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The industrial seed oils are what I call chronic metabolic biological poisons. In short, they're poisons, plain and simple. And they behave in our bodies very much like arsenic wood. And there's many parallels because anything that causes... Oxidation is like we're rusting inside. Devastating to every cell and every organ that it comes in contact with when it's in significant amounts. And anything, any amount of vegetable oils is significant. We really shouldn't have any. These are not natural foods. These are the most processed foods that there is available of the most processed food component. And if you look at the quantity of processed food ingredients, vegetable oils are the leading caloric component of processed foods, the leading caloric component.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turned their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, readers, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to episode 487 of Passion struck. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, be better, and to make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for joining us, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so love it when you do that. We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.

Either go to passion struck. Com/starterpacks or Spotify to get started. In case you missed it, last week I had two phenomenal interviews with Tessa West and Johann Harri. Tessa is a professor of psychology at NYU, an author of the groundbreaking book Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works For You. In this discussion, we explore the secrets behind job satisfaction. We discuss how to learn how to identify the hidden psychological reasons behind career frustration, and we guide you on how to find out how to navigate your way to a fulfilling career. In the second interview, Johann Harri is a renowned author of three New York Times bestsellers, whose work has captivated millions and has been celebrated by luminaries like Oprah and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this episode, Johann dives into his latest exploration, Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. If you love either of those episodes or today's, we would appreciate you giving it a five-star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.

Now, let's talk about today's fascinating episode. And before we do, I want to thank all the listeners who wrote me to request the guest who we're having on today. Could the diet of our ancestors Prevent, treat, and reverse. Most cases of being overweight, coronary heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, age-related macular degeneration, and autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus Crohn's disease, as well as most other chronic degenerative diseases. And is this a diet plan that is simple, effective, and allows one to eat to their heart's content? According to Dr. Chris Kenobi, the answer lies in eliminating vegetable oils. These oils, extremely high in omega-6 fats, are pro-oxidative, pro-inflammatory, toxic, and nutrient deficient. Dr. Kenobi's research compelling meets the Branford Hill criteria of proof, demonstrating that these oils are the primary drivers of numerous chronic diseases. Dr. Chris Kenobi is a distinguished physician, ophthalmologist, nutrition researcher, author, and speaker. He's the founder of two nonprofit organizations, Ancestral Health Foundation and Cure-AMD Foundation. Since 2015, Dr. Kenobi has gained international academic recognition for his work on the dangers of highly polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Driven by altruism and humanitarian goals, he accepts no compensation for his work in this field.

Formerly an Associate Clinical Professor Emeritus at the University University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, Dr. Kenobi is renowned for his research connecting Westernized diets and highly polyunsaturated vegetable oils to numerous chronic diseases, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, cancers, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and a list of other things. In 2016, he formally introduced the vegetable oil hypothesis, proposing that processed foods and vegetable oils are the primary drivers of the leading cause of irreversible vision and blindness in people 50 worldwide. Dr. Kenobi's groundbreaking work has been presented at various conferences, and he is the author of the acclaimed book, The Ancestral Diet Revolution: How Vegetable Oils and Processed Foods are destroying your Health. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Chris Kenobi, a visionary in nutrition and Public Health, dedicated to transforming our understanding of diet and chronic diseases. Thank you for choosing passion struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

I am so excited today to have Dr. Chris Kenobi on Passion Struck. Welcome, Chris.

Thanks so much, John. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure.

You and I have been talking about this now for a few months, and we've had a couple starts and stops. I'm just glad we could finally get this recorded because you have been requested by numerous members of my audience. So honored to really have you.

Oh, thank you. It's an honor to be here. So it's nice to be able to share the message a inch further. So I thank you.

Chris, I always like to start out with the background of the guests. And you have an interesting one that we're going to segue from where you were to what you're doing now. But can you tell me how you got interested in wanting to be an ophthalmologist?

As far as being an ophthalmologist, so I'm an allopathically trained physician, a medical doctor, trained at University of Colorado School of Medicine. And my idea that I I wanted to be an ophthalmologist started way back in college, and probably because I grew up nearsighted in part. And I'll just say right off the front that I'm not sure that ophthalmology was the best career choice for me. I might have been a half year in another specialty. I actually thought seriously about orthopedics and anesthesia and emergency medicine and others. But anyway, I ended up choosing ophthalmology, and I guess in the long run, that was really because my research eventually brought me to the hypothesis that processed foods might be driving age-related macular degeneration or AMD, which is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss and blindness in people over the age of 50 worldwide. But anyway, so I put in a full career in ophthalmology, and for the last nine years, I really become a nutrition researcher full-time, and this research suits me well.

I understand that you had a personal experience with severe arthritis that led you to explore some alternative methods to healing it, including the paleo diet. And that eventually transformed your understanding of nutrition and what may be causing the inflammation that so many of us suffer from. Can you talk about that story and the enlightening moments that you had coming out of it?

Yes, absolutely, John. So I developed arthritis when I was 33 years old, and this was progressive. So in my 40s, it became really severe. By the time I was 50 years old, it was so severe that I really thought I might not want to live more than another decade or so. I was in so much pain, and I had come across the paleo diet and just began a partial version of a paleo diet. And this just within seven to 10 days, just radically improved my arthritis. It's something that has never completely left me, but following an ancestral diet has been tremendously beneficial. I probably have some other issues, including primarily the fact that I was in iron overload, which I didn't realize. But this set me on the path way back in 2011, when I had this radical improvement in my arthritis to want to know It's all about nutrition because as allopathic physicians, medical doctors, we are not trained at all in nutrition. I would submit that whatever training we do have is wrong for the most part. I thought if nutrition has the power to accomplish this for me, what else can it do?

Perhaps alternatively, what about diets can also drive chronic disease? Those questions, that interest, changed my entire life. That was 2011. And four years later, I ended up leaving practice to pursue nutrition research full-time. So this whole scenario just changed everything that I do.

Well, thank you for sharing that. I wanted to make sure we went into it so people understood where you came from and how you made this such a passion that you're studying now. And I just wanted to point people to two recent episodes that I've done that touch on this as well. The first was with Dr. Terry Walls, who herself was suffering from multiple sclerosis and using the paleo diet, actually transformed her life from being confined in a wheelchair to being able to ride a bike for 20 miles and now leading a normal life. So I think that's a great one for people to tune back into. And I also just released an episode with Morley Robbins, where we did a deep dive into what you were talking about when people get chronic levels of lead and are taking too much zinc in their lives and the importance of copper. So I just wanted to put those two episodes out there for people to tune into as well. Chris, I think it's important for us to maybe do a bit of a history lesson. And today we're going to be discussing your book here that I have.

I actually like this so much that I sent a copy of it to both of my kids so that they had it as well. And You start out the book by discussing a history lesson. I think it's important to start there because I think it's interesting. When I see photos of people during the time of the Civil War, the Roaring '20s, '30s, even into the '40s, which is typically just waves of people who are not obese. Also during that time, people weren't typically suffering from the chronic diseases and inflammation that are so rampant today. Can you take us through a history lesson of what's different between those time periods and how we're living today?

Yes, absolutely, John. This is a long story. I'll try to make this brief, but just interrupt me here if I'm long, John. Let me start with this. In the 19th century, first of all, there was obesity, at least in men, and I'm sure it's the same in women, in men was 1.2%. This was Scott Allan Carson's work. So the last several decades of the 19th century, so maybe 1870, I think it was to about 1900, obesity in men aged 18 to 80 was 1.2 %. And the next data we have was in 1960 when obesity in the US was 13.4 %. It wasn't much different in 1980, about 14 or And by 1988, it was 23 %. By 1999, it was 30.5 %. By 2018, 42.5 %. And another 31.2 % of our population is overweight as of 2018. So in 2018, 74 % of Americans are either in the overweight or obese category. And it's expected to be 49 point something % obese by 2030, where that's the target that we're on for. So let's talk about coronary heart disease. So people don't realize this, but coronary heart disease, which is the leading cause of death today, was virtually unknown in the 19th century worldwide.

So there is eight scientific papers in all of the literature between 1800 and 1900 that I'm aware of. Eight papers reviewing coronary coronary artery disease, and two of those on thrombotic coronary artery disease, meaning heart attack. So physicians in the 19th century, despite the fact that people routinely lived into their '70s and '80s, had never seen heart attacks. Sir William Osler, famed physician, one of the founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, had not witnessed a heart attack through the end of the 19th century. He reviewed this in detail. He'd seen a few cases of Angina chest pain in the early 1990s, but he had never seen a heart attack. I don't think up through 2008, he still had not witnessed a heart attack, but he'd seen 200 and some cases of Angina at that point, which was drastically increasing in the early 1900s. So then James Herrick published the first known evidence of myocardial infarction heart attack in the US in 1912, documented with autopsy evidence. 1930s coronary artery disease became the leading cause of death. It was completely unknown in 1910, 20 years earlier. Why? In 2010, 32.2 2%, I think it is, of Americans died of coronary artery disease, so almost one-third.

We went from virtually zero in the 19th century dying of coronary heart disease to almost a third of people dying of coronary heart disease. Cancer. So in 1811, in the United States, as evidenced by the city of Boston, one in 188 people died of cancer. That's 0.56 %, I believe, is the number. Sorry. Yeah, 0.5 %. One in 188 people. 1900, it had already increased to one in 17 people dying of cancer. 2010, it's 31.2 %. Again, almost one So coronary artery disease and cancer now take the lives of almost two-thirds of Americans, and both of them were virtually rare, just rare 200 years ago. So let's just talk about diabetes. So diabetes was documented by Sir William Oslor again in 1890 to have affected 0.0028% of the population. That's 2.8 for 100,000 or about one in 36,000 people. That increased in 18 from 0.0028% to 0.37% by 1935, already 132-fold increase. So this trend continues. I think it was around 2.99 It was 0.9% by 1960, 2.9% roughly by 1989. I think it was 13% as of 2016. So the increase in diabetes from 1890 to was 4,643 fold increase. If it had doubled, that would be statistically significant, but it went up 4,643 fold.

Alzheimer's disease, first case, documented 1908 by Alois Alzheimer, physician in Germany. I think there was four cases in 1910, 250 cases by 1950, I believe it was. By 2022, 55 million people in the world with Alzheimer's Alzheimer's/dementia. That's one new case every three seconds, 10 million new cases per year now around the world. Again, completely unknown by all the physicians. No one documented this in the 19th century. Age-related macular degeneration, leading cause of irreversible vision loss and blindness in people over the age of 50. Also, I documented this and published this in the Journal Medical Hypotheses back in 2017. Less than 50 cases of AMD in all the world's literature between 1851, when it was first discoverable, and 1930. An 80-year period, less than or equal to about 50 cases in all the world's literature. By 2020, 196 million people with the disease, 14 million blind back in 2006, blind, both eyes, blind or severe vision loss, both eyes. And by 2040, we're expected to be at 288 million people with... I'll just say right now, John, that the one thing that's really changed during all that time is processed food consumption. We can go through the details.

But the huge factor to me, and I think all the evidence points to the major factor being polyunsaturated vegetable oils or industrial seed oils, which they were also unknown up through the American Civil War in the United States and unknown through almost all over the world, and now occupy As of 2010, about 32% of US caloric intake minus a little bit of plate loss. Anyway, a fourth to a third of our diet is made up of vegetable oil. This is the incredibly strong correlation between all these disorders and vegetable oils. This is the one thing that is, as I mentioned, extremely well-correlated. Nothing else is, including sugar.

Well, thank you for sharing all that in-depth research and figures. I know a person who has influenced you a lot has been the works of Weston Price. What did he do, specifically, for those who aren't familiar with his life? And what did he discover between that link that you're discussing between our diet and chronic diseases?

Yeah. So for those who don't know him, Weston A. Price RICE was a highly accomplished scientist, researcher, and dentist who, in the 1930s, traveled around the world evaluating people on five continents, 14 nations, hundreds of tribes and villages, and thousands upon thousands of people as these people were transitioning from their native traditional diets over to Westernized diets, meaning that they're consuming processed foods. And the interesting thing was this is research that could never be done again because this was the only time in history where that actually was happening. And price was able to capture all of this evidence about people who were either not consuming processed foods or consuming lots of processed foods or somewhere in the transition. And what price found, again, on five continents was that the people consuming their native traditional diets, meaning no processed foods, I can get into what those are in a moment, but those people were fantastically healthy. Those people essentially had no coronary heart disease, almost no cancer. Price didn't even mention it, but they had no obesity, really, based on all of the photos that are available. He rarely mentioned diabetes because he never saw it.

I just don't think he ever hardly saw diabetes. Of course, they didn't have a way to test for it, but it was extraordinarily rare in these people consuming their native traditional diets. But the people then that were consuming what he called the displacing foods of modern commerce, equate that to processed foods, those people first developed dental decay, and then they developed arthritis, cancer, and all sorts of degenerative diseases like birth defects, degenerative disease in old age, and so on. And so, Price, he defined the displacing Foods of Modern Commerce as refined white flour refined sugars, canned goods, sweets, confectionery, and vegetable fats. I'm using his terms. And so the vegetable fats is the same as vegetable oils. But in his day, and around most of the world, the vegetable oils had not reached most of the world. And so they were primarily still being consumed in the United States, in good part of Europe, but in much, much lower doses. So that was my first clue in my research way back. That was 11 seven years ago when I studied Weston Price's research and found that he had connected these foods to all this degenerative disease.

And so that framework of knowledge, that has guided me every step of the right through my research, and it's never failed me. If I view everything through the lens of Weston A. Price, it always seems to work.

Well, I think it's important to share that background because, as you said, his studies could not be repeated today. And I understand his book. It has a couple different versions of it, but the one that was most recent came out, I think, in the 1940s. It is a pretty thick book, but it provides some really impactful data in there. If people want to take a read, it's probably one of the most foundational books you can read on this topic.

Absolutely. It's Weston A. Price, and the book is called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

Chris, I wanted to just share a little bit of a story with you. My grandfather father was originally part of Airborne in the Army and was getting ready to be sent out during World War II. And literally, weeks before they were deployed, he gets orders from the Secretary of Defense that were highly classified, sending him to Fort Dietrich, Maryland, for a mission he had no idea why he was going to. In fact, he was very upset at the time. And when he arrives, he goes through weeks and weeks of health checks and different tests that they're doing on him. And he finally is wondering, What am I doing here? And he is met at the gate of where he would eventually work by his college chemistry professor from the University of Michigan, who had recruited him into what was then just the start of germ and biological warfare that they were doing at Fort Détra. My grandfather couldn't talk about his research for about 50 years, but he told us after that time had passed, how they were working on anthrax, botulism, all these other extreme toxins, because they were worried at that time that Germany was going to unleash these as well, and so they had to understand what they would do, et cetera.

Why I'm bringing this up is, after the war ended and he was released from his commitment, he took a job at Kraft, and he ended up leaving Kraft as the head of research and development. I remember talking to him over the years. When I was growing up as a kid, he was winning awards and tons of patents based on the research that he and his teams were doing. I remember a couple of stories where he was so excited because he had pioneered the ingredients that were in butterbutts and squeezeperk hay and margarine. And he talked about how when he developed these chemicals that they were putting in seal tests and briers, how it was allowing the shelf life of these ice creams to be consumable by everyone so that you didn't have to churn in your backyard. When I think of my grandfather, I don't think as he was developing all these things, he understood the health consequences that were coming from it. But I bring it up because I had a a grandfather who was at the epicenter of creating many of these what are considered food poisons today that are in so many of our foods.

I use that as a background because I was hoping that you might be able to describe how do the native and ancestral diet traditions differ from the modern Westernized diets? Where are the biggest gaps between what we're eating and what our ancestors ate?

Yeah, great question, John. So So there's really just simply, processed foods are made up of four main ingredients, and it's refined flowers, refined sugars, vegetable oils, and trans fat. So let me tell you about the introduction of these just briefly. So sugar has been available for many centuries, probably in small quantities, even back a couple of millennia. But in the last several centuries, sugar consumption has increased exponentially. So between 1822 and 1999, sugar consumption went up 17 fold. It went from, I think, 6 pounds per person per year, up to 108 pounds per person per year. So sugar is a nutrient deficient food. And then in 1880, roller mill technology was introduced, which could produce refined white wheat flour. And this is what the people wanted, but refined wheat flour is a nutrient deficient food. It removes the brand and the germ. That was introduced in 1880 it with three huge roller mills around the world. We had one in Minneapolis in the United States. So then vegetable oils were introduced in terms of it being a food ingredient right after the American Civil War. That ended 1865, 1866. The first vegetable oil, cotton seed oil, was introduced to the United States.

Now, you could argue, well, we had olive oil, but it was just incredibly trivial consumption, and probably 97, 98% of the nation had never tasted it. Consumption would have been less than a 10th of a gram per person per day, and probably far less than that all the way through the end of the 19th century. Again, we got cotton seed oil introduced in 1866, and Then from that, trans fat in the form of Crisco, created by Proctor and Gamble in 1909, is when that was introduced. That's it. That's processed food right there. Those four ingredients make up processed Processed food today. It really hasn't changed. Yes, there's these mystery ingredients and engineered ingredients, but I don't think those are primarily the main problem. But if you look at processed food, it's still those same four ingredients and the industrial trans fats come from vegetable oil. So without the vegetable oils, you wouldn't have those either. So that's it. So by 2009, 63% of the American diet is made up of those four ultra-processed foods. And we have All this chronic disease, coronary heart disease, strokes, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, age-related macrodegeneration, all the autoimmune diseases, all of this has paralleled this extraordinary increase in the processed foods.

To get to an ancestral diet, really all you have to do is just think about really removing three things, the vegetable oils, refined wheat flowers, and refined sugar. That means any form of added sugar. If you do that, you've fixed probably 95% of your diet, I would say.

I think an interesting exercise for a listener to do, especially if they have kids, is to have their kids go through a supermarket, especially three quarters of the store that's in the center of the store, and start picking out items that they like to eat on a daily basis, and look at how many of them have those three things that you just described. I did this about three, four weeks ago, and literally every single product I picked up, were some corn chips I found that were made with avocado oil, some potato chips that were made with olive oil, were really the only things that I found that didn't have one of these ingredients in them, including spaghetti sauces and so many other things that we take for granted. Can you maybe explain to the audience in case they don't understand how these vegetable oils are made, what the process is like behind how they're manufactured?

Yes, absolutely. First, let me just say this, John. So the manufacturing of cotton seed Cotton Seed Oil wasn't consumed ever as food until, again, as I said, until about 1866. Previously, before that, cotton seed oil was known only as lamp oil and then fertilizer. When they tried to sell it as food, in other words, cotton seed oil, and tried to sell it to people as food, nobody wanted it because I equate this to be, it would be like us being told we should consume motor oil. People knew this was lamp oil and it was machine oil. So why would they possibly eat it? And the manufacturers weren't deterred. What they did was they decided, well, the first thing they did is make margarine. So they mixed the cotton seed oil with butter and made margarine. Again, this is to sell butter. And then, since they couldn't sell the oils outright, nobody wanted it, they started adulterating olive oil with it. And by 1880, we had sent 55,000 barrels of so-called olive oil to Europe. And the French made a complaint in the year 1880, and they said basically, they refused to ever accept so-called olive oil from the United States again.

They knew it was adulterated just by the taste. They knew it wasn't olive oil. So that was cotton seed oil. That's how it got its introduction. And then again, Procter & Gamble, in the early 1900s, he worked with them to produce the trans fat, which is basically you take cotton seed oil and you hydrogenate it by bubbling hydrogen gas through the oil. It's heated in the presence of a nickel catalyst, and it produces that soft, creamy white substance that everybody knows. I'm sure everybody's seen, I think everybody's probably seeing Criscope, but that's very heavily laden in trans fat. That's how industrial trans fat are produced. So today, just so you know, now there's a complex process that manufacturers have in the edible oil industry, particularly with the industrial seed oils, I'll call them, that they go through in order to refine vegetable oil into something that people actually eat. Because if they didn't refine it, it would stink horribly. It would look black, it would look like motor oil, and it would have a terrible odor, not the same as, but analogous to rotting fish. So how do they fix the oil? Well, first, so they take these seeds.

I'll just use cotton seed, the first seed oil introduced in the US anyway. They crush them, crush the seeds, heat them, run them through a hydraulic press, and then take that mush and that oil, and they treat it to a petroleum-derived Hexane solvent bath. Then steam it, digum it, then chemically alcoholize it, chemically bleach it, and chemically deodorize it at very high temperatures, exceeding 500 degrees Fahrenheit, typically. And then they have it in the bottle. So you have this very dangerously oxidized product that contains these advanced lipid oxidation in products, which are, I can get into that later, but those are also extremely dangerous. It's very high in omega-6 linoleic acid. And linoleic acid is the primary omega-6 fat of all the omega-6s. It accounts for about 90% of the omega omega-6 in any oil or food, whatever you want to look at. And so that's the process. Let me just mention, John, that the problem with these oils is that when you consume vegetable oils, the high omega 6, as part of the problem is that it cumulates in our bodies, reflecting the amount that we consume in our diet. So it accumulates in our body fat, in our cell membranes, and in our inner mitochondrial membranes.

And there it sets up this environment that is pro-oxidative, pro-inflammatory, toxic because of the advanced lipid oxidation in products, and nutrient deficient. These oils have no vitamins A, D, or K2 like you would get in traditional animal fat. So I call those the four pillars of hazard that set us up for metabolic disease and physical degeneration. Again, pro-oxidative, pro-inflammatory, toxic, and nutrient deficient. Put those together and you have the recipe for all this chronic disease. It is just an absolute disaster. The vegetable oils, most of them, and we can get into which ones are safe and which ones are not, but these seed oils, the industrial seed oils, are what I call chronic metabolic biological poisons. In short, they're poisons, plain and simple. And they behave in our bodies very much like something like arsenic wood. And there's many many parallels because anything that causes... Oxidation is like we're rusting inside. Devastating to every cell and every organ that it comes in contact with when it's in significant amounts. And anything, any amount of vegetable oils is significant. We really shouldn't have any. These are not natural foods. These are the most processed foods that there is available, the most processed food component.

And if you look the quantity of processed food ingredients, vegetable oils are the leading caloric component of processed foods, the leading caloric component. So again, as I said, in 2010, we're consuming 32% of our diet as processed foods. And this data, everything I'm telling you is data that comes out of scientifically published journals, textbooks, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the USDA that tracks our our food consumption data.

That's interesting. I recently was talking to a friend who's from Italy, and he happened to come over to the United States, and he was eating basically the same thing as that he eats in Italy. But he noticed in the first 24 to 48 hours that he was in the United States, that he was experiencing bloating, he was experiencing fatigue, started to have some body pains, other things. And then when he returns back to Europe within about a week of him being back there, he seems to be cured from all of it. Can it really impact us that quickly?

Wow. Yeah. I'm moving to Europe today then. So, yeah, I'm making my plans, John. Anyways, I don't know what all that is, but I absolutely believe that. And I've heard this so many times, that it's particularly the other way around, people going from the US to Europe, that They just tolerate the diet better. So many of them say that they can eat bread that they couldn't ever eat and tolerate in the United States. They tend to lose weight when they're there. The food supply is much safer in Europe, and it's, of course, even safer than that in other areas of the world. But one of the things that Europe doesn't allow at all is GMOs. They have no genetically modified plants in their food supply, which means that they don't have the poison glyphosate from Roundup. So all the GMO crops, they're sprayed with Roundup, the herbicide from Monsanto. So that's one of the things that your friend was getting that he wouldn't be used to. They wouldn't have any Roundup up. And then the seed oils would be if he's just eating without knowledge of it or trying to avoid seed oils here, he's going to get a lot more seed oils here.

So I would say that's probably the two main things that would be driving that sudden of a change to his health.

Chris, for the listener who's out there who might be thinking, Man, seed oils are the predominant oils that you see on the shelves. Many say that they're good for your health. What would you consider to be the bad oils? And if you're a listener, what would you recommend to them are the good oils?

Yes, I'm Glad you asked. And as far as everything I'm saying about seed oils, vegetable oils, goes against the grain of allopathic medicines. My colleagues and the institutions of Harvard School of Public Health, Tufts University in Boston, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, the American Heart Association, everything I'm telling you about seed oils goes against what they tell you. So they tell you to eat vegetable oils. And we'll come back to why. But let me give you the list. So this is my worst of the worst list to avoid, is soybean, canola, cotton seed, rapeseed, grape seed, sunflower, safflower, rice bran, Sesame, and peanut oils. Those are the really high omega-6 oils that require the intensive industrial processing. Again, that requires much Heating, chemical, alcoholization, bleaching, and deodorization, which makes these so incredibly dangerous. Sesame and peanut on that list would be the least offensive in that regard. Then we look at the fruit oils, which would be olive oil and avocado oil. Now, those are both much safer because they're much lower in omega-6-linolytic acid. They don't require the industrial processing. They can just be pressed, and now you have the oil. I still believe they're nearly as healthy as the traditionally raised animal fat.

So that's critical. We can get into that. But the animal fat from cattle, from chicken and pigs, again, all naturally raised on natural diets, not corn and soy fed. Those would be the healthiest baths. Finally, then you have the tropical oils, which would be coconut, palm, and palm kernel. Of those, palm oil is not even really that healthy. It's 10% omega-6 linoleic acid. It's about the same as olive oil. And contrast that to 56% omega-6 linoleic acid in soyabean oil and 78% omega-6 linoleic acid in safflower oil, which is maybe one of the worst of all. But anyway, Anyway, the palm oil requires heating, again, which produces these advanced lipid oxidation in products that we want to avoid. So I would avoid that one. So all the oils that are available, the only ones that I think are really safe are coconut and palm kernel, they're both 2% omega-6 linolytic acid. They're almost identical in omega-6 to naturally-raised beef fat, which is tallow, lard from Ancestrally raised pigs, which there's almost none in the entire United States, and then Ancestrally raised chickens, which again, there's almost none in the entire United States. It means they're not fed corn and soy.

So that's the list, basically. And people go on and on about olive oil, and I just, well, surely olive oil has got to be good. And yes, I think it's way, way better than all the other seed oils, but it's not nearly as healthy as butter. So butter, especially from grass-raised cows, is 2% omega-6 linolytic acid, and it includes vitamins A, D, and K, too. You won't get vitamins A, D, and K, too in any vegetable oil. And that includes includes every single one of them, including coconut oil, palm kernel, all those olive oil. They don't have any natural vitamins A, D, or K, too.

Well, I think one of the other issues with a lot of the olive oils is unless they're cold-pressed and you're looking at what's in them, a lot of the ones that are mass-produced on the market by the companies who make the seed oils have other components in the oil besides just the olive oil that people have to be of, too. I appreciate you going through that. Do you have any thoughts on why some of the influencers that you commonly hear from are now even saying that olive oil needs to be watched if you heat it because it can change the metabolic structure of it?

There's a lot to be said about olive oil. There's pros and cons. I'll say right off the bat that if you have absolutely authentic authentic, fresh olive oil, properly pressed, properly bottled, and it's kept in a cool, dark container, all that, then you have a safe oil. I think that's a given. And it's very rich in antioxidants. So I totally agree, olive oil could be good. Here's the problem, is that the North American Olive Oil Association, the NAOA, has determined that 79 % of the olive oil in the United States does not meet their criteria of good extra virgin olive oil, meaning that it's either adulterated, which is a whole lot of it, meaning they're putting cheap seed oils in there like soybean oil and canola oil, and/or it's not fresh, meaning it's oxidized. And they look at all of this, 79 %. So that's four out of five bottles on the shelves that we're told is olive oil, It shouldn't even be consumed, according to the North American Olive Oil Association. And many people have been consuming what they think is olive oil for years, and they're actually getting a lot of seed oil in that.

And so I think that's a problem. Did I answer the question, John? I got off track here.

I'm- No, I mean, that's what I was saying about the problem with so many of the olive oils that are on the shelves at many of the grocery shops we go to is that they're infused with all these vegetable oils, and so you're not getting a pure olive oil, and so you need to do your research on it. But even if you are using olive oil, the other thing that's coming to light is if you heat it, it can create toxicity in the oil. I didn't know if you knew anything more on that. I've heard Peter talk about this. Simon has been talking about it. Steven Cabral has been talking about it. I didn't know the science behind it.

Yes. So omega-6 linoleic acid, again, the unsaturated fat that's in all fat, it doesn't matter where it comes from, it's in every fat there is. Any natural fat there is, it's going to have omega-6 linoleic acid. It's a matter of how much. The omega-6 linoleic acid, again, in natural animal fats, it's approximately 2%, even less, one and a half % or so, up to maybe 3%. But the omega-6 linoleic Omega 6 linoleic acid in olive oil runs the gamut from about 3 or 4% to 27%. There was a study looking at 800 and some different olive oils in Europe. But on average, the omega 6 linoleic acid in olive oil is about 10 %. All right, so when you heat omega 6 linoleic acid, or LA for short, it then oxidizes, meaning that it produces downstream metabolic end products. And those metabolic, those advanced, they're called advanced lipidoxidation end products or ALs, those are chemicals like 4-hydroxynonadol, 4-H&E, malondialdehyde, MDA, carboxyethylpyrol, acrylene, 9-13-hod, which is hydroxyocta decadianoic acid. Nobody wants to know that. I don't even know I don't know why I said it. But there's literally hundreds of others of these advanced lipidoxidation in products.

I tell people this. It's like when you smoke a cigarette, when you burn tobacco, you produce something like 6000 plus different chemicals. Lots of them are butygens and carcinogen. It's the exact same way when you heat these edible oils, the ones higher in omega-6 lentillike acid, including olive oil, should not be heated. So when you heat it, you produce all these advanced lipidoxidation end products. And together, these ales, they are cytotoxic, genotoxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, thrombogenic, meaning they produce plots. Atherogenic, meaning they produce atherosclerosis. They are obesogenic and diabetogenic, meaning they produce obesity and diabetes. I mean, really, could it get any worse? You're getting all of these things in that pretty bottle of soyabean oil or canola oil, right? They're in the bottle. And if They're not in the bottle. When you consume them, they will be metabolized in your body to produce these ales and produce these things, increasing your risk of coronary heart disease, cancers, diabetes, metabolic disease, Alzheimer's, on and off. That's where all this is being driven from is what my research has led me to bleak.

If there is, Chris, so much research that's now out there, I mean, all this research is started in the 1930s, and there's only been more and more of it over time. If all these things are pointing to these four culprits, why aren't the health organizations or the government doing anything to shy away from this or put regulations to limit this stuff from our food content?

That's the trillion dollar question, isn't it? I actually cannot answer that very well, John. I will tell you that there's a long and complicated history where we see that the government, the research institutions, like National Institutes of Health, Big Food, and Big Pharma, Essentially, all are in this together. And for example, it's very rather hidden, but we know that these research institutions like Harvard and Tufts, they are being funded by big food and by vegetable oil organizations. The idea since the 1950s and '60s, coming from big food, is really that they fund enough research. They continue to fund research that just keeps pumping out this support for vegetable oils and processed foods. I mean, that really does other than... So the World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization, the two largest health organizations worldwide, they both have broadly stated that processed foods are connected to or associated with broad terminology. But if you go down the path, like I am, of trying to connect vegetable oils, for example, to all of these diseases. Every time we get the thumbs down from most organizations, it's hard to even get anything published in the scientific literature.

It's just because there's There's so much going against us in this regard.

Chris, I think we've done a really good job of going over the history of this, what it's doing to people. Let's talk about what they can do about it. Can you go over some of the key components of the ancestral diet protocol that listeners could put into action?

Yes, absolutely. My suggestion is not that people go on low carb, ketogenic, carnivore, vegan, or hardly any other diet other than just, I recommend that most people will do their best on an ancestral diet. An ancestral diet really means that we give up these four food components. We give up, for the most part, refined flowers, refined sugars, vegetable oils, and trans fat. And you don't really have to look so much for trans fat because they're in the vegetable oils today still, despite the fact that they've been removed from grass status, generally regarded as safe status by the USDA. So how do you do that? Well, you really need to make your own food. That's the only way to be completely safe, or you just have to be extremely vigilant about the food that you buy and consume wherever you are, especially if you go to restaurants, traditional restaurants or fast food. Either one, you have to be just extremely cautious and vigilant about avoiding those kinds of foods. For example, if you order a steak and a baked potato with butter and sour cream, You're safe, right? If you get a salad, it's going to have, almost unless you choose vinaigret or something, it's going to have a vegetable oil in the salad dressing.

But almost all of the added fats to food today is going to be coming from the vegetable oil category. So that's how we just have to avoid all of those things. So this is what all fast food restaurants and most all restaurants are going to be cooking with. So if you're going to have something that needs in a oil, you have to request that it's butter. You can actually even say that you're allergic to vegetable oils. That's what a lot of people do. I've done it, too. Just say, I'm allergic to vegetable oils. But you have to be cautious there. They'll get, they say you're allergic, they will get very concerned that the tiny amount on their grill or something could be offensive to you. So just use your own judgment there.

Okay. And are there specific vitamins, minerals, or supplements that you recommend adding to our typical diet to ensure nutritional adequency?

No, I'm not. I never, ever take vitamins. And I don't really believe that adding minerals for the most part, other than to your water, is beneficial because as far as the minerals go, we cannot absorb them very well. But I do think, especially if you drink filtered water, then it may be mineral free. And so you're missing the magnesium and calcium and potassium that would naturally be in the water, very little potassium. But anyway, it all becomes significant if you're consuming water, let's say, all the time that has zero minerals where you should be getting those. But other than that, we cannot absorb minerals in a non-food, non-organic matrix very well. So we need to get these from our food. So this is why even the high carb foods, potatoes, sweet potatoes, There's, to some extent, grains, lots of fruits and vegetables, you get all of these minerals from those foods. And that's why those can be so beneficial to many people. Now, not everybody could tolerate all those things. So again, there's a lot of bioindividuality here. But as far as... Back to the vitamins, John, I have not supplemented a vitamin in many years.

And the reason I don't is because I think you mess with the imbalances once you start taking any of these things in a supplement form. I'm not opposed to supplements, but I think you can produce more problems. I have my best health ever, age 63, by still eating a natural food diet right here in the United States. You can do it, you can do it, but you have to be careful.

Yeah, and you can't go out. It sounds like most Americans like to do for many of their meals.

You can, but you just have to be really careful. I mean, I eat out, probably not more than once a week or so. But we eat mostly things like sushi and steak, things that I know I'm not going to get vegetables. I know that when I eat out, it's never, ever the quality of food that we make right here at home. It's just impossible because we get all ancestrally-raised meat, beef, pork, chicken, fish. It's all ancestral, like wild caught fish. You'll never get those things in any restaurant. I mean, hardly ever. It's hard to ever find those things.

Yeah, it's amazing, even though I live here in Tampa Bay, where we have plentiful grouper and snook and other redfish and other variants, how much of the food supply that you get in the restaurants, even here locally, is farmed salmon or other types of fish.

Exactly.

So you definitely have to keep your eyes on it. Chris, is there any last bit of wisdom that you would like to leave the audience with?

Yes. I would say that it's hard to imagine how incredibly important our diets are to our health. And by following an ancestral diet, you can virtually 100% know that you will never get coronary heart disease, you will never get cancer, you will You'll never get diabetes, you'll never get Alzheimer's disease, you'll never get macular degeneration. What an incredible thing that is to be able to actually know. You can go to bed every night, know that you're not going to wake up the next day and have a heart attack or being diagnosed with cancer. 100% no, but I think it's 99.7% possible to do that. Those are the odds that are in your favor if you go down this path. So it's just incredibly important. My parents said when I was a little boy, I remember them saying, If you have your health, you have just about everything. Unfortunately, they didn't know how to keep their health. So they both said, Well, my dad's already passed away. But again, you can just avoid all of these chronic diseases. I just think that's the most important thing that we can do, and the most important thing we can do for our loved ones, too.

Chris, thank you so much for joining us here today. Where's the best place for listeners or viewers to find out more information about you and your book?

Yes. Thank you, John. So the best place is, you already showed the book. It's called The Ancestral Diet Revolution. I'll show it here again. If we go and I've got a copy here, The Ancestral Diet Revolution. It's available on Amazon, wherever books are sold. We have two nonprofit foundations, Ancestral Health Foundation at ancestralhealthfoundation. Org. We have CureAMD Foundation at cureamd. Org. And in about two weeks time, maybe by the time this comes out, I don't know, John, that I will have chrisknobi. Com. That's C-H-O-M-D. Com. R-i-s-k-n-o-b-e. It's chrisknobi. Com. We've got more information there and a little bit of guidance about how to go about this. They get most of that from my books, really.

Chris, thank you again so much for joining us and sharing this important information with passion struck audience.

Thanks a million for having me on, John. I appreciate it.

I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr..

Chris Kenobi, and I wanted to thank Chris for joining us, but more importantly, the fans of the passion struck podcast who wrote in and asked me to bring Chris on this podcast.

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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck. Com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. If you're looking for daily doses of passion struck inspiration, then join me and John R. Miles on all the social platforms. Are you curious to find out where you stand on your own journey of becoming passion struck? Well, then consider signing up for the passion struck quiz. It consists of 20 questions, it'll take about 10 minutes of your time. And through it, you can find out your starting point on your journey to becoming passion struck. Just head over to passion struck. Com today. You're about to hear a preview of the passion struck podcast interview that I did with Dr. Erin Ahuvia, the world's leading expert on brand love. As a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan, Dearborn College of Business, Dr. Ahuvia has been pioneering the study of the profound relationships that we form with the products and brands that we adore since 1990. In this episode, we delve into his exciting new book, The Things We Love: How Our Passions Connect Us and Make Us Who We Are. Discover the intricate emotional attachments that we have with everything from books to baseball cards to iPhones and nature.

Dr. Ouvia reveals the cultural and biological factors driving our passionate relationship with these items.

So brand love is just love. It's essentially just love in marketing. So if you're trying to sell something, if you want to get customers to love something, you're offering a product, a service, an organization, a nonprofit, a social message, whatever it is, that's what brand love is about. It's looking at something that's not a person, it's something you're trying to market. And how do you build the really meaningful connections to consumers so that they have an emotional connection to this brand or product or organization, as the case may be.

The fee for this show is that you share it with family and friends when you we find something useful or interesting. If you know someone who is really into improving their health, then definitely share this episode with Dr Chris Kenobi with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion struck..