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https://thescienceofdieting.com/

The Science of Dieting, Denver, CO (2025)

03/12/2025

Not all carbs are created equal, with some being better than others. But how can you tell? In part III of our miniseries on carbohydrates, The Nutrition Grouch reviews the nutrition epidemiology literature to discuss what types of carbohydrates you should be eating, based on the literature. Some answers are pretty straightforward, some are surprising, and others just don’t make any sense at all.

Some of the topics in today’s episode include:

Carbs: nothing is “OFF LIMITS” (0:00)
When it comes to food, variety is “not” the spice of life (0:36)
A quick recap of our last two episodes on carbohydrates (7:06)
Ultra-processed foods tend to contain carbs AND fats (9:30)
Three types of scientific studies suggesting carbs do not turn to fat (11:59)
Some carbs increase your risk of type II diabetes but so do some fats (15:09)
Saturated fat and trans-fat increase your risk of developing type II diabetes (23:57)
TV Dinners: Phase I weight loss for The Science of Dieting (25:46)
Does eating dairy (saturated fat) cause type II diabetes? (28:20)
A potential podcast episode: if I was an internet as***le (33:09)
Reverse causality, ice cream, and Diet Coke (34:07)
Ultra-processed cereals and their surprising protective superpower against diabetes (35:30)
Should I eat low glycemic foods to prevent type II diabetes? (37:02)
Fruit juice and the risk of developing diabetes (46:22)
I thought fruits and veggies were supposed to be SUPERFOODS?! (46:55)
Brown rice versus white rice, which is better? (48:46)
Potatoes: apparently a hill that I will die on! (49:17)
Nuts, coffee, and alcohol (52:27)
Conclusion and beginning of final summary (52:53)
Are whole grains really that good for you? (54:37)
I want to go work for the cereal industry! (56:02)
Bottom line recommendations (58:30)

Not all carbs are created equal, with some being better than others. But how can you tell? In part III of our miniseries on carbohydrates, The Nutrition Grouch reviews the nutrition epidemiology literature to discuss what types of carb...

02/26/2025

In part II of our miniseries on carbohydrates, Jeff Burkart of Brave Chicken and I talk more about how in most cases carbs, are not only not harmful, but in many cases they’re actually beneficial to you.

Some of the topics in today’s episode include:

Three ways science shows us that carbs do not make us fat (1:09)
Does eating carbs cause you to develop type II diabetes? (3:13)
What is BY FAR the GREATEST risk for developing type II diabetes? (10:23)
Who really cares what you’re eating if you have obesity (14:09)
Is it easier to avoid fat or carbohydrate? (26:56)
A low fat diet should be low in fat AND carbs (29:15)
Don’t waste your calories on unnecessary fat (30:35)
Is it easy to get fats in your diet? (32:56)
Is there ever a reason to justify eating pop tarts? (33:56)
There are recommendations for carbs and protein, but not for fat (39:25)
How Jeff formed his perspective on carbohydrates (41:33)
If you don’t have fitness figured out by 35, you may want to hire someone (44:52)
80-90% of fitness is in the basics, try not to overcomplicate things (45:45)
Jeff’s personal story of disordered eating (46:10)
What Jeff’s first job out of college taught him (55:39)
Eating carbs to lose weight? (57:13)
Exercising in the “fat burning” zone is inefficient and time consuming (58:09)
Performance isn’t just for Olympic athletes, it’s for you too! (1:00:57)
Eating carbs to preserve performance during dieting (1:05:01)
If you do any volume of training at a relatively high intensity, you need carbs (1:11:02)
The “collective illusion” of carbs being bad for us (1:14:37)
Todd’s theory on why people say that carbs are bad for us (1:18:17)

In part II of our miniseries on carbohydrates, Jeff Burkart of Brave Chicken and I talk more about how in most cases carbs, are not only NOT harmful, but in many cases they're actually beneficial to you.Some of the topics in today's episode includ...

02/12/2025

Most rational people realize that there are different varieties, types, and sources of carbohydrate. But the dialogue around carbs is not a rational one. We’re far more likely to hear about how carbs are bad, period. They make you fat. They give you diabetes. You shouldn’t be eating them. There’s just a blanket condemnation of an entire macronutrient without really knowing all that much about carbs.

In today’s episode The Nutrition Grouch explains what carbohydrates are, the difference between simple and complex carbs (there really isn’t), how carbs are digested, absorbed, and metabolized in the body, how carbs can be converted into fat but probably won’t make you fat, how energy balance and carbohydrate control fat burning, and what he looks for in a grain based carbohydrate product.

This podcast episode is jam packed with great information that hopefully can help you better understand carbohydrates, be a little less afraid of them, and maybe even learn to love them, guilt free.

Most rational people realize that there are different varieties, types, and sources of carbohydrate. But the dialogue around carbs is not a rational one. We’re far more likely to hear about how carbs are bad, period. They make yo...

01/29/2025

I want to thank Jeff Burkart for co-hosting this episode and sharing his 20 years of training experiences and expertise! Jeff will be periodically joining me on episodes to come (hopefully every other). His insights and stories are always super helpful and inspiring to hear. I hope you enjoy listening to and learning from him as much as I do.

Here are the full episode details.

It may sound crazy, but everyone needs an enemy. Not the kind that wants to hurt you, but someone or something to focus your efforts to fight against. If you don’t find something to fight against, you may find yourself lacking purpose and floundering in the wind.

Enemies can help define who you are by helping you identify what you want to become and who you definitely don’t want to be. In today’s episode The Nutrition Grouch and special guest/co-host, Jeff Burkart discuss their biggest enemies and how they use them to succeed at what they do.

Not all enemies are helpful and as Jeff illustrates, you need to pick your battles. But even if you do not want, or are not seeking an enemy, they’ll be sure to find you in some way. Rather than letting them define you, use that energy to drive action towards your goal, whether that be race performance, weight loss or healthy living.

Some of the topics in today’s episode include:

Introduction to my new co-host (0:00)
My man strike, I mean, man crush (4:07)
An Alan Watts idea: everyone needs an enemy (8:06)
When you say “enemy”, what do you actually mean? (9:13)
Jeff’s greatest enemy (13:23)
Todd’s greatest (internal) enemy (20:25)
Why Todd doesn’t belong in academia or industry (20:21)
Afraid of being pigeonholed into one role (24:12)
Personal training is so much more than just sets and reps (25:33)
Health coaching: a jack of all trades, master of none (27:55)
School left me totally unprepared for the real world (29:10)
Even with a PhD, you’ll never know everything! (35:01)
How to be okay with not knowing everything (36:11)
Being comfortable with making mistakes (37:43)
Todd’s many, many external enemies (40:24)
Nutrition is no longer science based, now it’s art and entertainment (44:28)
Nutrition is used to support your superiority complex (46:21)
Nutrition is dangerous when it becomes part of your identity (46:54)
I’d be out of the nutrition field if it wasn’t for my enemies (47:32)
Don’t you dare trust science, unless it’s for your dog’s food! (49:29)
Do you pick your enemy, or does your enemy pick you? (50:30)
What happens when you get rid of McDonalds? (51:35)
Is having an enemy worth it? (52:29)

It may sound crazy, but everyone needs an enemy. Not the kind that wants to hurt you, but someone or something to fight against. If you don't find something to fight against, you may find yourself lacking purpose and floundering in the...

01/15/2025

We all eat (some) junk food, but exactly how much is too much? What exactly is junk food and are some junk foods worse than others?

In today’s episode The Nutrition Grouch explains that while there is a strong dose response relationship between ultra-processed food intake and type 2 diabetes risk, not all ultra-processed foods are bad for you. In fact, some ultra-processed foods may be “good” for you and actually reduce your risk.

He also discusses the limitations of the ultra-processed food classification system and while he encourages you to reduce the total amount of ultra-processed food in your diet, he also stresses the importance of “picking your spots” to enjoy the taste, convenience, and freedom from the kitchen that ultra-processed foods may provide you.

Some of the topics in today’s episode include:

An elementary school explanation of junk food (1:21)
2009: the debut of Monteiro’s NOVA ultra-processed food classification (2:13)
Beer and wine aren’t good for you, but liquor is worse (7:52)
Whole wheat bread and Wonder bread are in the same category? (10:11)
Cheerios are not the same as Lucky Charms (10:44)
Bro science idiots and breakfast cereal (11:19)
70% of our food supply is ultra-processed! (12:51)
Ultra-processed is a dirty word and shorthand for “bad” for you (13:26)
Not all minimally processed foods are good for you (15:55)
What’s the bigger problem: nutrient deficiencies or too many calories? (18:36)
Not all ultra-processed foods are bad for you (Chen, 2023) (21:10)
Are some ultra-processed foods actually “good” for you? (22:40)
Is Diet Coke better for you than regular Coke? (25:29)
What’s worse, animal products or Coke, the answer may surprise (26:39)
My kids love hot dogs and chicken nuggets, darn it! (27:14)
Chen’s 2023 quintiles of ultra-processed food consumption (28:44)
There isn’t any “safe” amount of ultra-processed food (31:04)
It’s extremely difficult to quantify your exact risk (31:55)
Are there any health benefits to cutting out ultra-processed foods completely? (36:40)
When your nutritional tank is full, it’s full (39:11)
Is 10 servings of fruits and veggies a day better than 5 servings? (39:41)
You can do your health far more harm with nutrition than you can do good (40:30)
Fruits and veggies versus cancer reoccurrence (41:31)
The blunted pleasure response of habitual ultra-processed food consumers (44:01)
My favorite researcher of all time, Kevin Hall (45:23)
A bag of Doritos versus a bag of baby carrots (47:18)
We’re all asking the wrong question about electric cars (50:49)
Induced demand nutrition (52:41)
NOVA is too broad and unrefined, is there anything better? (57:52)
The crazy individual variation in how foods are metabolized (59:01)
How much junk food is too much junk food?

We all eat (some) junk food, but exactly how much is too much? What exactly is junk food and are some junk foods worse than others?In today's episode, The Nutrition Grouch explains that while there is a strong dose response relationship betw...

12/04/2024

You can pay someone to make so many of life’s problems go away but this simply isn’t the case with your nutrition. No one else can do the work for you, you have to do the work.

While there are a number of products and services that can reduce or even eliminate your cooking burden, none of them are long-term, stand-alone solutions.

In today’s episode, The Nutrition Grouch discusses why you, and you alone, must take responsibility for your diet and the reasons why it must be this way.

Some of the topics in today’s episode include:

200 food decisions a day (7:44)
Even professional chefs can’t cover everything (10:17)
What are the possible meal options? (11:37)
Listed: the easiest to the most burdensome meal options (11:53)
The matrix of meal solutions (13:55)
No one knows your schedule, tastes, and preferences better than you (15:21)
After 12 years, I still don’t always get my wife’s food preferences right (16:15)
Why in person grocery shopping is still worth the time and effort (18:29)
Knowing what to do “in theory” versus the knowledge of having done it (20:34)
The “right” information doesn’t equal the “right” eating decision (22:04)
The time Jeff B. challenged my tacit knowledge and left me embarrassed (22:48)
Food marketers have filled your head with too much useless s**t (25:13)
The illusion of explanatory depth: how does a toilet work? (28:16)
You don’t learn anything by blindly following a meal plan (30:09)

You can pay someone to make so many of life's problems go away but this simply isn't the case with your nutrition. No one else can do the work for you, you have to do the work.While there are a number of products and services that can reduce...

11/13/2024

We keep treating nutrition and weight management as a logic and reasoning problem when it is not. The math is simple, eat fewer calories than you burn, and you’ll lose weight. If you know the number of calories in a food, you’ll make the decision to eat it or not eat it to stay within your daily calorie budget.

Yes, weight loss is a calories in/calories out math equation, but it is also so much more than that. We need to spend more time looking at how food decisions are made and how to better control our food environment.

The nutrition field seems to think that we can “educate” our way out of the obesity epidemic. That if people had the “right” information, they would make better eating decisions. But eating decisions are not born out of logic and reasoning.

Eating decisions are controlled more by our emotions (whether conscious or subconscious), the food environment, and the pleasure and reward we get from eating sugar, fat, and/or salt, than by knowing what is “good” for us or “bad” for us.

We’re not going to outreason, or outwit, manipulate or hack our physiology to decrease our hunger or increase our metabolism through various diet strategies. We’ve been there, tried that (food doesn’t work but medicine can).

Nutrition does not exist in a vacuum, separate from all the other parts of peoples’ lives. We need to take a more wholistic approach at looking at the individual’s emotions and stressors that lead to food decisions. Rather than focusing on the food, we need to focus on the individual.

We also need to find ways to “replace” the pleasure people are getting from food by engineering other daily pleasure inducing opportunities into their lives whether that be phoning a friend, watching Netflix, or going for a walk.

We keep treating nutrition and weight management as a logic and reasoning problem when it is not. The math is simple, eat fewer calories than you burn, and you'll lose weight. If you know the number of calories in a food, you'll make t...

10/30/2024

Good nutrition is not the same as wellness. In fact, nutrition is only a subset of a subset of wellness. And yet, if you listen to many of the experts in the field, you’d think that good nutrition is the be all, end all, of health.

In today's episode the Nutrition Grouch talks about how he used to think that "wellness" was just kind of a fluffy, meaningless, shallow term. And he also chronicles how he drank the diet and exercise Kool Aid starting as a high school student, then as a college student, and well beyond that before realizing that it just wasn't cutting it for him anymore.

By focusing so intensely on diet and exercise, many of us have neglected the other aspects of wellness that are ultimately responsible for our health and happiness. In future episodes he plans on exploring what it means to be well and how to best achieve it.

Good nutrition is not the same as wellness. In fact, nutrition is only a subset of a subset of wellness. And yet, if you listen to many of the experts in the field, you'd think that good nutrition is the be all, end all, of health.In t...

10/16/2024

In episode 27, I provided you with the foundation of meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking, in what I like to call "the weekly meal cycle". But I couldn't tell you EVERYTHING you needed to know in one episode.

So, today's episode in an extension of episode 27 and looks to fill in the gaps on the weekly meal cycle and covers kitchen essentials that I find indispensable to cooking and food storage as well as other tips and tricks to limit your decision fatigue and remove some of the obstacles and inertia that inevitably occurs during your workweek.

In episode 27, I provided you with the foundation of meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking, in what I like to call "the weekly meal cycle". But I couldn't tell you EVERYTHING you needed to know in one episode.So, today's episode in an...

10/02/2024

The weekly meal cycle is a concept that I coined to describe all the steps that go into meal planning: from finding recipes to creating grocery lists, grocery shopping, cooking, eating, running out of food, and starting the process all over again.

In today's episode the Nutrition Grouch talks about how he developed the weekly meal cycle and how it has been so incredibly helpful in his own life. It's probably one of the best organizational things he has ever done.

The weekly meal cycle is a concept that I coined to describe all the steps that go into meal planning: from finding recipes to creating grocery lists, grocery shopping, cooking, eating, running out of food, and starting the process all over again....

09/18/2024

Hello everyone - I'm (finally) back from summer vacation and just released the first podcast episode of my new season. And I'm going to start off by asking you all a question...

If you can't perform your preferred mode of exercise, what's your backup plan?

If you can't perform your preferred mode of exercising, what's your backup plan? If you can't run, do you bike? If you can't bike, do you swim? If you can't swim, do you lift weights? If you don't have weights available, do...

06/05/2024

My latest episode -- I'll be taking the summer off from podcasting to enjoy time with my family. But don't worry, I'll be back to grouch this fall. I hope everyone has a super fun summer!

Summer, summer, summertime! Ah, summer vacation, a time to rest, relax, rejuvenate, enjoy the great outdoors, and the many hours of daylight. Summertime is also a time when your eating goes sideways, and your food environment gets dest...

05/22/2024

For all of the talk about "being hungry" on a weight loss diet, we surprisingly have very little research on the relationship between hunger, dieting, and long-term weight loss. From the RCT and cross-sectional data that we do have on hunger and body mass, I'm not convinced that hunger plays a major role in weight loss or weight gain.

Hunger is often reported as one of the biggest reasons why a weight loss diet fails. And yet, dietary strategies to reduce hunger, such as drinking more water, eating more protein, fiber, fruits, and vegetables, and even going on a ketogenic...

05/08/2024

I'm obviously biased, but so many good nuggets in this one...

What is a fad diet? (0:36)
What diet is healthier, a true Paleo diet or a modern-day diet? (7:49)
Why did obesity skyrocket? One word: CARBS!!
How many fast-food restaurants have you ever been to? Can you name them? (15:26)
The carbohydrate/insulin hypothesis and Occam’s Razor (16:30)
Is a 5-12 NFL record really better than 3-14? (29:25)
Everything in moderation is a stupid saying (52:21)
When it comes to food, variety is not “the spice of life” (55:17)

Among many others!

I really don't like fad diets but there are a few things that they actually do get right. In today's episode I talk about 5 of the things they do get right as well as what some of the pitfalls of even those five "positives" are.To get to tha...

04/24/2024

I love nutrition but I hate the way it is practiced. In my opinion, there’s academic nutrition based upon science, facts, figures, and knowledge and then there’s the business of nutrition based upon sales, marketing, and persuasion.

I just can’t figure out how to compete in the business of nutrition, or rather, I just can’t bring myself to do it.

In health & wellness, nutrition knowledge, realistic expectations, and context seem to be optional. Instead, testimonials, best case scenarios, a total lack of quantification, false optimism, wishful thinking, and low effort, high reward programs seem pretty standard.

What I want more than anything is for nutrition claims to actually represent the data and the evidence and for them to be put into the context of life. I know this isn’t the way it works and there are far too many moneyed interests for it to work this way. But this is the way I operate, and this is what you can expect from me. Honest, contextual assessments, and advice.

We’re a little too good at telling people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.

I love nutrition but I hate the way it is practiced. In my opinion, there's academic nutrition based upon science, facts, figures, and knowledge and then there's the business of nutrition based upon sales, marketing, and persuasion.I just ca...

04/10/2024

No one ever has enough time. Everyone is too busy. Meal planning becomes an afterthought and meal decisions are made in the moment. Pardon the pun, but this is not a recipe for success.

Diets work in the short-term because they help you create a negative energy balance and provide you with a system and a way of eating. But they fail in the long-term because diets fall on your priority list and suffer from a lack of long-term commitment.

In today’s podcast the Nutrition Grouch outlines the first three steps you need to take to build a systematic, comprehensive way of eating and also talks about the importance of periodically identifying/ranking your priorities and making sure that nutrition stays towards the top. He realizes this isn’t easy and that some sacrifices need to be made, but it’s what you need to do for healthy living.

No one ever has enough time. Everyone is too busy. Meal planning becomes an afterthought and meal decisions are made in the moment. Pardon my pun, but this is not a recipe for success.Diets work in the short-term because they hel...

03/27/2024

Is McDonalds really that bad for you? Yes, it is. But it's not McDonalds that is bad, it's how much and how often you eat McDonalds that is bad. The poison is in the dose. Do you think that you could eat 3 fresh, natural, prepared on site, Chipotle burritos each day and still be healthy?

Is McDonalds really that bad for you? Yes, it is. But it's not McDonalds that is bad, it's how much and how often you eat McDonalds that is bad. The poison is in the dose. By focusing so intently on hating McDonalds people ...

03/13/2024

For health: there are some merits to both
For weight loss: neither approach is optimal

Small changes aren't big enough and nutrition perfectionism is too "health" focused. Weight loss requires "big" changes but focusing too much on health distracts us from what truly matters -- calories. Much of this podcast is about my trying to explain why I think eating for health and eating for weight loss need to be separated if you have a lot of weight to lose.

Change is super freaking hard. In an effort to get people to change their diets, many practitioners have advocated for a "small changes" approach. That is, make a few small changes to your existing diet and exercise to make the change ...

The Science of Dieting

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