The Truth about Saturated Fat, Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Total Mortality | Dr. Tom Brenna

If you start substituting high omega-6 oils for your dairy fat, that's when things really go off the rails. When you feed those oils to pregnant animals, you can look in the brains of the offspring and they are screwed up. I mean, I've never heard that as a technical term. So, is it a mistake for pregnant women to avoid fish? Absolutely a mistake, no doubt. 100% people that eat the most fish in the world do not have kids who are mentally challenged. They just don't. I always invoke iodine deficiencies. You see nothing like that, the kids just get smarter. Is pregnancy that one time to build the brain versus post pregnancy into childhood? Breastfeeding is so important. Kids are getting omega-3, they're getting DHA in breast milk. We are not just a heart, we have lots of other organs. The most important of which, in my opinion, is the brain. Omega-3 fatty acids, DHA are necessary, amazing for brain development, important for pregnant women. Is there something else also on the horizon you're thinking, this hasn't been developed enough and it's going to come out? The story of precision nutrition is an undertold story. It is one that... Most people assume nutrition advice is cautious for a reason. That if something is worn against, it must be dangerous. But what if the opposite was true? What if one of the biggest nutrition warnings of the last few decades didn't protect people at all? But quietly removed something the developing brain depends on. For years pregnant women were told to be careful with fish. Many, including myself, stopped eating it altogether. And almost no one asked what was being taken away. My guest today is Dr. Tom Brenna, a scientist who has spent decades studying brain fats, pregnancy nutrition, and the real population data behind national dietary guidelines. His work forces an uncomfortable conversation. How do well-intentioned warnings turn into long-term nutritional gaps? What happens when fear drives policy instead of evidence? And how many people are living with the downstream effects without ever knowing why? This conversation isn't about food trends. It's about how guidance meant to keep people safe can quietly shape brain development. Attention and cognitive health for, you guessed it, an entire generation. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you Gabrielle. Thanks for having me. Like I said before, I'm a huge fan, which makes me a little nerdy, but I am a huge fan. And you and I met in DC at the HHS building where they were about to announce the new dietary guidelines. Right. And there you were. And what was so interesting is each one of you, there's nine of you on this committee, each one of you had your own specialty, should I say? Yeah, that's right. We each worked on a rather narrow section of the, well, the concepts that were being considered. And you worked on the 2015s. You were 2015 and these last 20, 20, I guess they were we considered 2026. Well, yeah, it's 2025, 2030. I was also an advisor to 2010. Okay, so a lot of, I'm kind of a rut. So you've been doing this for a long time. And as one of the nine people there, there, I just want to get a sense of there's a lot of noise on the internet about all of what transpired. And frankly, I just want to say one thing, I think you guys did a great job. I think that and when I say you guys did a great job, I know that there is a different interpretation of the outcome of what you guys provided. But the questions that you asked and the answers provided, I think were exceptional. And it is also available for people to read where you guys got your science and how that was all developed. Is that fair to say? That's right. Everything we did really is posted and publicly available. So if you really want to dig into it, it's all there. Now, I want to read something that I was quite surprised to see. One of the things that I've learned from you and others on the committee is that there is not necessarily a rhyme or reason in that every five years, there's no unifying process behind how the questions are asked and what is answered. And when we are at the HHS, it's very exciting. I got a hold of a sign of a stake. They did pick that for me. And the American Society for Nutrition, which is one of the most well respected societies, and it really focuses on excellence in nutrition research, published a commentary. And the title is, and this is news from the American Society for Nutrition, which anyone can look up, which we'll link RJ, we can link to the bottom of this is American Society for Nutrition calls for strong science in national nutrition guidance. And I want to read one more thing. And again, I was surprised at that statement. And then reading this says the following, the American Society for Nutrition supports ASN the broad eating pattern in the newly released dietary guidelines for Americans, which are the DGA's that emphasizes minimally processed nutrient dense foods and limits added sugar, sodium and saturated fat, which are linked to an improved long term health outcomes. Dietary approaches that focus on whole foods and reduced reliance on highly processed foods and sugar, sweetened beverages have demonstrated health benefits. That was a very nice statement. At the same time, ASN is concerned that departing from the established scientific review process undermines confidence in the DGA's and nutrition science, contributes to confusion and distrust and obscures the opportunity for meaningful scientific discourse. Well, I was a little bit surprised by that too. The there were several specifics that were leveled in terms of criticisms. One was the questions about how folks were chosen. Well, there were nine of us and two of us had been on previous dietary guidelines. So we were chosen by normal methods, whatever normal really means. And as you've already alluded to, normal is different every five years. There is also a behind the scenes period for every one of these dietary guidelines. So when the report comes out from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, the 15 or 20 scientists that get together and issue a report, that report goes to either FDA or USDA, depending on who's the lead agency that year. And they seek input, but ultimately draft the dietary guidelines for Americans behind the scenes. And so I did not see the process this time as deviating as much as perhaps other people did. We did not draft the dietary guidelines for Americans. We did a very limited circumscribed job. And what we did is sitting online. And so I didn't dream up the upside pyramid. For instance, I have to say that I only learned of what was going to be in the dietary guidelines for Americans just a couple of weeks before they were released. And I didn't even learn 100%. I only saw draft. And we were quite happy with the draft to be perfectly asked. But we weren't asked to modify it. I mean, people make comments. So I just don't think that it's that different than it ever was. And again, there was a lot of noise around it and the outcome, which I think is really moving in a positive direction, which is, again, changing the protein guidelines. That's major. It's the first time, I mean, that that's ever happened. And they brought you on. So your background is your professor emeritus from Cornell, you did nutritional sciences, then you went into basic science and chemistry. You were a lead scientist at IBM. I was a scientist at IBM before I went to Cornell. Pretty extraordinary. And you've published quite a bit and really made some great contributions beyond the dietary guidelines, but in meaningful ways through infant nutrition, childhood nutrition, pregnancy. So we're going to come back to that. But that is perhaps one reason why you were chosen to answer the question or address saturated fat. Can you highlight potentially maybe frame up the difference between and you've been involved? Is it fair to say three dietary guidelines? Yeah, I think that's fair. Yeah, three is good. Three the last four. That's pretty great. What is that three? That's three fours, three out of four, 75%. Yeah, I still remember. I'm really not very good. Not very good at math, but anyway, besides the point. So as we just frame this up, so there's the outcome, which I want to know how you guys, how the questions were asked and the literature that was examined. But just briefly, how did that transition from the first time that you did it to the second time to the third time in terms of questions and just your task at hand? Well, in 2010, I advised the committee on fatty acids and specifically omega three fatty acids, what they asked me to talk about. In 2015, the theme transition to what is known as dietary patterns. And so nutrients took kind of a backseat. And sort of overall, I mean, is it a diet? Is it a dietary pattern? There is a technical definition that's relevant. But the point is the overall diet was what people were looking at. This time, the DGAC looked at a variety of things. Dietary patterns was part of it. There was equity involved and food equity and that kind of stuff. And but in this particular case, we were very specifically asked to advise on very circumscribed things. So saturated fat is what I worked on. I didn't work on protein. I didn't work on sugar. I just worked on saturated fat. And we were given a task and we accomplished a task and we handed things in and and then we found out what they did with it to be perfectly honest. Now, how are we chosen? You're about to ask me that. And the answer is each one of us had published on these things, but that sort of makes sense to bring people in and have been working on a topic rather than folks that have not been working on a topic. So and so my work, I think, in this area was pretty well known or pretty well knowable. And I think that's how I ended up being asked. And the primary, can you frame up a little bit about the history of the dietary guidelines from the saturated fat perspective? Oh, my. So saturated fat is, let's see, I feel a lecture coming on. Oh, I'm so excited. I've been waiting for two days for this. There's the saturated, oh, boy, you encourage me. The saturated fat story best I can tell may date into the 1800s. 1870 is where I would I would start. And so the story of saturated fat versus vegetable oils really reaches back into the into the period before 1900, I would say. And it's always been this this competition for what we're going to spread on our bread. And it's it's it's going to be butter, or it's going to be what was called oleo margarine. And it was I'll skip forward to 1902. And when a technique for making oils into solids was developed, and that's partial hydrogenation. So that's where the trans fats come from. So like Crisco. Indeed. Do you know where the name Crisco comes from? No, but I will say my mom used to make blonde brownies with Crisco every probably every month. Crisco made the most beautiful baked stuff. The best bakers in the 20th century used Crisco. Crisco was introduced around 1914. And it got its name from the material that was derived from in the process. So there was a lot of cottonseed oil around at the time. And when that cottonseed oil is partially hydrogenated, it assumes some crystalline properties. And so they picked out crystalline cottonseed oil, Crisco. That's where the name came from. You would be great on trivia or jeopardy. If the category is edible oils, I'll be great. Yep. Just say just throw that out there guys. Okay. Yes. Terrific. I don't know what I'm gonna do with the other ones. Fine. All right. No one said you had to win. Mass spectrometry for the double jeopardy. Yeah, definitely no one. You definitely know that. So and so so Crisco was a really a tasty nice product. And no one really understood the concept that it's going to maybe cause heart disease in a whole bunch of years. Was it utilized to limit, they say if something was very perishable like butter or something like that? Well, what you have is what it's an old story in the food industry and not a bad story that when you extract something from an edible food, butter is one thing. There's butter and there's buttermilk. So you have butter and so there's things that are left over. Well, do you throw it in the river or do you try to make something out of it? So this is oil, cottonseed oil. And the question you might ask is can we make something edible out of it? Can we use something? And I also want to, it also makes, it's a point I make a lot. Having inexpensive food is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And I, you know, we don't want to, we don't want to sort of price food out of the reach of of folks that don't have a big budget. So now that's what was going on in the United States. What was going on in Europe is actually much more remarkable, which is that they were partially hydrogenating whale oil from about the 1930s, probably from before that to the 1960s. Much of the whaling that was done depleting and basically wiping out the whales from the southern oceans was to generate whale oil that went into margarine as partially hydrogenated whale oil. When we cleaned out the whales from the southern ocean, we then transitioned over to fish oils. And those, those are various kinds of fish from various fisheries around the world. And so partially hydrogenated fish oil became what the Europeans and others were using in their margarines. There is a nice video on the web on YouTube from about 1942, which is kind of like a, almost an archaeologist's, how's it made? And it's the making of margarine. And they show the various oils that go in and one of them has a big sign on it that says hardened whale oil. Right. So people don't talk about that. Now, why is that important for us here in 2026? The reason it's important is because the studies that have been invoked that are said to be studies of saturated fat come from that era. And when people say that they're about saturated fat, the answer is, well, not exactly. So some of the most prominent studies were done in Europe in the 1960s and 70s. And one of my favorites actually says it estimates 40 to 50 grams per day of hardened marine oils were in the diet of the control group. So you take out this partially hydrogen, I say partially hydrogenated, I really should say that's what we call trans. We say trans fat. Now, if you think trans fat from vegetable oil is bad, wait till you see trans fat from fish oil. I've analyzed it years ago. You can't get your hands on it anymore. But I analyzed it years ago. You can't imagine. It looks like when you take it, when you look at the chemical analysis, it looks like the Alps with instead of had nice, nice peaks that tell you what each fatty acid is, there just is a mess in these things. And so that is what people are calling saturated fat. And all the studies do it, every one of them. Wait, wait, wait. So that seems like a major mistake. Yes. Thank you to Manicora for sponsoring today's episode. Winter means more time indoors, more travel. 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And now it's easier than ever to try Manacora honey head to Manacora.com slash Dr. Lion to save up to 31 plus $25 worth of this free starter kit, which is amazing. I have one. It comes with this massive jar of Manuka honey. That is go to manukaora.com slash Dr. Lion and save 31 plus $25 worth of free gifts. Basically, we are hearing an exponential amount of noise and concern regarding seed oils, vegetable oils, quote, animal fats, saturated fats. So there's the animal fats. Again, we people have been very concerned about this for a long time. And they grew that into saturated fat. And then there's the hydrogenated fat seed oils, which are also within the fair to say saturated fat, right? I'm going to call them trans. They're hydrogenated. They're trans, partially hydrogenated. Partially hydrogenated trans. But that does not fall under the category of saturated fat, right? Some of it saturated, more of it saturated than was in the original product. But mostly what you're concerned about is these weird isomers that are made. And the reason I frame this up is because, again, the conversation talks about saturated fat and then insinuates that all of these things are saturated fats. That is correct. They say it's saturated fat and it's not. And it's not saturated fat. So in the 60s, they started hydrogenating trans. Oh, they were doing it in the 30s. Okay. And this fat was way more dangerous. We know that now. And the other thing is that we spend most of our time talking about cardiovascular disease. But cardio, we're more than just a heart. There's a lot more stuff. So for instance, what we learned later is that those weird looking fatty acids that do not appear in nature to any degree, when we eat those things, they go into the brain, they go into the retina. And that's terrible. Yes, it is. And that's that was what was going on back then. Now, if you are they illegal now? Yes. And they've been illegal for a long time, but a long time, decades. So I don't like to do this as a good guy, bad guy thing, because if in the war years, I wasn't there. But in the war, great firms. How would that make you? One of the nice things I like about the omega field, omega three field is that is that the scientists live into their 90s. That's how I really think it works. But anyway, if stuff started in the war years, there was not a lot of food around. And you had fish oil, whale oil. And if you could hydrogenate it, you could feed the population. And this is what they were doing in the UK, in Europe, they had two World Wars to worry about. So the question that you could ask yourself even today is, do I want to risk a heart attack in 30 years or starve in three months? That's really good. I've never actually thought about it that way. And I don't think that people have so sorry to interrupt you. I love the old rationing videos. Have you ever seen that you sure? I mean, we are like, we're real nerds now, like we've just exposed ourselves. There are a ton of videos on World War Two rationing. And the reason I was very interested in is the protein recommendations were actually higher. They were, it was the soldiers were getting a pound of meat, it was, it wasn't necessarily calorie restricted even on the home front before the, at the same time as these victory gardens. And sorry to interrupt you, but from what I understand is that they're, they had to make this food, there had to be food. I'm told in the UK during World War Two that everybody got a fish. And that kind of stopped after the war ended. So they were probably better nourished during the war than after the war. And your statement that, which again, I have never heard anyone say that. See, I knew I was excited for a reason is that we didn't think about the idea that there would be a starvation problem and then making foods less perishable, because obviously canning and all that stuff happened. But it wasn't about the next 30 years, it was about how to survive. Indeed, that's the case. It's war. Okay. So and the ships were being blown up in the Atlantic and you can't get food in, but you have this thing that you might be able to eat. If you can treat it somehow, then you can feed the population. And somehow that, they didn't know it was dangerous at the time. That's fair to say. And then that trans fat made it into the general American diet. Is that kind of what happened? That's kind of what happened. Yeah, because you start out saying in Europe, it was whale oil and fish oil, but in the US, it would have been partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, call it trans. That's what we call it these days, trans. So it would have been trans fat. And so the trans fats that would have been less expensive. And so if you say, well, if we don't know if there's anything wrong with it, it's not toxic, it tastes good. It makes wonderful pie crust. You're telling from a friend. I am extolling the culinary virtues of Crisco, the original stuff with trans fat here. But do you know that it really is not a great thing for your health? Make one other point. We talk about these things like the world is a static place, like there's no other background. Those of us of a certain age remember when people were smoking two to four packs a day. Almost everybody in the 60s and 70s knew somebody who was a chain smoker, lights one cigarette with the last one. And so think about what smoking is now known to do. And I scratch my head and I think, well, if I smoke four packs a day, maybe hydrogenated fat, who cares? Just making the point that it's a different world now. And the risks are different. So getting rid of smoking probably unmasked some risks. Because smoking was certainly, it was not that unusual for people to have, particularly men to have heart attacks in their 40s and 50s. So what you're saying is, we, if I'm understanding you correctly, is that we created these dietary guidelines of, again, 10% saturated fat, hasn't that that's been maintained since what? 1980, probably, but that's probably 90 at least. But the number is basically picked out of a hat. There isn't there isn't some curve that somebody has made. So there's a threshold. So the last I looked at, which are not terrific numbers, it's ask people what they eat and see what they say. What did you eat yesterday? I don't remember. Remember? Exactly. Something. Yeah. Anyway, this is the problem with food frequency questionnaires is that, right? I don't know. RJ, what did you eat? RJ, you probably don't even know that you had protein waffle pancakes. Well, a fruit frequency questionnaire asks you how many times you ate it in the last month. And in a large fraction of people claim that they've eaten under 600 calories, which means they would be dead. So yeah, anyway. So the rationale of the 10% the the rationale from the 10% is based on cardiovascular disease risk reduction from partially hydrogenated whale oil. That seems like a problem. I think it's a problem too. And I really wish the ASN would look very carefully at the studies as some of us have and would would really look carefully at what saturated fat and what isn't. I actually don't think there is a lot of data on saturated fat. I don't think there is a lot of clean data on it. There is data on dairy. And over the years, the word saturated fat have been a code word for dairy. So you say, well, saturated fat. And then people say, oh, so what saturated fat in butter? Well, okay, yes, that's true. You've just figured that out. But that's where they were leading you when they said saturated fat. So but what are the original data that people have looked at dairy and you don't see a great deal of you just don't see risk here. So as we frame up this new dietary guidelines, again, the 10% saturated fat has not changed since actually I have something else for you. Okay, yes, terrific. The let's see, it's the it's an it's an act that was passed unanimously in Congress and signed into law in January of this year of this year. It's the something like the the Whole Milk School Lunch Act, something like that. And that act authorizes the use of full fat dairy in the schools. And it has a wonderful little line at the end. It says saturated fat in whole fat milk shall not be counted towards the 10%. In other words, Washington has taken saturated fat off budget. They do that sometimes with the budget over the years. And what they basically said is the school lunch won't count that well all of a sudden there is no cap in school lunch is there. Wait, so explain this to me differently. So I understand. So they so saturated fat is at 10% for the dietary guideline. Yes, that's right. Okay. And then when it comes to clusters or groups or schools, then the whole milk saturated fat doesn't count in the school lunch program in the school lunch pro saturated fat that comes in as whole milk could be flavored. But it comes in as whole milk, it doesn't count towards the 10%. So you can have 10% and everything else. And then as long as you're drinking milk, you can go any number you want. Explain to me how that works. Like, is that so I have a hamburger. But I mean, like, is that a good thing that it doesn't count? Is it sending confusing messages? I'm making the point that the 10% is a made up number may have well it is a made up number, but it may have been maintained. But it hasn't really been maintained everywhere. They've gotten around it in school lunch. I see. That's the point I'm making. I am pretty sure they didn't want to keep it. And but the act that was signed by the president in January, I think it was around January 14th, the act that was signed by the president passed the Congress by unanimous consent. Everybody voted for it. Nobody voted against it, not a single person. So saturate one is saturated fat, not saturated fat when it comes in as whole milk in school lunch program. That is confusing, right? So if you're thinking about and here's the definition of saturated fat, saturated fat is a fat found in animal products. Now this is, let's just go here for a second. Okay, like fatty meats, beef lamb pork and full fat dairy, as well as tropical oils and many processed baked goods, pastries, fried foods. I'm going to pause there. It also says it typically is typically solid at room temperature and should be limited in the diet. Okay, let's just pause. Saturated fat is a type of fat found in animal products like fatty meats. But from my understanding, and from looking at the data, almost 50% of the fat in say, fatty meat like beef is mono-insaturated. There's a lot of mono-insaturated in there. Yes, that's right. So now if we're thinking about science, and this is the whole idea is that we're trying to to make the best decisions we can, this is information that I am reading and that it's saying that it increases the risk of heart disease, and that we should recommend replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat from olive oil nuts and avocados. And then quickly underneath that there's the American Heart Association that says limits saturated fat to less than 6% of total calories. This is 2024. How do we reconcile all this? Wow, how much time you have? At least two hours. Well, may I ask who said that? Which one? All of it. Okay, well, the first one comes up with a Google, and this is I did this actually on purpose. Okay. So this is what a person who is looking on the internet actually, okay, so this is put it in Google, use AI mode. AI mode says and gives this information. And this comes from this is a university. I don't know if I'm going to say it. And then also the American Heart Association. That's all fine. I just want to say one more thing, which I forgot to say in the beginning, all of your comments and opinions, they're all your own. They're not associated with any university. They're not associated with any government agency or HHS. So I'm going to... Everything I say is my opinion. That's right. Thank you very much for that. Anyway, yes, that's correct. So I see what you did, Debbie. What you said is, well, I'm going to Google it and see what comes up and hear all of this stuff that's really confusing. And the, I would agree it's confusing and it is contradictory. And so if it's contradictory, I can't really explain it. I can only tell you what I think is right, which is where we're going. So I think the 10% limit is not justified. I've said that before. We, I think the 10% limit chases us away from highly nutrient dense foods and actually causes nutrients of concern. Give me an example of what this would be. Would that be zinc, selenium, B12? Bingo, all that stuff. And we know that we can recover much of that by dairy, for instance, but if you're scared of cheese and milk and things like that, then you're going to stay away from it because you think it's going to give you heart disease. One of the things that really bugs me about this and that I would look, I would query more in that Google inquiry is to get away from the cardiovascular story. Because when we look carefully at weather-saturated fat to find however you like. I was going to ask you to define, okay. When we look at that in terms of total mortality, you don't see effects. If you don't see effects, why are we focusing on cardiovascular? Thank you to Timeline for sponsoring this episode. 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If muscle is the organ of longevity, supporting the engine inside that muscle matters. Go to timeline.com slash drlion to get 35% off a mitopyr subscription. Let's go a little bit deeper, because you've said a statement, I don't want to gloss over it. Everything, most statements out there regarding saturated fat are related to heart disease. Correct. The American Heart Association, again, I am on now, I've switched to a search engine that I use called Open Evidence. I have no relationship with them, but this is, you have to have a medical license to be able to look at this. And this scours for, you can put it in criteria, but it's typically journals. So it's the New England Journal of Medicine. It's all academic journal of the American College of Cardiology, British Journal of Sports Medicine. So there are all these journals, which will then provide you with synthesized information. Every single thing here points to the connection between saturated fat and heart disease. And the concerning component is we are making broad generalizations that affect our children, affect prisons, affect nursing homes, affect anyone that receives federal funding, and even more importantly, affect day-to-day decisions of moms like me. So what is the truth? No small task, but on saturated fat. So the American diet right now, to the best of our knowledge, is 11% saturated fat. What, in the 80s, it was 15% saturated fat? Well, once again, if you count trans fat, which you shouldn't, but if you do, then maybe those numbers are right from the early days. So the point I am really making is that the evidence for saturated fat being related to heart disease is actually so messed up and conflated with trans fat that it's impossible to separate. But if you look carefully at foods that are high in saturated fat, you find out that those relationships are just not there. So I don't think the 10% makes any sense at all. I don't think it's justified. And when folks talk about this, they gloss over that there's trans fat all over the place in these studies that they're citing. Okay, so let's see. I also want to bring it back to the idea that we are not just a heart. We have lots of other organs, the most important of which, in my opinion, is the brain. Mine is muscle, and my husband who's in urology is something else. I can probably find common ground with your husband. I'm sure I can find common ground with muscle too. But the thing about reproductive organs and the brain, they have a lot in common, actually. Megatheories are a big deal. Before I move on, I just want to read something to you, okay? Because you're going to find this very exciting. So this is open evidence. And now this is from the Cochrane database of Systematic Reviews 2020. And I asked open evidence, what is the evidence of saturated fat in heart disease? Okay. And it said, reducing saturated fat and replacing it with polyunsaturated fat reduces cardiovascular events by 17 to 30% with effects comparable to statin therapy. Why am I hammering this? One, I'm annoying and I'm sorry. And number two, this is the information that providers, clinicians are being given to then go out and put quote best practices in place. So I just, I want to say that and not to be fair, I'll read the next statement. So the first statement, 17 to 30% reduction comparable to statin therapy by reducing saturated fat intake. However, this blows my mind. However, the evidence shows a little to no effect on all cause mortality or cardiovascular mortality. And the benefit very, very substantially based on baseline cardiovascular risk. What are they like? What is what? Well, well, you just got, you just said it's related to cardiovascular events, but not to mortality. Is that what I get? Did I get that right? Yeah. Okay. So one of the things folks notice comparable to statin therapy. Okay, fine. One of the things that folks notice is that when you talk about mortality, you have a very clean outcome because almost everybody can count bodies. However, when you assign events, you have to do a diagnosis. So is it a heart attack or is it indigestion or really bad case? And so it doesn't make a lot of sense that there are more events than there is death. I'm with you. And so that is almost a smoking gun for for there being bias. Now, I have another point to that's very, very important and that relates to what we just did on dietary guidelines. We talked about randomized trials as being, being giving us the chance of identifying causal effects as opposed to prospective cohort trials, which ask people what they eat at one time and then see how many people get sick later. And that's just a natural kind of observational thing. But a randomized trial is only a truth teller if it is double blinded or as I prefer the way the ophthalmologists call it, double masked. And none of these trials are the least bit blinded from the 20th century. They're not blinded. Everybody knows what group they're in. Everybody knows whether they are consuming the control or they're consuming vegetable oil or whatever it happens to be. You can, you can design trials like that. And I have recently published a trial that's designed in such a way so that people didn't know what they were eating, but it is not easy and it is not cheap. And so people, most of those studies, they left people on their normal diets. They said, okay, you just eat whatever you're normally eating, which happens to be 50 grams of hydrogenated marine oil. And then we had these other people over here and we're going to feed them all kinds of other things. We're going to feed them polyunsaturated fats and then, and then vegetable oils or whatever happens to be. And then we're going to blame all of the differences on saturated fat, which it sounds like they're all eating milk or something. And it's just not the case. So as this translates to, so the question that you were designated to answer on these guidelines, what was that question? Well, it was about, it was about the relationship between saturated fat and cardiovascular mortality and the things that one usually looks at. And so one of the things that I, well, let's say, re-verified for myself is that the studies that are out there often lead with a statement that saturated fat causes more cardiovascular events. But then as you go through the paper, you find out just kind of as a throwaway at the end that there wasn't any difference in total mortality. Okay. Well, if there's no difference in total mortality, isn't that what people care about? Total mortality? Yeah. I think that's what people care about. And so we turned it around and we said, we're going to talk about total mortality first, and then we will talk about the various kinds of mortality, coronary heart disease, coronary cardiovascular disease, mortality and events, and look at those. And we found with a very high level of confidence that total mortality is not affected. And in the observational trials, which is really what there was. In the other guidelines. Or this one. No, this is this one, because we did our randomized trial and we did prospective cohort trials. We did, we looked at both. And in the prospective cohort trials, there was stroke as an outcome. And does it surprise people when there's one these, the saturated fat, what we call saturated fat is protective against stroke? That's what it looks like. That's what the data say. Protective. So is this whole thing, what do you want to die of? I hope not. If total mortality is not affected. And even if you say heart disease is worse, but if total mortality is ineffective, then that means something else must be benefit, most benefit. You know, I've also seen, as we kind of wrap this piece up, it's fair to say that we don't know the number or percentage of saturated fat that would be detrimental. Right. And then I want to take this one step further by talking about potentially the LDL conversation. So, but if we are, if we are just going to look at total mortality from cardiovascular disease, which is really the outcomes that people care about, there isn't, again, there isn't a strong relationship between the two. There's not a strong relationship, but I would even ask you, do people really care about total mortality due to cardiovascular disease or do they care about total mortality? Care about total mortality. I think they care about total mortality. And the data say there's no effect on total mortality. Even if you, even if you accept what is called saturated fat, which I've just got finished explaining is not all saturated fat. So, it's challenging because there are these guidelines, the dietary guidelines now make this recommendation, which now essentially weaponizes animal-based products because of the 10% number or less. There's also, there's also another thing that I'm not that well versed in this, but I will raise the, raise the point that much of the work that's been done on red meat is not just red meat, it's red and processed meat. Well, it's fresh red meat the same as processed meat. And if you throw in everything that's processed, is a, is a, is a nice roast or steak or hamburger, we really think that that's exactly the same as a very processed and I want to pick on anything in general, specifically, but the cheapest, very processed kind of meat you can think of. Do we really want to put those things in the same category? I don't know why one would want to put those in the same category. I mean, they may well both be fine, but the red meat part, I, fresh red meat, I don't see a problem. Does this lead us to this moment where what we can all agree that we need more science behind what potentially we're defining saturated fat, what the actual implications are? We have to first have the folks who are saying that saturated fat is bad actually recognize that that is not what they've been talking about all these years. They've been talking about saturated fat plus partially hydrogenated oils. In other words, they've been talking about saturated fat plus trans and the trans has been some of the worst trans that there is. When this data is presented to these groups, again, this is not about a person or any of those, those, you know, entities, but what you're saying and looking at if someone were to pull this up and to look at the science of supplement, the supplemental material, it's hard to not acknowledge that. People don't seem to have any trouble not acknowledging it. So what do you, and this is again just a personal question. I don't want to spend so much time on that. Why? Do you think that there is a, again, is it the science questionable? Is what you're telling me perhaps, you know, maybe it's questionable or some other reason? Well, as scientists, we have to describe what we've done and we have to describe it with specificity. And when someone is calling something saturated fat and it's not saturated fat, I'm not sure how much further I have to go with that. I agree. Now, I could go back and say, well, you're just trying to raise money or you're selling something or something like that. But I would prefer to just sort of say, look, you have to recognize that people are mischaracterizing what they've, what their data look like. They're mischaracterizing it. We need to look more carefully. And there are data out there that address this. I just mentioned this. I mean, that's really important. And I think that you imagine that that's the next step. I mean, I think a lot of what the new administration is going to do or the current administration is, it seems as if they're going to allocate funding to try to explore that more. So they say. Correct. They do say. Can we just touch on the LDL story? Okay. So reading again, what is available? And from my understanding, it's complicated. And for some people, let's say 20% of the population has an LDL cholesterol over 160. Again, I'm just framing this up as to how one could intellectualize the statement that if you reduce saturated fat, then you will lower your LDL cholesterol. And so you will. Okay. And so this says, replacing 5% of energy from saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat, again, reduces mortality by 27%. Where? Not sure. Not in Japan. Not sure. But there is this relationship between saturated fat and lowering LDL cholesterol. My question is, what percent of the population is that meaningful? And is that reduction? Is it a linear reduction of LDL cholesterol with saturated fat to then have some kind of meaningful outcome for a mom like myself that wants to make sure my husband lives longer than me? Well, we understand a lot about the LDL story for the extreme cases. So these are folks with the genetic mutation. Yes, mutation that causes their cholesterol levels to be sky high. So we have a pretty good idea how that works. The question I think that's really relevant is to what degree do reductions in LDL cholesterol at the moderate level below 160 really help us out. And I cannot get past looking at the Japanese data. Now, usually people shut you down by saying, well, there's hardly any Japanese who have high levels. Actually, there's 100 million Japanese. And so there are plenty of them that have higher levels. And if you look carefully, the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease is the opposite of what it is in the United States. It doesn't go up. It actually goes down a little bit. And those data are robust. Okay. So I want to correct myself first. I just pulled up my notes for this episode. The current average LDL in the U.S. is 111. Okay. And once per deciliter, again, I'm sure someone can correct me. But this is what I found. Those who have an LDL above 130, that's around 25% above 130. And above 160 is about 5%. 5% above 160. Okay. Okay. Thanks. And so again, as we frame it up, if saturated fat intake is down from 15%, let's say we pick that number from the 80s, then there should be an average drop in LDL to mirror this. Right. But one of the points that the asterisk paper makes is that decreasing LDL doesn't always have a relationship with decreasing cardiovascular risk. So the question is whether one can make a break in statement about this kind of reduction and whether it makes any sense at all. And I think the answer is probably not. And what else to say? I can repeat myself by saying that we understand that sky-high cholesterol levels are a problem. We're also recognizing these days something we didn't recognize years ago, which is that triglycerides are a big deal also. And this is the other fat in the blood. And this is an independent risk factor as well. How high? And I have those numbers, by the way. Well, if they're above 500 milligrams per deciliter, then I think they're candidates for a I'm going to call it a pseudo pharmacological intervention. And when I call it pseudo pharmacological, it's kind of a fish oil thing. And so what does that mean? What do you mean? Here, I have some numbers for you. Okay, go ahead. Give me some numbers. Hit me. Hit me. People with elevated triglycerides above 200 or closer to 70%, 17%. So people with LDL above 160 or greater are like between five and 7% of the population, which doesn't seem like that much. People with elevated triglycerides above 200 are closer to 17% of the population. That's a higher number. And this is, from my perspective, a carbohydrate issue. Yes, I think it's a carbohydrate ischium. And it may well be an insulin resistance issue as well. Okay, so and you don't get numbers that high unless you're not eating much for omega threes. Omega threes won't go that high. Omega threes lower, I mean, we've known this since the 80s that omega threes lower fish, the fish oil, essentially fish oil, lower triglycerides. And that's the irrespective of carbohydrate intake. Pretty much. But they're going to basically lower it because they turn on the genes that burn fat is what they do. And so sign me up. Indeed. This episode is brought to you by Bond Charge. Now, my husband looked at me the other night and said, should I be scared? And honestly, fair, I was sitting in the dark with a glowing red mask strapped to my face. I don't have time for a five million step skin routine. I just don't. But I do have 10 minutes while I'm answering emails or pretending to read before I pass out the bond charge red light face mask uses red light and near infrared wavelengths to support skin health, which again, it's a great way to scare your husband. It's lightweight and it's portable. It doesn't feel heavy or uncomfortable. Since I started using it consistently, my skin looks the following smoother and just overall more healthy. I didn't have to add another complicated thing in my life to get the job done. Go to bond charge.com and use the code Dr. Lion to save 15%. And listen, many of us make a ton of various investments, but skin care and something that works is an investment that you will not regret. Go to bond charge.com and use code Dr. Lion to save 15%. Fish, fish, fish. Why don't we get to talk about fish and prime and check? We're going to talk about, we're going to move right on to that. And then I want to know dosing. Is that like your normal four gram dose? And I'll switch that. I want to again, close this out because, you know, there's the hearsay, there's the game of telephone like, Oh, did you hear this? You were literally there. Yeah, I was there. You were literally there. I got some great photos of you. Also have been contributing to the dietary guidelines for quite some time. 10% saturated fat doesn't necessarily make sense. We don't have evidence from a mortality standpoint. You should hurry up and change that. I'm hoping you'll do that for the next one. And then also, consequently, the LDL cholesterol discussion still while it might link back to the saturated fat might not be the primary problem. I really don't think it is. And I would also reference for you that once upon a time, we were so very sure that it was HDL that protected you and LDL that was the problem. So good cholesterol, bad cholesterol and the HDL stuff all fell apart with the pharmacological interventions in the 2000s. And everybody was scratching their head. Now, people are actually working on subclasses and do we really see reverse cholesterol transfer and those kinds of things? And that's fine. The point, however, is that these gross measures are just that they're gross measures. There's other things going on. So should we talk about another mistake? Sure. Pregnancy and avoiding fish. Oh, God. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, this is really fun. I've been pregnant twice. It's not very fun. I'm not a huge fan of that. I just will say pregnant. Yes, it's very hyperamnesis gravitum. Oh, my husband was active duty. I was alone in New York City throwing up like all day. Okay. It was terrible. So that wasn't fun. It wasn't fun. But I actually, it was one of the only periods of time I shifted away from reading about amino acids to reading about epigenetics, pregnancy, nutrition for pregnancy. And there's actually not a ton of data from a protein perspective, which I suppose makes sense for pregnant women. However, looking at some of the data around omega three fatty acids, children, now we're talking about something that could be really meaningful. You know that women are told many women avoid fish while they're pregnant. Ready? I'm ready. I hit me. Hit me with your best shot. There was a song. It was. It was like that. It was in roughly 1999 that an FDA commissioner was asked by a reporter almost blindsided by a reporter, how come you're allowing women to be poisoned with all this mercury and tuna? And from the perspective, and there's some subtlety here, but we do have a few nerds in the audience. So it was in the 1980s and 90s that analytical chemists perfected ways of analyzing metals. So you could see the de minimis tiny little bits of metals. And so it wasn't very hard to see any kind of a metal in a natural product. And so if you looked in a tuna, you could see it because the chemistry was really very highly developed. It took longer to develop it for organic molecules than it does for elements. Anybody could see mercury in the 80s and 90s if they looked for it, but you wouldn't be able to see other small molecules, not others like aluminum, like what are the metals you could always see? Okay. In other words, the micro plastic technology, you can't see micro plastics, the technology then the technology for analyzing metals was very well developed because it's actually in a way easier to measure metals than it is to measure organic molecules. When you measure metals, you blast the daylights out of everything and make a bunch of atoms and then you detect the atoms. But if you try to do the same thing with organic molecules, you lose the organic molecules. So you have to be more nuanced and sophisticated in that kind of thing. Let me ask you this, is it a mistake for pregnant women to avoid fish? Absolutely a mistake, no doubt, 100%. Since, since we'll call it the 21st century, we have been collecting data on the consumption of fish specifically in pregnant women and the mental development of their kids. And what we find is that compared to women who eat zero fish, women who eat a little fish, their kids almost always do better on almost all the tests that we look at. And it keeps going up, up, up, up, up, and then it plateaus. And it depends on, then it starts to depend on what fish you're eating. But we have gone up to 100 ounces a week, the recommendations 12 ounces a week, at least from the, from the government right now, we've looked at 100 ounces a week 10 times more of whatever they fish out of the sea in the, in the Indian Ocean and the Seychelles Islands, for example, even there, you don't even start to see it coming down again. Because let's say there's mercury, the mercury is entirely below any kind of a detectable harm level. You only get benefit, you don't get harm. Whoa, whoa, I was expecting you to say only eat fish or tuna once a month. Is there a limit? So I really don't think there is a limit. I don't think the evidence shows there's any limit. There is a point where you plateau, you don't get any more benefit. But it's not like you, if you keep going, you're going to turn around the people that eat the most fish in the world, do not have kids who are mentally challenged, they just don't. And you will understand that we know what mental, mental defects looks like. I always invoke iodine deficiency as being something that, that we know what that looks like. You do, you see nothing like that, the kids just get smarter. Um, so they're the components, right? So pregnancy is, is pregnancy that one time to build the brain? Like is that that's a critical component versus post pregnancy into childhood? We are putting DHA into our brain until we're about 20 years old. So pre-pregnancy, post pregnancy, one of the reasons why breastfeeding is so important beyond the immune stuff, behind the bonding stuff and all that kind of thing is that kids are getting omega three, they're getting DHA in breast milk. In 2001, we got it put into infant formula for the first time in the United States anywhere. And anyway, it was in other places, but not in the U S. And no, the brain is remodeling consistently until at least stage 20 and probably out to 25. So we are doing brain development all that time. Do you think that it is that static? Because, you know, when you think about Alzheimer's and, and other cognitive problems, it, if, if one, uh, avenue of science shows that it could be helpful, it would make sense that there might mitigate that DHA. And again, I want you to explain what that is. Yes, it might mitigate some cognitive decline. Well, there's, there's been a lot of hypotheses around that. And there, there have been some, there has been some work in reduction in, or hypotheses looking at reduction in neurodegeneration towards the end of life. And the data are, I'm going to call it mixed. I'm going to eat fish until I'm in the ground. But, and, and so it isn't going to cure it. But certainly the, the underlying mechanisms, which we still have not identified, I'm working on some of that and other things I'm doing. But the underlying mechanisms I'm quite convinced are related to fatty acids and the extraordinarily high energy that we produce to run the brain, to run the retina. And, and the interaction between all that energy, which throws off reactive oxygen species, which then oxidize these, these highly oxidizable fats. So DHA, can you frame us up what that is? The, the spectrum there's omega three, omega six. DHA is an omega three fatty acid that it's actually, again, for the nerds in the audience, docosahexanolic acid. You said it, I didn't. Docosa means 22 hexamines six. So it's got 22 carbons and six double bonds. And I like to call this the year of DHA because we've got two, and I ignore the zero to six. So that's 22 six. There we go. And at any rate, this is what we call an omega three fatty acid, the omega three part is a part of the structure of the, of the molecule. So if you draw the molecule on a blackboard, and then you name it according to organic chemistry, which you took, then, then you will see that the last double bond is three carbons in from the back end. If you go to omega six fatty acid, you'll find that the last double bond is six carbons in from the last carbon. Now, omega three and omega six are special because they are processed by the same enzymes in the body. And so when there is a big imbalance between the two, you start to suppress one against the other. And that's why a balance is actually quite important. What we have in the United States is a high amount of the omega six fatty acid and vegetable oils called linoleic acid. If you really want to read some nerdy stuff, you can look at the Dietary Guidelines foundational report, which is posted. And I think it's chapter five, which is a nice discussion of this stuff. There's lots of other stuff, and there'll be things on the web that you can see about this. There is no question, none, zero, absolutely zero. So tell me how you really feel. Oh, tell you how I really feel. Yeah, go with it, dude. Let me, let me, let me, for emphasis, start over. There is no question, absolutely zero, none that omega six linoleic acid suppresses all the omega threes, metabolically everywhere. Wow. So period, full stop. People say that's not the case. It is the case. It is always the case. No exceptions. Wow. And the outcome, so then a clinical outcome to that would be or a metabolic outcome or a biomarker outcome would show higher amounts of. Well, it, it, I'm quite sure that it depends on genetics. And we've been working on those genetics. And you'll have me back for another one of those. Can't wait. Anytime. But in, in vulnerable folks, the omega six is in vegetable oils are actually enhancing a pro inflammatory state. We're seeing, we're seeing a response to omega threes pushing down colorectal polyps. We've published this already. How, what is the dose? 200, sorry, two, two grams a day. Not very much. Not very much. And it, and if you're of a certain genotype, it pushes down colorectal polyps at the end of a year by 50%. Is that good? Wow. It's published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Okay, so we'll pull that up. I'll take a note of that, pull that up. And then, so it's based on genetics, obviously someone could probably run those SNPs and. Yes, it's actually more complicated. It's a, it's, but it's actually, it's actually, it's more and less complicated. It's an insertion deletion, which is sitting in a fatty acid desaturates gene cluster. Now I really lost everybody. Yeah, definitely. Are you popular at parties? Okay. But there's no downside for someone who would be wanting or interested in taking omega-3 fatty acids. But you said it's the balance. The balance is what you need. The balance is what you need. You have to be balanced. And in the diets that we have now, we're, we still have, we have an excess of omega-6. Now, the omega-6 folks will say yes, but if you eat more vegetable oil that has more omega-6, it pushes down cholesterol. Well, it does, but we just got to finish having that conversation about whether that actually benefits anything or not. And we always go back to the heart, but not the brain. So going back to the heart, meaning, meaning individuals are looking at LDL cholesterol or total cholesterol and saying, well, this reduces total cholesterol, but that might be irrelevant to the, if I'm understanding what you're saying. Yeah, you are actually, you're not, you're not, you have it. You have it correct. So, that's what we're going to start. In fact, working on the omega-3 omega-6 story is what led many of us to start talking about saturated fats and start looking into that. Because if you say eat less omega-6, it's got to be replaced with something. And so what should you replace it with? Now, the best thing I think to replace it with is monounsaturates. So olive oil and, well, we now have we're clear cutting the Amazon to make avocados, avocado trees, and there isn't enough olive oil to supply more than a very small fraction of the demand in the United States. And so what I think we ought to be doing is what we learned how to do 20 years ago, which is to make effectively a kind of an olive oil, but we can do it with sunflowers and safflours and peanuts because we've, we basically taught them how to make olive oil from this perspective. They're called hyaluronic oils. And there is a fundamental disagreement about what will happen with that, but I, I mean, will it be the same as the trans fats? Is that what the disagree? No, no, I don't think it will. I don't think the trans fats will be relevant here because the fatty acid profile in these hyaluronic oils is almost indistinguishable from olive oil. In fact, olive oil has a range depending on where you grow the olive trees, whether they're in the hot area of North Africa or they're in the cooler area in Tuscany, let's say, and there's, there's more linoleic as you go north and there's less, and as you go into the hotter regions. And so there's a range. And so these hyaluronic seed oils have are within that range. You know, that, that's fascinating. You're talking about essentially the food matrix, but in a different way, the compounds of the food. And if you were to say in an ideal world, would you say, I want you to have two grams of omega three fatty acids, I want you to have, you know, a component of that is DHA 200 milligrams. And I want you to have olive oil from Tuscany because it's up north. How would you think about getting granular for someone who wants to just say, you know what, I'm going to do a tablespoon of mono unsaturated fat from olive oil, and then I'm going to do three pills of omegas, because that's going to give me two grams and then DHA. I don't hear that. Here, so the other thing to recognize is that when as the, I just told you that omega six suppresses omega three, if you push down the omega six, you don't need as much omega three. The omega three is actually more effective. We've never really calculated how effective, but, but I mean, you can actually. Meaning if you push down. If you have, if you have high linoleic acid, you're creating a metabolic need for omega three in order to balance it. You need more of it. I would rather have a traditional diet. We didn't have these amounts of omega six in the diet before roughly the year 1900 before, maybe earlier than that, but it's about that. There were almost, there's almost nowhere on the planet where we had these amounts of linoleic acid. There's some that was in northern China with, with rapeseed oil, but, but only a few hundred years ago. So this omega three, this omega six business with high levels of linoleic acid is, has been an uncontrolled experiment that we conducted from the 1950s and coming back here and saying, well, we don't want to do this new experiment by pushing it down. Well, no, that wasn't the experiment was putting it so high. I see. And the omega six would be things like corn, so here's our canola. I'm glad you asked me that question. So here's the problem. It has not been for 20 years that being able to say the name of the plant that an oil came from tells you what to eat. We can't, we can no longer do that. You can't say soybean oil because there's four different soybean oils that have been widely sold in the marketplace. There's, there's at least three sunflower oils, and they've all been intentionally bred to have different fatty acid profiles. So I can't just say for what reason, for what purpose, for the very purpose that I'm describing. And, and, and the other reason is that the traditional oils, what we used to call the commodity oils 20 years ago, the you know, from Chicago, there's commodities and the options exchange. Yes, indeed. So they, they, yeah, how many hog bellies do you want? Anyway, these are jokes where we are collectively funny together. If you, if you, if you push down the amount of omega six in the oil, it, it increases the shelf life and the frying life. And so we've been frying potato chips. We lays up in North of Dallas and everywhere else around has been using these hyaluronic oils for years because the frying life is longer. There's fewer of these peroxides that get formed during the frying process. And so they like it a lot better. Now I'm speaking for, for lays and they should hit me over the head because I don't know I've never been set foot inside lays, but at any rate, I'm pretty sure that's what they've been doing. And, and that, and that I think has, has made the products healthier. I mean, what I used to like to say is, you know, if, if chips make you fat, that they have to make you sick too. And I, I had lays potato chips the other day. So busted. That's it. So you, for the omega, for the omega three fatty acids, when someone, I know you don't see patients, but is there a good ratio? If there is a physician out there, again, we look at omega three, omega six, ratios, many of our patients have higher omega sixes and there's a whole, yes, they do. And so, and so you're thinking the, you're thinking of the mega quant kind of a mega three. Yeah, I think, I think that what those folks have been using are pretty good, is a pretty good guide. So below four is, is bad and above eight is good as the, the, as a kind of the broad guidelines. Yes, I think, I think there is an I, I, I watched that whole story develop since well before it started. I remember the discussions on it and one person running with it. And I'm very in a manner of speaking proud of him for running with it. That's very cool. Making, making it happen. So there was one individual. Yes, that's right. And you can look on the website and for Bill and, you know, and it's, it's, and then we had conversations about, you know, well, you know, we're measuring cholesterol, what the heck does that mean? If we could only measure omega three somehow, then we'll give people a little bit of control and we think that'll have more control and be more important. I pulled this number, it says more than, and I don't know if this is accurate. Sure. More than 95% of people fall short of recommended DHA intake. Yeah, well, that's, that's almost certainly true. But it depends on who's recommending it and what it should be recommended. Absolutely. What about kids? How much? So, you know, I think about my two little kids, we have little fish oil, so we try to give them, you know, it's kind of hit or miss, but is that adequate? I know that you're going to say something is better than nothing, but it is, but you talk about the food matrix. Yes. How much should they, in an ideal world where you're like, okay, well, look, look, my, my, my grandkids, just stuff salmon into their mouths. They'll absolutely. So maybe we just have that. Okay. Well, I am kind of more of a Whole Foods guy, little W, little F, despite the fact that headquarters are over four blocks from my place. Oh, I see, I see, I get it. Okay. But I'm more of a guy who thinks that, that the nutrient package is important. If you can't have fishing people, we've got allergies and this kind of stuff, right? So, and we can talk about, you know, what has caused that we don't be introducing foods. I think pediatricians are getting the idea that should be induced and everything very early on when the immune system is recognizing self and non-self. But at any rate, I get my, well, when she was three, I'd bring her over to Wegmans in Rochester and she wants the salmon sushi and then she, we sit down and she picks the salmon off the top, leaving the rice carcasses behind and just shoves the rest of it down her throat. And so she's taking in something like two weeks worth of shana omega three, maybe more than that in that little thing. And she's giggling the whole time. She's gobbling it up. I mean, but you guys got, you guys got ahead of it. And, you know, my kids, they love salmon, but, you know, the other sardines also good sardines. Absolutely. What about, I'd love for you to just touch on this. People will say, well, I'm getting my omega three from flax and chia walnuts. Would you just speak to that just very quickly? Sure. So this is a little bit of an example that something is better than nothing. But the data say that these plant-based sources of omega three are not the same as the lawn chain omega threes. And I'm hesitant to call them animal sources because there are vegetarian sources naturally. Naturally. Yes, it would be from the from the single soul organisms from the ocean. So we call them algae oil, but there's there's other other things like that. And I am well aware that there are vegetarians in the world. I won't say vegans, but I will say vegetarians. And even this is a nuanced thing because if you decide you don't want to eat animals, but it's okay to eat dairy, for instance, that's great. If you start substituting high omega six oils for your dairy fat, that's when things really go off the rails because dairy fat is very low in omega six naturally. So you're getting the least suppression of the omega threes. If you eat dairy, if you start eating high omega six sunflower oil, you're suppressing the omega threes, you're creating a metabolic demand. And when we do studies in animals, and there's lots of them out there, and I would just remind everybody that animal studies can be very well controlled. Human studies are the worst controlled studies that there are. Okay, so forgive me. I'm doing my science here. Okay. And so when people don't talk about well controlled studies, and they only rely on human studies, you can argue about things for seven decades like this that we're arguing about. But at any rate, when you feed those oils to pregnant animals, you can look at almost anything going on in the brains of the offspring, and they are screwed up. Not, I mean, I've never heard that as a technical term. Screwed up as a technical term. But you make a really good point. And to frame this up for people, people have been arguing about omega threes, omega sixes, should women, pregnant women eat fish, should kids eat fish avoided because of metals? And what I'm hearing you say is really two things. Number one, we got saturated fat wrong. Yes, we did. We really got the wrong. And number two, omega three fatty acids, DHA are necessary, amazing for brain development, important for pregnant women. And conversely, omega six is not just safe and neutral. We're just going overboard with it. That's all. The omega six, you have to have some omega six. And so when I have these conversations with people, they say, sometimes they just go too far and they say, omega six is terrible. No, no, it's not terrible. You need the balance. You need this much. And you really don't want to go above this much. It's really not that hard. I mean, a little is absolutely required. I mean, there's actually human studies from the early days from 1961, where kids were put on omega six deficient diets, babies were put on omega six deficient diets, and they knew they were omega six deficient, and they developed skin lesions, which were rapidly reversed when they put them back onto the omega six. We can't do that anymore. It probably wasn't a great idea. But it served a purpose, at least answer a question way back then. And so you have to have some omega six. It's just not so much. Not as much. Just two final questions. The last one is a bit robust. There is a lot of discussion about ADHD, mood, omega three fatty acids. Is there real science behind the utilization of omega three fatty acids and improving ADHD? So I am told, now I know how to read this literature. I must say that I am not as up on the ADHD literature as I would like to be to answer you definitively. People I know who've been working on this say that there is something to it. But I'm not going to tell you that given fish oil, the kids with ADHD is going to solve the problem because I don't know that that to be the case. I don't think it'll make it worse. I agree with you. I'm hopeful that it can help. It seems to help a lot of other things, maybe not ADHD. My last question. So beyond fish, mercury, saturated fat, nutrition policy information seems to really shape our thinking and it becomes extremely, I don't want to say misinterpreted, but accepted as truth when perhaps it's not. And this is just from my curiosity, which I'm sure that other people are thinking, is there something else also on the horizon that you're thinking, okay, this hasn't been developed enough yet and it's going to come out? Well, let me answer it this way. I think the story of precision nutrition, precision medicine, precision nutrition is an untold story. It is one that doesn't fit as well with the research paradigms that we have, you know, ask a huge number of people what they eat and then try to make correlations and that kind of stuff. But I think that we are going to have to get towards that. So when we have these conversations about one number for everybody, like in dietary guidelines, we need to be getting much more specific about that. We need to be able to say, here are life stage issues, pregnancy, lactation, brain development and maintenance of brain health are all going to be going to have demands that are different than that 50 year old man that I was complaining about. And they are, as a matter of fact, there's just no question that they are. And then there are, I am quite sure, differences due to genetics. We really should tighten up our genetics when we look at these things. I am more or less one trick pony on my genetics because we identified something we think is actually a causal polymorphism that defines requirements. But I am still working on that. And I think we have not incorporated that into our research the way we should and into our recommendations the way we should. A lot of genetics that is not, you know, an amino acid change, so that are really obvious changes. But a lot of the genetics we do is correlative or associated. We've heard of, the nerds have heard of genome-wide association studies and the A association is a cleaned up version of the word correlation. And we really need to move that needle towards things that will be causal insofar as that word is relevant in genetics. So I think we have a long way to go to do personalized nutrition. That's where I would like to see us move the whole thing forward beyond the general recommendations for everybody. And I'm looking forward to our next visit. I'm sure that you'll have more to share and also with the genetics, but also the metabolomics of the genetics. Okay, well metabolomics and liponomics is a subset of that is something that is near and dear to my heart in part because it is fundamentally a chemistry thing. And it is also something that has been devilishly difficult from a laboratory point of view. You always get correlations, you always get data. And as my advisor used to say, and not everything is an artifact, you hope. So Tom Brenna, you are, I'm a huge fan. I think you do great science. You're a great human and just, it is so wonderful to have scientists like you that don't mind teaching are very personable and just willing to identify the science and also speak to it. Just thank you for all the work that you've done for all the years behind the scenes. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thanks.