Foods Humans Were Never Meant to Eat ! - Dr. Gary Fettke

Added: 2026-06-06

[00:00:00]I wanted to ask you, there was a I think a lecture that you did where you mentioned that three things you hate is processed carbs or carbohydrates, processed carbs, and then seed oils.

[00:00:10]Tell me why you dislike these three.

[00:00:13]>> So, I'll I'll proudly uh self-promotion, I'm the first person in the world to describe the combination of sugar, refined carbohydrates, and seed oils being a model of inflammation and then for as you know, inflammation is behind every modern disease. It just It does.

[00:00:32]We you got to look for it, but it's there.

[00:00:34]>> Okay.

[00:00:34]>> So, it was a nutritional model of modern disease based around the model of inflammation. And I can still remember, you know, and I'm I just pieced those three pieces together. I'm not the person who came up with the you know, the the biochemistry of fructose and the and the things with with carbohydrates and seed oils, but I put the jigsaw together and it was in 2013.

[00:00:55]And so, in summary, it's with sugar makes you hungry, carbohydrates make you fat, and polyunsaturated seed oils make you sick and inflamed. That's the meme.

[00:01:08]And so, we can go through all of that biochemistry. And so, people say, "Oh, you can have fruit." I go, "Well, yes, you can, but you're setting yourself up for the big four." So, how do I summarize it in a minute? Um tricky, but and so, therefore, that's why those talks on nutrition and inflammation uh all there with diagrams and pictures and In fact, I got into trouble with the medical board before making it too simple, which is ridiculous because, you know, we're supposed to aim medical education at a 10-year-old.

[00:01:37]You know, that's the functional level of passing information across, so you can If you can explain it to a 10-year-old, then that's what we need to be aiming our message at. There's no use using a convoluted language. We can go into it today, but at a public health policy level, you need to get it across.

[00:01:54]>> Agreed.

[00:01:55]>> So, sugar is 50% fructose, 50% glucose. So, the metabolism of fructose fructose goes down multiple pathways, goes down an aldehyde pathway which gets effectively is what produces alcohol. And so, that actually in short becomes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

[00:02:17]It goes down a small amount of storage into glycogen, but the majority of it gets converted into uric acid, which as a byproduct which then affects affects our nitric oxide again biochemistry.

[00:02:28]Nitric oxide is so important in keeping our blood vessels open, our brain vessels open, and our immune system going.

[00:02:36]It then has another pathway which is actually going when you got too much of it which is in the LDL production. You know, I hate the term bad cholesterol, but you know, in summation becomes bad cholesterol particles.

[00:02:49]The small dense LDLs.

[00:02:52]So, that's fructose. Then you've got glucose.

[00:02:55]And my COVID talk, which I you know, I did a whole lot of research on it was carbohydrate the dose is the poison cuz we're all demonizing carbs. And again, it's quite detailed, but essentially I came up and said if we're going to call it toxic, what is toxicity? So, I called toxicity at a level when it has a negative impact on the system.

[00:03:15]And at a biochemical level because you can't argue with the biochem. You can interpret all sorts of stuff. Everyone has their opinion. That's why I keep coming back to biochemistry.

[00:03:24]At a biochemical level, 4 g or 1 tsp of glucose starts to have a negative impact on the system.

[00:03:31]And it has that effect at number one at a glycocalyx level. So, at every single blood vessel, it has it at an insulin level because insulin when you intake glucose, then the body produces insulin to get it out of the system.

[00:03:49]And then insulin itself has problems with affecting it's a growth hormone for tumors. It's a growth It's a hormone related to making us fatter and it's also related back into the inflammation argument. Again, particularly through joints and cartilage and and inflaming um uh the synovial sites within a joint. So, it's another level.

[00:04:11]And then you've got the other thing is that if you have too much glucose in your diet, you end up pushing that into fructose and back into the fructose pathway.

[00:04:20]So, that's part of the perfect storm.

[00:04:22]You then add in the polyunsaturated seed oils. So, oils and fats are exactly the same apart from their temperature their their substance at room temperature. So, an oil is liquid at room temperature, a fat is solid at room temperature.

[00:04:38]That's sort of the nut but none of the difference between them is the number of double bonds within them.

[00:04:43]So, double bonds create flexibility in between all the the the parts of that uh fat molecule.

[00:04:50]Double bonds you have, the more unsaturated it is. So, saturated fat has no double bonds in it.

[00:04:56]Monounsaturated fats have one double bond in it. Polyunsaturated has multiple double bonds in it. So, those double bonds are important if you're a plant because plants tend to have more double more polyunsaturated oils in them, which allows them to have flexibility particularly in cold weather so that the the plant can stay alive.

[00:05:16]But, so we as humans are at 37° or what is it? 90 >> 98.

[00:05:23]>> 98.6 I think at in in in Fahrenheit terms.

[00:05:27]But, that's so therefore the fats are solid with saturated fats are mobile in our bodies at that temperature. But, if if we went back to a room temperature of 20° then we'll just become frozen blobs.

[00:05:41]So, it's important for plants. But, the trouble is those double bonds come at a price. They Each double bond is a point of flexibility but it's also a point of weakness and they can become oxidized.

[00:05:51]Now, if your plant's not really much of a problem because plants are plants, but as humans, if we actually have an abnormal amount of polyunsaturated oil in our fat, fats in a polyunsaturated fats as a proportion of the fat in the body, then that makes it prone to oxidation and that creates points of oxygen free radical release and then points of inflammation.

[00:06:18]Now, the problem is our modern diet, if you go back over time, theoretically, we probably had about 1 to 2% omega-6 and omega-9.

[00:06:28]So, the omega-6 is the number of the six omega-6 double bonds, nine double bonds, you have an omega-12 which is the 12.

[00:06:34]But, the omega-6s we know are important. We need We only need a tiny amount of them, but they're also the inflammatory ones.

[00:06:43]So, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we probably had 1% of the fat in our bodies was poly omega-6 linoleic acid. Stephan Guyenet published a paper, I don't know, 10 12 years ago, where he he was able to track omega-6 levels, linoleic acid levels in I think it was about primate studies initially and then following it through, where and and I I spoke I wrote to him.

[00:07:09]I said, "W- Why did they start studying this in the 1950s?" And he said, "I don't know, but someone started it."

[00:07:15]And they did a whole lot of these things. So, what we've seen over the last 70 years is that theoretical 1 to 2% of linoleic acid, omega-6 inflammatory oils, have gone from 1 to 2% to 7 to 10% to 20 to 25% and maybe 30% is now of the fat in our bodies is omega-6 linoleic acid, which is prone to oxidation, which is prone to inflammation.

[00:07:42]The perfect storm is that if we've got our modern diet, you know, the standard Australian diet, the standard American diet, you know, the sad concept is highly inflammatory because it's high in sugar.

[00:07:55]It's high in carbohydrates, which if you're insulin resistant, 50% of that gets flipped back into fructose anyway.

[00:08:02]And then the fat that's produced as a result of the deposition of that too much carbohydrate and the deposition of fructose is now, instead of being 1% omega-6, it's now 25-30% omega-6.

[00:08:17]So, it means nearly a third of the fat in their bodies is actually inflamed.

[00:08:22]It also means to be and got myself into a bit of hot water, I don't mind saying it. It also means at an embryonic level at conception, the what that first cell and the second and the fourth and as it the doubling goes out is being built out of inflamed cells prone to oxidation.

[00:08:43]And is it any wonder we now see a rising rate of birth defects and it's well documented, particularly in women with gestational diabetes, that we see that at at term that the just at the the abnormalities that are found are related to environmental and not genetic.

[00:09:07]So, they're more likely to have birth defect cardiac defects, they're more likely to have uh learning issues, they're more likely to be inflamed children, more likely to have obesity, and more likely to have ADHD. It's just fascinating that we've changed the environment of the baby from what the food the mother eats. Now, it's not to make give a guilt trip to mothers. We've actually already apologized to our children.

[00:09:30]You know, even though the youngest is 30 now, but we say sorry about your diet 30-40 years ago.

[00:09:36]But, it's just I'm I'm just fascinated about the topic because we've got a modern society which is completely out of control with sickness. I don't call it a health industry, I call it a sickness industry.

[00:09:51]We've got people that with modern diseases which we're seeing on the increase, whether or not we're looking at all of the autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease, dementia, the childhood behavioral problems, the depression. They're all related to inflammation. They've all been on the increase since we've been on this highly processed diet as the more we've moved away from an our ancestral diet as can very well say the proper human diet, you know, a natural food diet, the more we've moved away from it, the more we've gotten into more more troubles. And all I've said is, "Okay, what are the three big biggest components of that?"

[00:10:31]I think it's sugar, fructose, highly processed uh carbohydrates, and the seed oils. And that's the model.

[00:10:39]Everything else, whether or not we're talking about light and exercise and sleep, is actually secondary. I'm not saying they're not important, but one of the ways I describe it is if you've got a car you've got a car Have you got a car? Have you got a car in your life?

[00:10:50]>> yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, [laughter] yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[00:10:53]>> [gasps] >> Yes, I do have a car.

[00:10:55]>> You do have a car. All right, do you put petrol in it or diesel?

[00:10:58]>> Uh petrol.

[00:10:59]>> All right, do you ever ever put a little bit of diesel in it?

[00:11:01]>> No, never.

[00:11:02]>> Well, a little a little bit in moderation won't hurt. Well, of course it will. Okay. So, >> [clears throat] >> we pay pay more attention to what fuel we put in our cars than we put in our bodies. Now, if you put the wrong fuel in your car, then you are going to spend more time getting it serviced.

[00:11:17]>> Right.

[00:11:17]>> And it doesn't matter how much time you spend washing the outside of the car, vacuuming, cleaning the tires, checking the tires, doing changing the oil. If you keep putting the wrong fuel in the car, it is not going to run properly.

[00:11:31]>> Right. Well, welcome to the modern world.

[00:11:34]Let's get back to putting the right fuel in our bodies and then reassessing what needs to be done after that. The number of people, as you know, who just change their diet and move away from ultra-processed food, cut down the amount of sugar, cut down the amount of garbage food going in, and cut down the seed oils, see an improvement. Some of those improvements will occur very, very quickly. Like you can get control of type 2 diabetes within days.

[00:12:01]But what's interesting, the half-life of linoleic acid, the omega-6 fatty acid, we don't know.

[00:12:11]But it's probably around 4 years.

[00:12:14]>> Wow. How did you determine that?

[00:12:15]>> Well, that's a really good question. I Professor Glenn Lawrence in New York is a professor of oils. I think he's retired now. He wrote a book about oils and I found this article where he was talking about the length of and So, I wrote wrote to him and said, "Look, I'm really interested in this topic. I'm trying to work out what the half-life is." So, I said, "Read my book." So, I read his book.

[00:12:38]Um a few hundred pages. I mean, pretty dry reading. Nothing personal, Glenn, but it was pretty dry reading. Bit like Tom Seyfried's book on cancer.

[00:12:45]Really good, but pretty dry reading.

[00:12:47]Anyway, Glenn, I wrote to him and I said, "Look, I've read your book. I know a lot more about oils now, but you still haven't answered my question, which is what's the half-life of linoleic acid?" And we had a bit of a discussion. He said, "Probably about 4 years.

[00:13:01]It's really hard to work out."

[00:13:03]So, therefore, the what that means is if you decide to get rid of ultra-processed food, and so I don't dine out. If I do, it's going to be a steak, you know, where I'll find a place with steak or if it's takeaway, it'll be a roast chicken, you know, farm roast chicken.

[00:13:16]So, I know it takes about probably 4 years for the inflammation, that inflammatory component of linoleic acid to get out of the body.

[00:13:26]And we know we can test that, you know, like if you look at pe- people with melanoma, they've got higher levels of linoleic acid in their subcutaneous fat than people without melanoma.

[00:13:36]It always drives me insane that the cancer councils around, you know, particularly here in Australia say, "Oh, avoid the sun with melanoma." No, no.

[00:13:43]What the Why do we have an increasing rate of melanoma in non-sun exposed areas? And I think the same's in the US. I've seen some papers about that.

[00:13:52]So, it it's got nothing to It's not nothing, but it's almost nothing to do with the sun. It's actually related, I think, to the omega-6 fatty levels. At least there's a relationship there, which starts to explain the problem. So, in practical terms, and I my my sister-in-law was diagnosed with and I've got her permission to speak about it was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

[00:14:13]And she reluctantly agreed with her brother-in-law and said to try out this low-carb keto sort of thing.

[00:14:19]And almost to the day at 4 years, she lost all of her symptoms.

[00:14:25]>> Right.

[00:14:25]>> Well, again, that's anecdote. Now, now I've got you know, many anecdotes of that.

[00:14:30]>> too. We have a couple in our practice, though. They're anecdotal.

[00:14:33]>> MS. I'm not saying MS, but these are the n equals one studies. These are the pilot studies that say, "Okay, if you we're trying to reduce inflammation in your body, but hang on, just based on biochemistry and linoleic acid, which we know to be the oxidizable inflammatory uh uh oil, it might take 4 years. And it's just interesting, I think people do, on their own journey, keep improving for that period of time. On the flip side, we're all getting older in the same 4-year period, so it all balances itself out. Um and on an informed consent aspect, you know, we've now got to in society where, you know, people sort of go, "If I eat too much sugar and crap food, it's not not good for me."

[00:15:17]But we've got sugar. People are aware of sugar. We're starting People are starting to be aware of carbs because people hear about low carb. In Australia we've got low carb beer. It doesn't mean I'm advocating alcohol, but it's still we've got it there.

[00:15:28]Women's Weekly, you've got a Women's Weekly version in the US.

[00:15:32]Our Women's Weekly here in Australia have at least three low carb cookbooks now.

[00:15:37]And keto cookbooks are it it's mainstream. But what I want now to this just moved in I'd like to see in the next 5 to 10 years that people say I if I'm going to have polyunsaturated seed oils in my diet, it's going to make me sick. You know, that's maybe the next step in my journey.