Vinnie Tortorich on Keto, Filmmaking, and the Fight Against Big Food

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (0:10)
Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. It is the one and only Vinnie Tortorich joining me today. Of course, Vinnie is the author of Fitness Confidential, Adventures in the Weight Loss Game. Speaker, podcaster, as I said, bestselling author. He's documentary that you all know as Fat, and there is a new documentary called Dirty Keto. Vinnie, thank you so much for being here.

**Vinnie Tortorich** (0:30)
Thanks for having me, Drew. It's always a pleasure.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (0:32)
So is Fat still making the rounds? I imagine people still refer to it.

**Vinnie Tortorich** (0:36)
You know, you're not gonna believe this, and I can actually, I'll send you a text later. About three weeks ago, I got a message showing that we were ranked at number 21 on all documentaries on iTunes. That movie, Drew, is five years old now. And by the way, you were one of the stars of that film.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (0:58)
Oh, it was so fun. It was so good. And I feel like it moved the needle, you know what I mean? You've got the Means siblings out there now sort of advocating sort of similar stuff. You've got everybody questioning the government's recommendations on everything, thank God. And these sort of ridiculous ideas around fat and food pyramids, things you've been talking about forever, now are becoming commonplace, I think, yeah?

**Vinnie Tortorich** (1:27)
You know, it's funny. I was in Washington, DC yesterday.
I did a speech at a rally right there on the mall next to the Washington Monument. And I'm there with some of the people behind us. Dr. Georgie Eates was there. Robert lustig was on the same stage with us. And I could go on and on, Chris Palmer, and just on and on. And then we all went to dinner afterwards. And we're sitting around and we're talking out, are we moving the needle? And I said, look, guys, I hate to put the wet blanket on this. But, you know, I've been doing this online for about 13, almost 14 years now. Gary Taubes was there right before me. Nina Tyshows came on. Nina was also there. Came on right after me. And I pointed to Nina at the table. I said, Nina, do you think we've made any ground with the government? And she did this. She goes, zero, zero. But we know we're doing something because as I said in my speech, when it's an N1 experiment, right? N1 means one guy does one thing and it changes things. And then you have two N1 experiments and then three. And as I said, we know we don't have 10,000. We don't have 100,000. We have a million N1 experiments and it's working.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (2:49)
Yeah.

**Vinnie Tortorich** (2:50)
When does that N1 experiment become an epidemiological study, which as I said in the speech, government loves a good epidemiological study.

**Dr. Drew Pinsky** (3:00)
I'll tell you something they love more than that and that's money. And the only reason that they don't, the government doesn't change is adulterating influences. And bureaucratic, what should we call it, ossification. Bureaucracies don't move. They don't like to be wrong and they only hear and respond to money. And did we not learn that during COVID? And here's what I would say about the question raised at the dinner table. Who gives a fuck about the government? We shouldn't be looking to them anymore because they can't be relied upon. You guys have been, you start a movement Vinnie, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that the average person has now heard about and knows that it's in juxtaposition to the government. That the government has been misleading us since the food pyramid, and God knows before probably. And that's it. It can't do, it should, it can't do the job.
And I don't think they're the right people to do the job, frankly, because they've shown themselves to be just not worthy of our confidence.

**Vinnie Tortorich** (4:06)
Dr. Drew, you could not be more correct. I always use, you used the example of the pandemic. I'm going to give you another way to look at it, and this is the one I love to use. I'll say to anyone, how many gun laws have been changed? How many gun laws have the NRA actually changed? And or the government has changed based on the NRA? And the number is zero.
We're trying to change gun laws. The only gun law that was ever changed was during a Republican's standoff, and that was when Reagan was shot. Since then, we had Clinton for eight years, Obama for eight years, so that's 16, and now 20 with Biden. 20 years of Democratic rule. They didn't change one gun law. So what does that tell you? The NRA is giving as much money to the politicians on the left as they do the politicians on the right. So if you take that, you go, well, geez, I never thought of it that way. What else are they doing that with? Well, food is doing that, big food is doing it, and Big Pharma is doing it. The three biggest lobbies out there, Big Food, Big Pharma, and Gun. And none of those will ever change. I don't care who is in office.