My guest is Dr. Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., professor of medicine and director of nutrition studies at Stanford. He is known for his pioneering research on the impact of dietary interventions on weight loss and health. We compare ketogenic, vegetarian, vegan and omnivorous diets—and why there is no one-size-fits-all approach. All agree, however, that eliminating or dramatically reducing processed foods is best for health. We discuss the protein needs controversy; plant vs. animal proteins; the importance of fiber and low-sugar fermented foods for gut health and inflammation; and how diet affects gene expression. We also review food allergies—including gluten, wheat, dairy and soy—as well as raw dairy. The episode offers data-supported advice for healthier eating. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Mateina: https://drinkmateina.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Levels: https://levelshealth.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Christopher Gardner 00:02:32 Is there a Best Diet?, Individual Needs, Geography & Diet, Lactose 00:11:02 Sponsors: Eight Sleep & Mateina 00:13:49 Raw Milk, Lactose Intolerance 00:20:33 Wheat Allergies, Gluten Intolerance; Celiac Disease 00:25:12 Processed Foods, Food Dyes, Research Outcomes, NOVA Classification, GRAS 00:33:44 Processed Foods, Economic & Time Considerations, US vs European Products 00:39:59 Food Industry Funding, Investigator Influence, Equipoise, Transparency 00:50:10 Sponsors: AG1 & BetterHelp 00:53:11 Industry Funding, National Institute of Health (NIH) 00:56:41 Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet; Diet Comparison, DIETFITS, A TO Z Study 01:10:24 Nutrition Naming, Omnivore, Meat, Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) 01:17:14 Transforming American Diet; Taste, Health & Environment 01:22:26 Sponsor: LMNT 01:23:43 Food Preparation, Chefs, Improve School Food 01:29:54 Scalability, Mega-Farms, Small Farm & Farmer Loss 01:34:25 Protein Requirements, Dietary Protein Recommendations, Standard Deviations 01:45:33 Protein & Storage 01:52:12 Plants & Complete Proteins?, Legumes, Bioavailability 02:01:58 Sponsor: Levels 02:03:17 Beyond Meat, Impossible Meat, Ingredients, Sourcing Meat, Salt 02:09:18 Vegan vs Omnivore Diet, Twin Study, Cardiometabolic Markers, Genes, Microbiome 02:20:24 Health Science Communication, DEXA; “Protein Flip” Diet; Food Patterns, Caloric Intake 02:31:29 Microbiome, Inflammation, Fiber, Tool: Low-Sugar, Fermented Food 02:45:32 Acknowledgements 02:47:55 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Christopher Gardner and what is his research focus?
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Christopher Gardner. Dr. Christopher Gardner is a professor of medicine and director of nutrition studies at Stanford University.
Dr. Gardner has conducted groundbreaking research on dietary interventions for over 25 years, focusing on what dietary interventions reduce weight and inflammation and for generally improving physical health.
He is known for doing extremely well controlled studies of nutrition where calories, macronutrients, so protein, fat and carbohydrates and food quality are matched between the different groups and not simply comparing one intervention to the so-called standard American diet, as so many other nutrition studies do.
As such, his work has been published in prestigious journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. Today, we discuss several important nutritional controversies and we examine what the science actually tells us.
First, we explore protein requirements, how much protein we actually need and do those needs change based on activity levels, age and health status. And I should say that even though we started out with rather discrepant stance on this, we converge on an answer that I think will be satisfying at least to most people. And then you can tailor that answer to your unique needs.
We then examine the ongoing debate between vegetarian, vegan and omnivore diets for optimal health. And we dive into whether plant proteins are truly inferior to animal proteins, as is often claimed. We also discuss the role of fiber in the diet and the emerging science on fermented foods and their powerful anti-inflammatory effects.
Throughout today's conversation, we focus on food quality and not just macronutrient ratios or calories and how those can impact health outcomes. As you'll hear, Dr. Gardner and I don't agree on every nutritional recommendation. particularly how much protein people need and the discrepancy in views about animal-based proteins versus plant-based proteins.
But by the end, I do believe that we converge on themes that everyone, regardless of their dietary preference, ought to be able to benefit from. As always, we provide you with science-based, actionable information that you can apply to your daily life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my conversation with Dr. Christopher Gardner. Professor Christopher Gardner, so nice to meet you and to have you here.
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Chapter 2: Is there a best diet for everyone or do individual needs vary?
So there isn't one best diet, and I don't think we need different diets. We're just incredibly resilient, and we can do crazy wild things. So the way I start my human nutrition class at Berkeley with students is in the very first class, I point out the Tarahumara Indians, who are like world-class ultramarathon runners, mostly corn and beans, like total carb.
And then you can look at the Alaskan Inuits who for centuries lived on whale and blubber and polar bear and things like that. So that was like total fat and total carb. And they thrived. There was really no diabetes, no heart disease, no cancer. But eating all their local indigenous diets. You know, Michael Pollan has a great quote on this, the author of Omnivore's Dilemma.
And he says, you know, if you really look around the world, it is amazing. how much variety there is in a diet that people can thrive on, except the one that doesn't work is the American diet, the standard American diet, because it's full of processed, packaged food.
And the sad thing is that the Tarahumara Indians now eat a lot of crap, and the Alaskan people and the Inuits now have a lot of packaged, processed food shipped in, and the world's all sort of centering... on an unhealthy diet that is convenient and it's inexpensive and it's available and it's addictively tasty and it's problematic. So no, there is not one best diet.
It's incredible how resilient we are. So I'd love to get into that.
Well, there's so many facets to what we call diet or nutrition. There's the macronutrients, protein, fats, and carbohydrates, the micronutrients. There's how many calories are in there. There's how it was sourced. There's how that sourcing impacts the environment. There are just so many lenses to look at this issue through.
I would like to know, because of what you just told us, that people prior to food making its way around the world from different cultures to other cultures, food largely centered on what was grown and hunted and harvested locally, is it possible that even though people have dispersed across the planet,
sort of going back to this first question, that there is a quote unquote best diet, meaning not that we can adapt to any diet, but that for some of us, high meat, high fat, maybe even high, let's say high protein, high fiber, just to make it a little bit less extreme, high protein, high fiber, low starch is better.
And for people that are descendants of people with genes from another part of the world, that high starch, high fiber, lower protein would be advisable?
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Chapter 3: What is lactose intolerance and can raw milk cure it?
16 people might not seem like a lot of people, but because GI disorder is so easy to detect, you either had diarrhea and gas or not. We're very proud of that tiny little paper, tiny little study we did. Although this raw milk company still, on their website, says they cure lactose intolerance.
A different issue altogether.
So let's not go there, but let's flip that to wheat because so my concern in the world of wheat and gluten intolerance is, yeah, it's amazing how many people feel some distress. And if they were tested, you might find out that they're not clinically gluten intolerant, or I'm sure that's a continuum. But I think this actually has to do with our food supply.
So in a lot of foods that we grow, historically, there were multiple brands or types of bananas and corn and wheat, et cetera. And in the U.S., we pretty much grow one kind of corn and one kind of wheat, monocropping, massive amounts. And Americans in particular, of all the grains that people eat around the world, Americans eat wheat.
I actually had to do a paper one time where we were sort of trying to determine how much protein came from different sources, how much from meat, how much from dairy, how much from grains. And I was very intrigued to see that this USDA database said, here's our value of protein from grains.
And by grains, we mean wheat and oats and rice and quinoa and everything with a little footnote that said because 90% of the grains Americans eat is wheat, we basically just use the wheat value for this and we didn't use the others. And I thought, oh, my God, with rice and oats and everything else out there, 90% of the grains Americans eat is wheat. But think about it.
Bagels, pastry, breakfast toast. Even pizza crust. Pizza crust. We eat an insane amount of wheat. So one of my – favorite graphics. And sorry, maybe we'll get into this later, sort of looking at the types of carbs, fats, and proteins that people in the U.S. eat. And I'll have more details if you want to do this later. But 50% of what Americans eat for carbs is carbs.
And 40% is crappy carbs, added sugar and refined grains, which is mostly refined wheat. And 10% is healthy carbs. And so I think what Americans are eating, and I think the gluten intolerance, has to do with wheat being such a predominant grain source when it doesn't need to be. And very little variety in the wheat.
I know there's actually some folks out there that are trying to bring back sort of some heritage versions of different wheat grains. Camut and buckwheat and what are some of the other ones? Farro and wheat berries. I actually make a kick-ass wheat berry salad if you want to get into that later. But
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Chapter 4: What are wheat allergies, gluten intolerance, and celiac disease?
Is it that the tomato sauce doesn't contain these dyes, that it doesn't contain sugar? And what are they replacing those foods with if they're replacing them at all?
So probably at least two answers, and one of them is going to be, I can't tell you how many Europeans or other folks from other countries have said, I bought the same product that I buy in my home country here, and it has twice as many ingredients. It's the same company. It's the same food. It could be, what's the hazelnut spread?
Nutella.
Nutella. Like, here's the Nutella you sell here, and here's the Nutella I buy there. I've had multiple people bring those up to me and show me the different ingredients. And so it can be made the other country way. But in the U.S., it's made another way for Americans. So if we could even just make that move, if we could say, okay, you already make this in another country another way.
Can you just make it the same way in the U.S.? That would be a start right there.
Why is it that there's this discrepancy in ingredients? This became very much – in the media recently with Froot Loops. It was argued, I don't know if this is true, but it was argued that Froot Loops in Canada are colored with carrot juice and beet juice and Froot Loops in the United States use artificial dyes. And I can't verify that.
I don't know that to be true, but I think a number of examples pointed to that possibly being true. Why would you have a system like ours if other people can do it presumably for same or lesser costs?
I agree. I can't back up that one statement either. But I think that is true for reasons that I can't explain. And that's why it would be helpful to talk more to the food industry. I think there are some challenges with this reaction against ultra-processed foods. I think there are some problems with NOVA that I brought up earlier. You'd have to make those foods accessible.
But some of them you could fairly quickly if you took advantage of some of the other ways that people are making it. And the rules are just too loose, right? So I think that's important. And the level at which this could be impactful is not educating the public to look at the back and find the ultra-processed cosmetic additive and removing it.
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Chapter 5: How do processed foods and food additives affect health?
I find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health. I just feel so much better when I take it. With each passing year, and by the way, I'm turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better, and I attribute a lot of that to AG1. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
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Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice.
It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular weekly therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, which of course I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides.
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When it comes to – well, let's just close the hash on the industry funding part because I know that's going to get some people's hair standing up a little bit. Is there a world where – You don't have to rely on industry funding to do these studies. I mean, my first response is like, why go there? Why not just, I mean, we have a National Institutes of Health.
They fund studies on everything from developing novel molecules for the treatment of Parkinson's to studying the effects of breath work on cancer outcomes. I mean, it's a... Nowadays, it's a very wide range of topics that the NIH embraces, but I think most people don't realize this. And everything in between. So why not just go to NIH for the money?
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Chapter 6: Why do US and European processed foods differ in ingredients and quality?
The keto diet did better at lowering triglycerides?
Yes.
Than Mediterranean? Yes. That surprises me.
No, because they did better at wiping out carbs. When you wipe out all your carbs, then those extra carbs don't go into your liver to make triglycerides. Not surprised. And the keto diet was higher in saturated fat, so it raised the LDL.
But the Mediterranean diet carbs generally are pretty quote-unquote healthy carbs.
Yes, and that's the point. So can we go back there for a minute? So to me, that is the point of sort of looking at this equipoise. So when we made the low-carb and the low-fat both healthy— Our primary predictive outcomes, the genotype thing and the insulin resistance didn't work. And what we took home from that message is you could do either one. If you do them in a healthy way, it would be okay.
And when we took it to ketogenic and Mediterranean, they both lowered glycosylated hemoglobin. The keto had a worse effect on LDL, but a better effect on triglycerides. But as we track the adherence, people couldn't adhere to the keto. They couldn't maintain that really low level of carb and the really low level of fat.
And so as you're working through these questions, those are the subtle nuances in nutrition that you just said the poor public, and I agree, looks at so many of these and says, oh, my God, you guys can't agree. Can I go back to the fact that I've actually helped American Diabetes with their guidelines. I work a lot with the American Heart Association.
I just rotated off the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. And when there are scientists looking at nutrition data, we almost always agree. Nutrition scientists don't really disagree. We're almost boringly more in agreement than than most people think.
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Chapter 7: How does food industry funding influence nutrition research?
And the meat is two ounces, or it's a condiment, or it's a side dish. It's like making the aesthetics look good, making it taste great. So the phrase I use is from Greg Drescher from the CIA, unapologetically delicious. So I'm hoping to have the science in my back pocket. I'm a card-carrying PhD nutrition scientist. I got the science. We'll probably go there later.
I got the environment in my back pocket too, but don't beat people over the head with that. Beat people over the head with, oh, this is going to blow your frigging taste buds away. This is so good. That's a good incentive. Working with chefs has been very fun.
Yeah, that's a good incentive. I would like to just offer the opportunity. You don't have to take it, but offer the opportunity to finally at least start to do away with this ridiculous naming, which is plant-based. I mean, I have to say that, again, I've spent a good amount of time in the public health sphere and public education sphere. How things are named means everything.
Yeah.
If there's ever a hope to get people eating more, let's just say fiber from vegetables and maybe fruit also, that sooner or later this plant-based naming, I'm going to say, has got to go. It just is never going to work because people hear that and they hear vegan. It's just been too long. It's been too long. It's just –
sort of defies any kind of logic to think that the public will eventually think that plant-based includes meat. I think there just needs to be a new name. So I don't expect you to come up with one on the fly, but can we call it plant-biased, perhaps? Or just omnivore. What's wrong with healthy omnivore?
Omnivore is fine. Plant-forward people have used, plant-centric people have used.
I think as long as it's just plant-forward just sounds like no meat.
So let me tell you a funny story. So I participate in something called the Google Food Lab, which is a whole bunch of people that come together for googly casual collisions twice a year. And at one of these twice-a-year events... Probably a decade ago, it's usually a two-day event, and they have all kinds of different talks and sometimes breakout groups.
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Chapter 8: What does research say about ketogenic, vegetarian, vegan and omnivorous diets?
That's only the average. Half of the people are above average. So the recommended daily allowance of protein is set at two standard deviations. above the value determined by this disgusting nitrogen balance test decades and decades ago. And I understand that the community of protein fanatics doesn't like that. That's not an optimal protein. It's like a minimal protein requirement.
So I totally buy that argument. But I think the first thing that people get wrong is they think that that old method is recommending the average requirement. And it's not. It's got a safety buffer. It's got two standard deviations built on top of it so that if everybody got that 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight per day, 2.5% of the population would be deficient.
And not only would 97.5% of the population meet their requirement, they would exceed it. If you drew the graph, right, you're seeing the line, this whole group would exceed it and this group would not meet it and this group would get just a small sliver, would get what they needed.
Thank you for that clarification. I have a couple of questions I know are popping up for people. I just would like to tick off if we can. Who were these subjects? Was it men and women? These were conscientious objectors, so I would presume at that time we weren't sending women to Vietnam, so it would be just men.
So this is just at Berkeley? So other people were doing this too. It wasn't just this one group. And I don't know who the others were. Got it. I just remember that I got my PhD at Berkeley. And it's like, as soon as I got there, people said, do you want to see the penthouse? I said, what the F is the penthouse? Oh, the penthouse is where Doris Calloway and Shelley Margin figured this out.
And like, this is a famous thing. So, you know, they took great pride that part of that came from their work.
And they had to call it the penthouse to get people up there because what happened in there sounds anything but pleasant.
Yeah, it was unpleasant.
Yeah, at least for the Berkeley study. These guys are up there. Guys and gals are up there. They're in these suits. They're collecting everything. They're not exercising. They're not breathing fresh air, presumably. They're not – are they walking around? Are they getting even like a couple thousand steps a day? I mean my concern is that – Oh, absolutely. Yeah, their concerns.
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Chapter 9: How can chefs and food preparation improve public health and diet quality?
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both short and long term health is your body's ability to manage glucose.
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Again, that's levels dot link spelled, of course, L.I.N.K. slash Huberman to get the additional two free months of membership. I really appreciate all that information. Very illuminating. And I'll just remind myself and everyone that I love vegetables. In fact, these days, I'll say this for anyone listening. One of the great things about getting older is I actually eat less.
but I just try and focus on eating quality food. And I just find that I don't need to eat as much food to maintain my body weight and feel good and have energy. In fact, I'm eating less and less each year. Once I start eating, I like to eat.
But I think one of the markers of health, in my opinion, is the ability to wait to eat or to, you know, to eat a slightly larger meal and not have it, you know, crater your sleep or something like that or to have some, you know, eat less one day and more the next day. And maybe we don't need as much protein every day.
I've played with this idea before of, you know, limiting the amount of protein I eat for a few days and then eating – going to a barbecue and eating like two ribeyes and enjoying that more. I think we think of things in this very static way, like best thing to eat each day. And you also illuminate for us that there's a lot of nutrition in beans and legumes and other plants.
And again, I'm starting to explore this more and more because I'm not a great cook, but I love to eat when I do eat. And I do think there's a real dearth of variety in the American diet that we can all work on. As long as we're talking about meat, I'm going to pick on Beyond Meat a little bit. Sure. I think it's the child of a Stanford professor that started this company, right?
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