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Coke’s New Institute, inSANE Sugar Claims, and More


Jonathan: Welcome to the Smarter Science of Slim, the scientifically-proven program where you eat more and exercise less to burn fat and boost health.

Carrie: Eat smarter, exercise smarter, live better. I am soo ready for that.

[Audio Starts 00:23]

Jonathan: Hey everybody, Jonathan and Carrie Brown coming at you with another Living the Smarter Science of Slim podcast. Carrie has some exciting news to share with us folks, Carrie Brown.

Carrie: It’s not the same news I was deliriously happy about on the other podcast.

Jonathan: You’re in a streak of good news.

Carrie: I have more news. I finally quit the Diet Cherry Coke.

Jonathan: What?

Carrie: Yes.

Jonathan: Decades. Decades. After decades.

Carrie: No, no, no. I only started the Diet Cherry Coke last July.

Jonathan: Oh, okay. Was this in place of regular Cherry Coke?

Carrie: Dr. Pepper.

Jonathan: Oh okay, okay. But this is after, I would assume decades because you mentioned in a previous podcast that when you grew up you didn’t drink water, you drank Squash.

Carrie: Squash, right. Which is completely different.

Jonathan: But it’s sugar water, but it’s sugar water.

Carrie: Sugar water. It’s just, yeah sugar juice kind of that you dilute with water but I did kind of get into this whole Dr. Pepper thing but I drank fat Dr. Pepper because Diet Dr. Pepper tastes nasty. Then of course I met you and the Dr. Pepper had to go. Then I went with no pop for a long time and then I was in Georgia and it was 106 degrees and I hate water so I started drinking Diet Cherry Coke. It had to go.

Jonathan: It just went.

Carrie: Well just I wouldn’t… yeah. It’s a struggle but I’m going to do it. I’m done with it.

Jonathan: So that’s the way. So let me get this right Carrie.

Carrie: I’ve now told the world that I’m done with it because now I’m accountable, right?

Jonathan: I’m so impressed with Carrie because last week you shared with us that after literally you know me I’m like Mr. Green Tea, I’m all about green tea. That it took two years or not two years, a year of podcasting with me and you finally found a way to incorporate green tea in basically the same week that you eliminated the last remnants of sugar waters. It’s like beverage hallelujah.

Carrie: Actually you are right because it was the same weekend I went…

Jonathan: Look at that.

Carrie: I cannot do this diet soda, I can’t do it… anymore. Then I started ripping open tea bags and tipping in my smoothie. Yes we’ve had a beverage revolution at the Brown house.

Jonathan: I love it. Then it gets back to our other podcast talking about as we get better and better and better — to be clear folks as we start going SANE we’re going to find that on a pretty regular basis things that may have been a little uneasy at the very beginning start to become habits. Then we start to look for other ways, other things we can do and pretty soon before you know it, not only are you SANE like Carrie, but you’re doing things like you got your green tea, you don’t even need any sort of sweetened beverage at all. I bet Carrie if you two years ago —

Carrie: [Indiscernible 00:03:15]

Jonathan: You know what I’m saying, you know what I’m saying. Pretty soon, pretty soon these successes start to build on one another and we look back a year later and we’re like, what? Pretty amazing.

Carrie: I have to confess. You know this but nobody else does but I’m about to confess this too because hopefully that’ll make me even more accountable. I drink like 20 times more water on podcast days than any other day just because I’m sitting in the studio with you. So I need to kind of figure out a way to translate podcast water drinking into every day.

Jonathan: Well Carrie here’s what I can do.

Carrie: But at least I do it on podcast days, right?

Jonathan: Here’s what we can do, I’ll get you an 8×10 picture of me that you can frame and put up in your office. You can just set it right there on your desk and that way you can be like, “Jonathan’s watching me. Jonathan’s watching me.”

Carrie: Okay actually the thought of not having to have to the picture…

Jonathan: I’m going to sneak into your office and I’m going to change your desktop wallpaper to just be like a giant picture of me.

Carrie: We love you.

Jonathan: Oh, goodness. Carrie, it was funny because before we were recording the podcast Carrie share with me two bits of soda. It’s ironic that you call it pop because I thought people just called it pop in the Midwest, but you call it pop. I thought it was called soda everywhere else or soda pop in the south.

Carrie: Well actually in England we call it fizzy drinks.

Jonathan: Fizzy drinks.

Carrie: Fizzy drinks.

Jonathan: When you go to the Louvre.

Carrie: Yeah, I think I’m just confused at this point. Whatever it is I no longer drink it.

Jonathan: Well Carrie speaking of fizzy drinks, share with the wonderful listeners the awesome website that you discovered over the weekend.

Carrie: Well it’s the Coca-Cola Company Health and Beverage, Health and Wellness Institute.

Jonathan: That’s awesome. The Health and Wellness Institute [inaudible 00:05:05]

Carrie: Seriously. When I saw the link, I’m like, I have to click on that because [inaudible 00:05:10]. Is it like April one?

Jonathan: Yeah, is it April fools?

Carrie: I just stood there with my and Daisy the cat will vouch for me, I just sat there staring at my computer with my mouth open going, “I am not looking at this. This is not real.” The whole website basically is saying why fizzy drinks, soda, pop, sugar or artificial sweetener, aspartame, it’s all goodness and why we need to drink it to stay healthy. The subtitle was something like Resource for Health Professionals on the Science of Beverages and Hydration. I still… my brain cannot process what I saw when I was up there.

Jonathan: Well Carrie this is going to sound a little funny but I actually, stick with me here this is going to sound odd. To me this is actually really good news. Here’s why I say that because in the late 50s we saw a similar thing created it was called the Tobacco Institute. Now the Tobacco Institute we may be more familiar with was depicted in the 2005 movie Thank You For Smoking as the Academy of Tobacco Studies and it essentially was.

It was this organization that did “science” to show that smoking wasn’t addictive and that smoking in moderation wasn’t bad for you. So the fact that today’s the new nicotine as I, actually I like that phrase. The new nicotine aka added sweeteners, the fact that they feel that they need to bring up and they need to create and they need to start throwing millions of dollars at creating faux science via their own new nicotine institute, actually shows me that this collective movement to get back to eating food and not edible products, people are taking note of it.

Carrie: Right. However, without people who just see that who haven’t heard the science or haven’t read the science or haven’t been introduced to the kind of things that you teach us, there are going to be people who believe this.

Jonathan: Oh absolutely.

Carrie: Because they’ve got health studies all over this website. I mean it’s just staggering to me. I don’t know how anybody could actually —

Jonathan: Sleep at night?

Carrie: Themselves and do that. You know and there are going to be people who believe it to be true.

Jonathan: Absolutely. The good news is I feel that truth does win out. It just takes some time and as we saw with tobacco I mean it took decades and decades and decades. I’m even surprised in my life the fact that it’s basically illegal to smoke in any public place anywhere. Twenty years ago if you told someone that that would be true they would probably think you’re crazy. That’s a complete, no, no, there’s no way like a bar. I can’t smoke in a bar in downtown Chicago. They would say, “That’s ridiculous.” But it’s true now.

Carrie: So it’s good job that I’ve given up pop because in 20 years it’ll be illegal, I’ll be carrying pop around in paper bags.

Jonathan: I don’t think it will be illegal but I think for example, I was speaking with someone on a guest podcast recently and they mentioned that in their children’s school when they answer a math problem correctly, they’re given their choice of a pixie stick or something. Like they are given candy in the classroom to encourage good behavior. I like to call that second hand sugar because again it’s fine if you want to smoke, but it’s not okay to take a drag of your cigarette and then blow it in your kid’s face.

That’s not okay. So no, do we ban smoking? Absolutely not. But do we protect those who can’t otherwise protect themselves from having that decision made for them? Yes. I think that’s the world we’re headed towards which I think is great. Once we know something is deadly and addictive to say that we should be allowed to advertise it specifically at children is immoral and we’ve already established that precedent in our country.

That’s why you’re not allowed to market drugs that are addictive to children. This is a drug that’s addictive and they market it to children. So is it going to be illegal? No. Will it become regulated like other substances of abuse? I hope so.

Carrie: So what do you think about the New York City ban on big pop then?

Jonathan: To me I think it’s —

Carrie: Since we’re having a pop [indiscernible 00:09:43].

Jonathan: I don’t support it. It would be like saying you can’t buy two packs of cigarettes at a time, that doesn’t make sense. If an adult wants to drink a lot, you can just buy two 20 ounce sodas. It’s not a meaningful, it causes there to be debate in an area where there shouldn’t be debate. If we want to start setting precedence’s around sugar why not attack marketing directed at children. I don’t think anyone thinks that it’s a good thing to market a detrimental and addictive substance to children that cannot delineate the difference between advertising and facts.

Studies have been done all around the world that show that children that are basically under the age of nine if it’s on television it’s all the same. Like it doesn’t matter if it’s educational or it’s an ad to them it’s just stuff and there’s a reason why kids are like, “Mommy I want this because it’s got this cartoon character on the front of it.” Right? So to me if we want to start making a change in the world, let’s start making changes in ways that are not going to cause unnecessary controversy and are going to protect those that can’t protect themselves versus a law that essentially says well you just can’t buy two packs of cigarettes at a time. But if you go to the end of the line then you can buy a second pack of cigarettes. It doesn’t really make much sense to me.

Carrie: Don’t you think it has some value in the fact that it’s making it more inconvenient for people and it’s also raising awareness. Why are they doing this? Maybe there is something… I don’t know. Do you think it has any value? The fact that we’re talking about it.

Jonathan: I don’t.

Carrie: Not you and me but the fact…

Jonathan: My personal opinion is I just think if we’re going to spend time and money on it, it’s gotten a lot of mixed signals. For example, I’m just saying okay, there are better ways to spend our political capital. For example, we subsidize the production of corn and sugar and soy and all kinds of other crappy starches and sweeteners. Why not subsidize the production of spinach? Subsidize the production of grass-fed beef. Make it more profitable to feed your beef grass that which doesn’t kill them versus feeding them corn which if you keep up causes their stomachs to erode and they die.

Let’s do that and that will then make healthy eating more convenient. There’s a reason, if I’ve got a choice between buying a $1.99 Happy Meal for my kid and that some of that’s like $5.99 because it’s fresh produce and I’m financially strapped at some point in time I’ve just got to get calories in my kid’s stomach, right? So I think if we’re going to do things in the political arena doing the wrong things can actually do more harm than doing nothing because you’re going to stir up controversy and you’re going to get people to argue against you who if you would have come at it from a different approach — Carrie it’s a basic principle of sales.

Get people saying yes, get people saying yes. So you take someone who would agree with yeah you probably shouldn’t be able to market an addictive, detrimental substance specifically at children. I agree with that. There’s a lot of people who would agree with that, that don’t think you should limit the size of sodas an adult can buy. Just like you don’t limit the amount of cigarettes an adult can buy. We don’t, we don’t limit the amount of cigarettes an adult can buy. We don’t limit the amount of alcohol an adult can buy. So why would we limit the amount of soda and adult can buy? Right?

Let’s look at precedence’s we’ve — I’m on my political soapbox now. There is a precedence for saying if it’s addictive and detrimental you cannot advertise it to children. We all agree on that principle. So now the question is are added sweeteners addictive and detrimental? Yes. That is not controversial. That has been demonstrated clinically.

Carrie: Except if you go to the Coca-Cola Company —

Jonathan: Coca-Cola Institute —

Carrie: Beverage Health Institute where you’ll learn that nothing has been proven bad about anything.

Jonathan: Oh my goodness. It’s so funny to Carrie, because you know I love science but for anybody who doesn’t think added sweeteners and processed starches are addictive, try to stop eating them. It’s not easy to stop. There’s a reason why it’s hard but if you for example were just to say, “I’m not going to eat chicken anymore. I’m only going to eat every other kind of meat and fish.” You wouldn’t be like, “Oh, my god I just need chicken, I have to have it.” It’s not that like food is addictive, that’s not true. Not all food sources trigger.

You can do brain scans, it’s not hard. Sugar and these concentrated sources of sweetness trigger the same opiate receptors in the brain that heroin, nicotine, morphine, other opioids, those type that class of drugs, concentrated doses of sweeteners do that, other foods do not. They’re uniquely addictive.

Carrie: I have been trying since I went to Georgia to not drink pop and it’s just been nine months just endless struggle. So it is, it’s hard. You get addicted to it and it’s the hardest thing ever to stop but we’ve got to stop.

Jonathan: We’ve got to stop and you know what the easiest — this is kind of a stupid point, but I’m already going in that direction. What a gift we can give our children to not cause them to ever have to go through that addiction in the first place, right? It doesn’t mean they can never have anything sweet. Carrie has introduced more sweetness into my life but I’ve got my 15-pound bag of Xylitol and I swear anytime I want something sweet, I enjoy it and it’s wonderful and we’re not talking about giving up the taste of sweet.

Just like we’re not saying that no one in the world can ever enjoy intimacy with another person. We’re just saying be safe about it. We’re saying be safe. We’re saying protect yourself, same kind of thing. We preach safe sex. Let’s preach safe sweeteners. I’m all about like the analogies today with the new nicotine, safe sweeteners. Like man, it’s a good day Carrie.

Carrie: So I had a conversation, something you just said made me remember. I had a conversation earlier today with somebody that I work with and she came into my office with two cans of Diet Cherry Coke and I was just like, “Aaah.” because I’m struggling here people.

Jonathan: [crosstalk 00:16:27] recovering.

Carrie: I’m recovering —

Jonathan: Aholic, Dr. Pepper-holic.

Carrie: Right. So I’m like, “Uh. Get that out of my office.” She was like, “Well I bought you one.” because she didn’t clearly get the memo that I’d stopped. So anyway and I said, “I’m doing it anymore.” Then we got into a conversation about it and she said, “About aspartame.” I’m like, “So you know all about aspartame?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like then, “How can you keep drinking that stuff if you know about aspartame?” Then we carried on talking and then she said to me, “My daughter is not allowed to drink pop. She drinks maybe two cans a year.”

I’m like, “Okay. So if it’s not good enough for your daughter, if you have a compelling reason why your daughter doesn’t drink it.” She was adamant that child is never going to get that addiction. I said, “But then over here, how are you okay with that?” Obviously she couldn’t answer me. She just sat there and kind of looked me and I went, “You’re going to have to think about it now aren’t you? Because how do you do that?”

Jonathan: Your story inspired me Carrie because in a previous podcast we talked a little bit about how if you’re one of the survivors of the great nutritional depression as I’m calling it now. Which was the period of time which sugars and starches were “good for you” and any natural food that contained fat was bad for you and protein was frankly irrelevant. If you lived through that some things happened to your metabolism which we can mitigate the bad effects of but the metabolic aka propensity to store fat, once you have a fat cell you can’t get rid of it. That’s a fact it’s not controversial. So, if you were subjected to dietary guidelines that put an additional 10,000 fat cells on your body, we can shrink those fat cells but unfortunately it’s like if you smoked for 20 years, there’s going to be some damage to your lungs that we can’t do anything about.

The good news though is we can make you healthy but we can’t get rid of those fat cells. So it’s just not going to happen. However, one of my favorite authors in the entire world actually a gentleman who a quote of which I used in my wedding vows to my wife, is a psychologist, Austrian psychologist, by the name of Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl was a survivor of the concentration camps and his whole theory around human motivation and psychology is called logotherapy. With logotherapy, he talks about is, it’s all about finding meaning.

Like even if someone has to endure something as terrible as a concentration camp as Viktor Frankl did, if you can find meaning in suffering you can transcend it. Like people just need a meaning. So for example, Viktor thought to himself, “I can endure this suffering in the concentration camp so that I can survive and make sure it never happens again.” Like he could put meaning to it. Now it is horrible that individuals had to live through this great nutritional depression and they may have tens of thousands of additional fat cells on their body because of it. However, you can put meaning onto that.

You have the power to ensure that you are the last generation that ever has to be subjected to that. You can be a transition person and you can be that change. You can ensure that your children do not have to face that same subjugation that you did. While you may not be able to have six-pack abs, you can leave a legacy that will enable health and happiness for generations to come. I don’t know Carrie but personally that might bring a bigger smile to your face than any abs ever could.

Carrie: I think it’s brilliant that this friend is not allowing her daughter to get into that physiological addiction with pop but at the same time, the power of example is incredibly powerful.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Carrie: So my concern is that that adorable little girl is going to think well that’s okay, when I’m an adult it’s going to be okay for me to drink that. We’ll just throw that out there to people that it’s not — yes you may be doing a great job of not letting your children eat things that you now know are harmful but be a good example and let that be a motivation to help you to live a SANE life. I unfortunately don’t have that built-in motivation because you know my cats don’t care. But if most people do have someone they live with that can kind of hold them accountable I just think that’s very, very powerful.

Jonathan: Carrie, you hit the nail on the head and I’m going to even take it one step further and demonstrate that. Even if you don’t have individuals that you live with, Carrie you are a perfect example of this in the sense that the people you work with see you and see what’s happening and you being that example provides an “emotional subconscious” argument that no amount of science and no amount of logic will ever be able to duplicate. If an unhealthy sick person is like, “Well, eating this way is clearly good for you. Look, I do it, look at the results.” You’re like, “Well, no dude. I’m not going to listen to what you say because the results aren’t there.”

But you by being SANE and by getting eccentric, and by being the radiant element that you are, even if you’re light isn’t shining on individuals that cohabitate with you, we all live in a world that’s interconnected. We will touch lives in ways that we’ve never even known and I feel like that what you’re saying is having a motivation like that, having a motivation like leaving a legacy and improving the lives of others indirectly just because you’re such an awesome example, is a hell of a lot more motivational than trying to make the needle on the scale go down a little bit lower. At least for me it is.

Carrie: I have never been described as a radiant element before. I’m going to have think about that.

Jonathan: A radiant element. Your luminosity is quite high today Carrie.

Carrie: I don’t know what to say to that.

Jonathan: I think I might have to get you a Christmas present which is like a shirt that says, Radiant Element on it. It sounds like a band.

Carrie: Yes, yes there we go.

Jonathan: To all the radiant elements out there sharing this wonderful podcast with us–

Carrie: Stop drinking pop.

Jonathan: And please don’t support the New Tobacco Research Institute. The Coca-Cola Institute of Sound Science with no freaking ulterior motives at all. As you remember from the Smarter Science of Slim text that I quote, “Hydration is very important and consuming six to eight ounces, or six to eight ounce drinks of any kind, including soda, can contribute to a wonderful hydrated life.” Fortunately Carrie we’re eating smarter and we’re exercising smarter and we’re living better so, we’re off.

Carrie: And we’re not drinking pop any more.

Jonathan: And we are going to eat more, and we’re going to exercise less but we’re going to do that smarter and we’ll see you next week.

Carrie: See ya.

Jonathan: Wait, wait don’t stop listening yet.

Carrie: You can get fabulous free SANE recipes over at carriebrown.com.

Jonathan: Don’t forget your 100 percent free eating and exercise quick start program as well as free fun daily tips delivered right into your inbox at bailorgroup.com.

This week:
– Big food takes one step closer to admitting it is no better than big tobacco
– What to think about the latest internet nutrition fad: “sugar is good for you”
And much much more!