GLP-1 Drugs & Bariatric Surgery Explained by a Top Obesity Researcher | Dr. David Allison

**Dr. David Allison** (0:00)
If we keep saying to people, this will help you, this will help you, and either they don't help at all, or they help a very small amount, somebody who has never studied obesity, who has never studied nutrition, who has never read a paper on any of these topics, give you their very strong and convicted opinion.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:18)
If you're on this grapefruit diet, you'll never be hungry again. You mean those kind of fat type?

**Dr. David Allison** (0:23)
Just eat between this time and this time. Just eat whole fruits and vegetables. Just eat high volume. Just eat low carb. Just eat low fat. Just eat all natural food. Don't eat ultra-processed.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:35)
Do you think there's danger in that?

**Dr. David Allison** (0:36)
I think it misleads people tremendously. It wastes huge amounts of time. It wastes huge amounts of resources. You're distracting them from potentially doing the thing that might be helpful.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:45)
People will say, well, trust the science. Do we need to trust the science?

**Dr. David Allison** (0:49)
It's a process, absolutely. But if you said to me, do you trust a lot of the science that comes out around dietary supplements? No.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:02)
Is there anything that you think that we've gotten really, really wrong?

**Dr. David Allison** (1:06)
Here's the thing. You don't have to learn a lot of nutrition. You don't have to understand what protein is. You don't have to know what a carbohydrate is. All you gotta do is this.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:24)
How did you get involved in what you're doing now? Because you occupy a very unique lane.

**Dr. David Allison** (1:29)
Your question is an enjoyable one for me, because it allows me to sort of think about tying the two paths of my life together. And I think one of them is just who I am. You know, I sometimes get asked, how did you choose to become a scientist? And I say, there was no choice. Choice had nothing to do with it. I never chose to become a scientist.
From the earliest I can remember, as a little kid, when I could speak, I would ask questions. I was the kid in the backyard who liked to turn over the rock and say, what's under here? How did it get there? What does it do? How does it eat? How does it live? And sometimes people would give me answers, adults. And then I often had the temerity to say, how do you know? And are you sure? Which didn't always please adults, and it doesn't always please them today when I say things like that. But it does tend to please people who are true scientists in this period, because that's what scientists do. They ask those questions. And so that's part of me. It's one part joy and wonder, and it's one part rigor and hard-mindedness.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:35)
And you grew up in Long Island?

**Dr. David Allison** (2:37)
Correct.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:37)
You grew up in Long Island. And then where did you do your training?

**Dr. David Allison** (2:40)
So I did my undergraduate at Vassar College, and I'll just take a very brief pause there to mention two things about Vassar. One is that it's a place really of spirited open-mindedness. And so I really learned to be open-minded and to think about things wildly. And I took a course as a sophomore called Human Emotion and Motivation. And in it, we studied the work of Stanley Schachter. It was built around his work, who was a psychology professor at Columbia at the time. And he had a book called Emotion, Obesity, and Crime, in which he tied those ideas together and I always admired his experimental approach. It was very novel and creative. And so that got me hooked into obesity research. I just was, that was the, oh, the wonder, the joy, the thrill of discovery.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:30)
Was obesity, and when was this? Was this in, because obesity?

**Dr. David Allison** (3:36)
Early 1980s.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:37)
Okay, so in the 80s. So this was right when the obesity epidemic probably started taking shape and had a name.

**Dr. David Allison** (3:43)
At least was perceived to be taking shape.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:44)
Ah, interesting. Okay.

**Dr. David Allison** (3:46)
It was taking shape a few hundred years earlier at least.
So anyway, I got hooked in that. The other thing about Vassar was, is very focused on writing. So I wrote lots and lots of papers, and every course I took, I had to write a paper. And so I found that it was easier if I could write a paper on the same topic but from a different angle. And so when I took physiologic psychology, I'd write about obesity from a physiologic angle. And when I took developmental, I'd write from a developmental angle. And I learned that you not only could address obesity from all those different perspectives, but in fact, you almost had to. If you didn't address it from economic, genetic, psychological, developmental, physiological, nutritional, and so on, you didn't have a full grasp. And so that to me was always thrilling. And from there on, I was in. And so that's how I sort of got into obesity. And the science part, the sort of skeptical part, I think that's just in me.