#1235 - Ben Greenfield

Ben Greenfield (0:09)

Hello, Ben.

Joe Rogan (0:10)

What's up, buddy?

Ben Greenfield (0:11)

There's a discrepancy. My coffee is way, way bigger than yours.

I've got like this 40-ounce Big Gulp French Press.

Joe Rogan (0:20)

Yes.

Ben Greenfield (0:21)

Versus the, is that a caveman?

Joe Rogan (0:23)

Yeah.

Ben Greenfield (0:23)

Cold brew.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

Nitros.

Ben Greenfield (0:25)

Yeah, those are pretty good too. Those pop a punch.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

Yeah. Dude, thank you so much for the bread and the macaroons and-

Ben Greenfield (0:31)

The goodies.

Joe Rogan (0:32)

Yeah, that's awesome.

Ben Greenfield (0:34)

Dude, I would probably be morbidly obese if I wasn't an exercise freak.

Joe Rogan (0:39)

It seems like it.

Ben Greenfield (0:39)

But yeah, yeah, Jessa makes that sourdough bread and it is freaking amazing.

Joe Rogan (0:44)

Did you do that carnivore diet thing? Did you try that out?

Ben Greenfield (0:48)

No.

Joe Rogan (0:48)

You did?

Ben Greenfield (0:48)

No.

Joe Rogan (0:49)

No.

Ben Greenfield (0:49)

I like me, but I didn't do the carnivore diet.

Joe Rogan (0:51)

I thought you were going to do it for a certain amount of time and test it.

Ben Greenfield (0:53)

I thought about it. I'm too much of a foodie.

What I did was I tried to eat ribeye steaks every night for dinner, so I did like a 33% carnivore diet. But there was a study actually that came out, it was just like two days ago on that TMAO, the sugar that is associated with gut damage when you're eating a high red meat diet.

Joe Rogan (1:18)

Right, when your body takes excess protein and it turns it into sugar.

Ben Greenfield (1:22)

Right, with theoretically the idea being that that might be present because your microbiome is imbalanced from a diet that's too heavy in meat.

Joe Rogan (1:31)

Is it your micro…

It's because of your biome? I thought it was just because of glucogenesis, because your body has nothing but meat, your body turns it into glucose?

Ben Greenfield (1:42)

No, that would be something different.

That conversion to glucose is a different sugar than the TMAO. So what the TMAO is, is that's going to be present if you aren't getting enough fiber or if your biome isn't balanced. But what this study, a couple of days looked at was people who were eating like a fish and egg and plant rich diet and they had high levels of TMAO too, but they weren't deleterious. They're actually protective. Because they had the fiber.

And I mean, you could do a carnivore diet if you were… There's a few populations that do this, like in Spain, I forget the name of the sausage, but they'll eat the ruminant, like they'll eat the intestine of the ruminant and get their grasses and their fibers and their plants literally by eating the stomach of the animal.

Joe Rogan (2:29)

Like a cat.

Ben Greenfield (2:30)

Yeah. Yeah. And it's the same issue with methionine. Too much of the amino acid methionine from just eating red meat would be deleterious. But if you're getting glycine and some of these other amino acids, if you're eating like, nose to tail, bone marrow, bone broth, all the organ meats, head cheese, Braun Schweiger, just like all these different mixes of meats, I think that would be the way to do a carnivore diet.

Joe Rogan (2:55)

Yeah. There's a lot of people that are proponents of that as well. And then there's a bunch of people that are, you know, it's interesting because you've got to, there's a disparity between the anecdotal accounts of health and wellbeing and then blood work.

Ben Greenfield (3:08)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:09)

The blood work these folks get is not impressive.

Ben Greenfield (3:11)

You mean the people on the cardboard.

Joe Rogan (3:13)

Yeah. What I've seen, I haven't seen anything where I see all their inflammatory markers down, their testosterone up. I haven't seen anything where it's looking really good.

Ben Greenfield (3:23)

High blood glucose is another thing that you see.

Joe Rogan (3:25)

But I should say that there haven't been a lot of tests done. It's not like a lot of people are publishing stuff on it, but the anecdotal evidence is amazing. It's like, it's really weird. Like my friend Jordan Peterson, he's had a tremendous success with it.

Ben Greenfield (3:38)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:38)

Lost a lot of body weight. He says he's in his intellectual prime. He said he's never felt better in terms of his energy levels. And that guy is, he is so rigid and disciplined with it. All he's eating is meat with salt on it and he drinks water. And that is it.