today we're going to play a little game together. i get asked a lot to fact check this video or that
blog and that's totally fine but my real goal is to give you guys the tools so you can distinguish
between solid information and confusion, so that's what we're doing today. it's the whole give a
man a fish versus teach him how to fish proverb. i'm going to show you how to recognize the pattern
of a misleading argument. you don't need any scientific training, anybody can learn this
in like five minutes and once you know how to spot it it'll be much much harder for you to get
confused by internet content. sound good? i'm gonna go through several scenarios, some claims that you
might find on social media, and you tell me if it's a compelling argument or not. it's a little game we
call 'compelling or storytelling?'. so we're going to go right into it, here's argument number one:
when we eat whole grains, like wheat for example, they release a peptide called gliadin
and our guts can't break down gliadin properly so it gets absorbed in its full form
now gliadin binds to certain receptors in our brain specifically in this region called the
hypothalamus and we know the hypothalamus controls several physiological functions
like hunger for example so this is one reason we should avoid eating too many whole grains, because
they can increase our appetite and cause us to eat more. compelling or storytelling?
just to clarify, this is not about our opinion of whole grains or what we know about them. it's just
about that argument as presented, okay? the central claim is that whole grains make us eat more
so if we had never heard of whole grains, is that argument as laid out, with the evidence cited
convincing or not? and why? if you're not quite sure, don't worry, this is just the first one, we're going
to go over this a bunch of times, it'll make a lot more sense in a minute. feel free to pause the
video if you need more time or go back and listen to it again, we're going to go right into the
answer. so this argument would be a typical example of storytelling. the general structure is, i tell
you about a certain molecule in the food, in this case gliadin, i tell you about it binding receptors
in the brain, some molecular interaction, and then i seem to connect those dots by making a claim about
the food and hunger. it can sound sciency because i threw in some sciency lingo but the main claim
that whole grains cause us to eat more is not compelling because i never cited any specific
direct evidence that people eating more of that food get hungrier or eat more or gain weight, i
just made a logical leap from the molecular stuff to the overall effect in a human. in nerd speak we
call this mechanistic speculation and it's extremely common. talking about an individual
molecule or a biochemical pathway and then doing a logical leap to a systemic effect, a general
effect in the body, but without actually showing evidence of that effect in living breathing humans
what we call outcome data because it shows the actual outcome. so the solution is simple, just
dumb it down, if the main claim is that eating whole grains makes us hungrier, makes us eat more
the question is, do they? do people who eat whole grains get hungrier or eat more or get heavier
than those who don't? or who eat less of them? that's outcome data. that's what we want to see.
so when we get the smoke and mirrors out of the way and we dumb it down, it's real simple
you don't need to know anything about gliadin, you don't need to know where the hypothalamus
is, those are distractions. we're just trying to find out if eating whole grains makes us hungrier
and makes us eat more and gain weight, that's it. now, today we're just looking at the patterns and
the specific answers matter less but real quick, in most studies whole grains have either no effect
or a slight decrease in appetite, depending what we compare them to, and same thing for weight loss,
either no effect or a slight weight loss on whole grains. so the mechanistic speculation
that gliadin should lead to weight gain because of some interaction in the brain
is not supported by the evidence, which is actually the norm, shockingly enough. more often than not,
mechanistic speculations don't pan out in outcome data, which is one more reason to be wary of them,
especially if you see someone using mechanistic speculations but not referring to the actual
answer to the question, the outcome data, get your guard up. it usually means it doesn't exist
or it points in the opposite direction of the argument the person is trying to make. and this
is super common. alright, you ready for the second argument? here it is. nowadays we eat too much oil
throughout evolution our ancestors didn't have oil available so our bodies don't know how to
deal with it metabolically, and sure enough our ancestors in the paleolithic were all lean, and
even now if you look at hunter-gatherer cultures, they eat natural foods, no oil, and sure enough they're
all lean as well. try to find an obese individual in the middle of an amazonian tribe. you can't. and
so, the ubiquity of oils in our society is really one of the reasons we're so overweight and so sick
so minimizing or even avoiding oil is a great health move. compelling or storytelling? remember
this is only about the argument as presented. like it's the first time we're hearing about oil and
this is all we know. alright? the main argument is that oil is unhealthy and we should eat
less of it. is the evidence presented in that argument convincing or not? and why? pause the
video if you need more time or go over it again, here's the answer. it's storytelling again. there's
some circumstantial stuff about ancestors and hunter-gatherers and then there's a logical leap
that oil is the cause of weight gain and disease. hunter-gatherers also don't eat a bunch of other
processed stuff, they don't eat candy, they don't drink soda, they move around way more, they don't
spend all day staring at a device... right? so just from that argument alone how do we know oil is the
key factor? we don't. for all we know oil could be very slimming. based only on what was said we can't
tell either way. the solution again is to dumb it down. do people who eat more oil get fatter than
people who eat less of it? in a reasonably matched comparison, ideally a clinical trial or at least an
observational study where we adjust statistically for many of the confounders, like other dietary
differences, exercise, smoking etc. okay, we're going to speed this up and go right into the
next one but if you want more detail about oil we have a whole video on it, i'll link it at the end.
right now we're just focusing on the structure of the arguments. alright, next one. a diet rich
in ultra-processed foods can lead to weight gain. cohort studies show that ultra-processed
foods associate with higher BMI, and in a clinical trial people allowed to eat as much as they wanted
ended up eating more calories overall and putting on more weight if their food was highly processed
so moderating our intake of ultra processed foods can really help maintain a healthy
body weight. compelling or storytelling? remember, we're only judging the argument, not our opinion
of ultra-processed foods, right? this one is pretty compelling, right? evidence is cited that directly
addresses the claim, outcome data, on weight gain with and without ultra processed foods. it doesn't
mean it's case closed, we would still want to see if the studies are robust, well carried out, if they
reflect all the available evidence, but it's a cogent argument, it's compelling on the face
of it, that's what we're judging. okay, ready for the next one? here we go. eggs are very high in choline
and our body converts choline into this metabolite called TMAO. now, we know from experiments in animal
models that TMAO causes macrophages, these cells from our immune system, to take up more cholesterol,
and that's a key step in foam cell formation and atherosclerosis. heart disease. so this shows that
eating too many eggs can raise our heart disease risk and so it's better to eat them in moderation
or avoid them altogether. compelling or storytelling? i think most people got
this one. storytelling, right? and did this one remind you of another one we looked at before?
the first one, right? with the wheat and the gliadin. mechanistic speculation, right? same thing here
we talk about some molecules, choline and TMAO, and some cells, and then we make a logical leap to the
risk of a disease, we say that eggs raise risk of heart disease. but that's a factual claim, we'd want
to see evidence that people who eat more eggs have more heart disease. so i threw this one in
on purpose with a structure similar to the first one so you start to pick up on the pattern. now, in
case some of you are getting cocky, like 'oh my god this is so easy, i'm nailing this', that's good. five
minutes ago many of you would have been confused by these arguments, probably have been confused by
these exact same structures many times online, right? and here we are just a few minutes later
and you're picking up the pattern. that's how easy this can be once you know how to recognize it
and now that you know it you'll see these patterns everywhere, all kinds of internet content and gurus
lean on these exact structures all the time. okay, we got two more and get ready because the last
one will be harder, for the cocky crowd out there. alright, here's the one before last: cow's milk is
basically liquid meat. we're not supposed to drink it. no animal species drinks the milk of another
species. it's completely unnatural. and sure enough a lot of people across the world are lactose
intolerant. so the healthiest move for your family is to just ditch dairy. compelling or storytelling?
storytelling, right? other animals don't do it, okay, that doesn't tell us anything about health value
it could be the healthiest thing in the world or not. and then, some people are lactose intolerant so
you should avoid it. should you also avoid all nuts and seafood and strawberries because some people
are allergic? it's all logical leaps, right? okay, here is the last one and this one is going to be
a little harder for the cocky crowd. 'whatever man, we totally got this.' heart disease is all
about inflammation. studies have shown that there's inflammation inside the plaque, in the artery wall,
and in double-blind, placebo randomized controlled trials, giving people anti-inflammatories lowers
their cardiovascular risk. and to top it off, statins also lower our risk of heart disease and
they have a powerful anti-inflammatory effect. so as long as we keep our inflammation low enough, we
can avoid heart disease altogether. compelling or storytelling? pause if you want to think about it,
here's the answer. so this one is more nuanced, right? because there's a lot of solid
evidence but the main claim is a logical leap. the evidence presented is compelling that inflammation
is a risk factor for heart disease, but not that it's the only factor, as the argument
then claims. it's entirely possible based on that argument that lowering inflammation helps,
that it reduces cardiovascular risk, but that we can still get heart disease due to other
factors. and by the way, that is actually the case. so the main claim the argument wraps up with is
storytelling. so the take home message here from all of this is to watch for the logical leaps
like an eagle because they're often buried under a lot of shiny lights, so don't get distracted by all
the sciency-sounding words, every claim needs to be substantiated. this is like that tom cruise
movie where he's like 'show me the money! show me the money!'. jerry maguire, right? show me the money!
this is the same thing except it's show me the evidence, show me the evidence. alright? let me
know below how many you got right and wrong, is this useful, was it too hard, was it too easy? and
here's some more details on oil as promised and here's some more tricks of the trade to help
you dispel confusion and make sense of confusing content online. take care, see you next week