Nutrition Expert: This Is Why Eat Less, Exercise More Never Works

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian (0:00)

So calorie take has gone down or is about the same as 2000 And physical activity has gone up, and obesity has dramatically gone up since 2000 So we have a paradox.

Dr. Mark Hyman (0:10)

So eat less, exercise more, which is what we're all told, doesn't seem to be working.

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian (0:15)

What's truly amazing is the science of how food affects our biology. What we're learning is that the type of food we eat long-term is way more important than its calories. This is why we can't blame willpower.

Dr. Mark Hyman (0:30)

Welcome back to the podcast, Dariush. I'm so excited for your new book, Food is Medicine, which just came out. It is been the work of my life. And to have someone like you also getting it is just amazing. And for those who are listening, who don't know who Dr. Mozaffarian is, he's an iconic leader in the field of nutrition and nutrition research. He's the guy who I went to to learn all about nutrition from his scientific papers well before we were friends.

He's one of the most prolific and published authors in the space of nutrition and is deeply thoughtful and has come to mostly the same conclusions as I have about chronic disease and food and how we're kind of trying to solve the problem of chronic disease with drugs, which is not why we have chronic disease is the lack of drugs. It's the lack of proper nutrition. And the whole idea of Food is Medicine is so central to his work, to my work, he's the former dean of the Tufts School of Nutrition Science and Policy, now the head of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts, and we have worked together and collaborated for many years in policy stuff in Washington, DC. And we have really just kind of walked this walk together around how do we make our food system better because it's not just a personal problem. The fact that we're obese and have chronic diseases in America is not everybody's fault because they're weak willed, morally corrupt, or have no willpower. It's something else. And we're going to talk about what that is. We're going to talk about the key controversies in nutrition, about protein, about seed oils, about what we should be eating, what we shouldn't be eating, about what is ultra processed food. And we're going to also talk about some of the key issues that have been kind of controversial and are still controversial, which is calories. Are calories all the same? We're going to talk about policy a little bit. We won't bore you with that too much. But I think it's important because if we don't change the food system, we're going to not be able to solve this problem. It's like trying to bail a boat. It's got a giant hole in the bottom without fixing the hole. So, Dari, welcome and let's sort of get into it.

Tell us how you, as a Stanford-trained biologist, as a Columbia-trained doctor, as a Harvard-trained MPH, MD, cardiologist, straight-up doctor, how you somehow had the epiphany that food might be important considering we learn nothing about food in medical school or in our training.

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian (2:54)

You know, I wrote this book to really put together everything I've learned in my career and try to explain it to people. You know, you get to have a few hours with someone and I get asked so many questions and it's often the same questions again and again. And I thought, you know, if I can write down everything I know, explain the science, how we got here, you know, where we are today and how we actually have to get out of this mess, you know, I could help, you know, an individual person understand what to do today and tomorrow for what they eat, but also really help us all kind of understand what we don't know and where, whether we shouldn't, you know, probably worry too much because there's not a lot of certainty. And also what the solutions are, as you said. So it's great to be here.

To get to your question, I mean, you know, you're absolutely right, you know, after high school, I did 15 years of training to become a doctor, right? Four years of college, four years of medical school, three years of interval medicine, four years of cardiology. And in that 15 years, the nutrition we learned was basically biochemistry. What's the Krebs cycle? Where does ATP come from? How is glucose broken down?

Dr. Mark Hyman (4:02)

Right?

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian (4:03)

And that's important. You need to understand that. But really true nutrition food was missing from 15 years of training.