can digest plant fiber and then he compares out teeth and digestive track to cows and horses. Oops, more problems here. First, humans cannot digest fiber due to the lack of cellulase enzyme. Second, carbohydrates are digested in the mouth, not the stomach or intestines.
It's also interesting how many references he makes to the foods that we were apparently designed to eat yet fails to mention that the grains and potatoes he keeps including in those statements are toxic to both humans and cattle. We cook them to kill the toxins. We just kill the cattle before the grains kill them. Look up acidosis and cattle sometime.
10. Hypertension is caused by high sodium foods. If you look at the actual studies that support this statement, they state that, in the most extreme cases, sodium reduction can result in a blood pressure decrease of 10 points. Guess what. That's not even enough to get you from stage II to state I hypertension. Insulin causes the kidneys to stop expelling sodium, which is actually the cause of water retention. A hormone called thromboxane also controls vasoconstriction, the other cause of hypertension.
As much effort as it took to bring up the major inaccuracies in his speech, there are plenty more that I left out. This may all sound sensational, and he makes a nice case, but the simple fact is that his science is bad. It is very easy to look around and find studies that support whatever your theory may be because there are studies conducted all the time that have incorrect results do to poorly conceived tests.
