Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome member of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute Ben Sutton Good morning everyone If you would before you take your seats Would you please rise for the presentation of the colors by the Ventura County Naval Base color guard and Please remain standing for the performance of our national anthem by Yeoman Aaron Dixon From the best ship in the United States Navy the USS Ronald Reagan Gentlemen ladies parade the colors Who's brought stripes and bright stars Through the Pairs fight or the red were so Gastar spangled Bear have your attention for just a few moments, please down the cafeteria If I could have your attention for just a moment, that'd be great When accepting the 1980 nomination for president of the Republican National Convention Ronald Reagan Described America's unique responsibility as a defender of freedom He affirmed that the United States has an obligation to its citizens and to the people of the world Never to let those who would destroy freedom dictate the future course of human life on this planet Today those values of freedom and democracy are under attack all around the world Ukrainians are defending their freedom against unjustified and unprovoked Russian aggression Israelis are fighting for their survival against brutal forces that are bent on their destruction in The Indo-Pacific Taiwan and our other friends and allies are increasingly at risk as China seeks to forcibly Reshape the region in its authoritarian vision We recognize the fate of our own freedom reflected in these country's struggles and As we seek to defend freedom abroad we must grapple with serious challenges at home Sequestration and reliance on continuing resolutions hinder effective defense planning and production as well as our ability To serve as the arsenal of democracy Being Secretary of Defense has never been an easy job and in this complex and dynamic environment. It's especially challenging fortunately America's 28th Secretary of Defense is an extraordinary man who has dedicated his life to the service of our country Before becoming the civilian leader leading the Department of Defense Lloyd Austin had a distinguished 41 year career in the Army that Included command at the core Division Battalion and brigade levels His awards include the Silver Star and he served as vice chief of staff of the Army and Later as commander of the United States Central Command Responsible for all military operations in the Middle East in Afghanistan Secretary Austin has inspired military officers and civilians alike with his unshakable sense of duty and Sacrifice and we're fortunate to have his steady leadership guiding our Department of Defense during these tumultuous times last year at the Reagan National Defense Forum Secretary Austin reaffirmed in his keynote address and I quote a basic American truth and the struggle between those fighting to defend democracy and those bent on Imperial aggression the United States stands with the forces of freedom Those struggles have only grown since he delivered those remarks a year ago And so we look forward to hearing more of Secretary Austin's vision for how our nation must rise to Challenge and defend freedom Ladies and gentlemen, would you please join me in welcoming a great American and the 28th United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and thanks for that kind introduction. I know you said at the outset that being Secretary of Defense has never been easy Leon Panetta and Mark Esper said it was easy on airwatch. They don't see what the problem is You know, this is my third time speaking To the Reagan National Defense Forum as Secretary of Defense So this is starting to be a habit We've got a great delegation here from the Department of Defense including Secretary Kindle several combatant commanders General CQ Brown and other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Let's give them all a round of applause. It's also great to be joined by Representatives in out from our allies and partners and by distinguished members of the United States Congress You know, I'm always grateful For support from Congress for our mission and for our troops So while I've got you here, let me urge you to pass a full year appropriation That's the single best thing that Congress can do to strengthen our national defense You know our competitors don't have to operate under continuing resolutions and so Doing so erodes both our security in our ability to compete and I also urge you to pass our urgent supplemental budget request To help fund our national security needs to stand by our partners in danger and to invest in our defense industrial base You know, only one country on earth can provide the kind of leadership that this moment demands In only one country can consistently provide the powerful combination of innovation ingenuity and idealism and A free minds free enterprise and free people and that's the United States of America And so I'd like to talk to you today about some key national security challenges In about the very American way that the Department of Defense is meeting them And let me be blunt about our mission The US military is here to win our country's wars and to win them decisively We will always try to deter a conflict But if we have to defend our country, we will fight and we will win, you know watching the news these days Reminds me of one of president Reagan's jokes Today he would say If someone offered us the world on a silver platter Most of us would take the platter We're living through challenging times and that includes the major conflicts facing our fellow democracies Israel and Ukraine and bullying and coercion from an increasingly assertive China In a worldwide battle between democracy and autocracy So these are the times when both our friends and our rivals look to America These are the times when the American people count on their leaders to come together And these are the other times when global security Relies on American unity and American strength President Biden calls this an inflection point in world history And with his leadership We have rallied our allies and partners to defend the rules-based international order Now, I know that that phrase doesn't get everybody's pulse racing But the rules-based international order is central to our long-term security It is the structure of international institutions Alliances laws and norms Built with American leadership after the staggering losses of world war two And those rules help ensure that Nothing like world war two can ever happen again They uphold sovereignty and honor borders They help ensure that civilians are protected And not targeted And they help to punish aggression And keep bullies in check Since 1945 the rules-based international order has helped to give our country and the entire world An unprecedented period of peace and prosperity, but peace Is not self-executing Order does not preserve itself And security does not flower on its own The world built by American leadership Can only be maintained By American leadership And as President Biden has said, American leadership is what holds the world together from Russia to China from Hamas to Iran Our rivals and foes Want to divide and weaken the United States And to split us all from our allies and partners So, at this hinge in history America must not waver American leadership rallies our allies and partners to uphold Our shared security And it inspires ordinary people Around the world to work together toward a brighter future But the troubles of our time will only only grow worse without strong and steady American leadership To defend the rules-based international order that keeps us all safe And if we forfeit our position of responsibility Our rivals and our foes Will be glad to fill that vacuum You know, in every generation Some Americans prefer isolation to engagement And they try to pull up the drawbridge They try to kick loose the cornerstone of American leadership And they try to undermine a security architecture that has produced decades of prosperity Without great power war And you'll hear some people try to brand An American retreat from responsibility as bold new leadership So when you hear that Make no mistake It is not bold It is not new And it is not leadership As the old saying goes If you think that education is expensive Try ignorance And if you think American leadership is expensive Consider the price of American retreat Over the long sweep of American history the cost of courage Has always been dwarfed by the cost of cowardice And the cost of abdication has always far outweighed the cost of leadership The world will only become more dangerous if tyrants and terrorists believe that they can get away With wholesale aggression and mass slaughter In america will only become less secure if dictators believe that they can wipe a democracy off the map And the united states will only pay a higher price If autocrats and zealots Believe that they can force free people to live in fear So you can see that core insight at work In our approach to three quite different challenges In the middle east crisis In russia's invasion of ukraine And the strategic challenge from the people's republic of china On october 7th Hamas terrorists murdered More than 1200 israelis And at least 35 americans And took more than 200 hostages It was the deadliest terror attack In israel's history and the bloodiest day in jewish history since the end of the holocaust Hamas massacred innocent civilians inside israel's border It murdered A 74 year old canadian israeli peace activists And grandmother who used to drive sick palestinians from gaza into israel For medical treatment it kidnapped toddlers And holocaust survivors And so just six days after the hamas attack i flew to israel to underscore our solidarity in our resolve And to make it crystal clear that america's commitment to israel security is ironclad And so we have rushed u.s security assistance to israel To help it help it defend its people and its territory And to help ensure that hamas can never again commit the atrocities that we saw on october 7th U.s leadership has helped in the release of dozens of hostages And we will continue to do everything that we can To help secure the release of every man every woman and every child seized by hamas Including american citizens We also rapidly reinforced our force posture in the middle east And that strengthens our regional deterrence Better protects our forces and helps defend israel And our presence now includes two carrier strike groups An amphibious ready group A marine expeditionary unit A guided missile submarine Integrated air defense and missile defense forces and more fighter aircraft and bombers But as we are working to stabilize the region Iran is raising tensions And after attacks against u.s personnel in iraq and syria our forces Repeatedly struck facilities in iraq and eastern syria used by iran's irgc And by militias affiliated with iran We will not tolerate attacks on american personnel And so these attacks must stop And until they do We will do what we need to do to protect our troops And to impose costs on those who attack them Now israel Is in a hard fight against a cruel enemy in one of the most densely populated areas on earth But democracies like ours Are stronger and more secure when we uphold the law of war So we will continue to press israel to protect civilians And to ensure robust the robust flow of humanitarian aid First and foremost, that's the right thing to do But it's also a good strategy You know, I learned a thing or two About urban warfare from my time fighting in iraq and leading the campaign to defeat isis Like hamas Isis was deeply embedded in urban areas And the international coalition against isis worked hard to protect civilians And create humanitarian quarters Even during the toughest battles And so the lesson is not that you can win In urban con urban warfare by protecting civilians The lesson is that you can only win In urban warfare by protecting civilians You see in this kind of a fight the center of gravity is the civilian population And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat So I have repeatedly made clear to israel's leaders That protecting palestinian civilians in gaza is both a moral responsibility And a strategic imperative And so I personally pushed israeli leaders to avoid civilian casualties And to shun Irresponsible rhetoric And to prevent violence by settlers in the west bank and to dramatically expand access to humanitarian aid This week a u.s. Air force c-17 Air lifted more than 54 000 pounds of un un medical supplies and warm clothing and food to the people of gaza And we expect more such flights in the days ahead and so Two things are true Any state has a duty to respond to a terrorist attack Like october 7th And every state has a duty to protect civilians during armed conflict And so that's crucial as israel works to dismantle the hamas terrorist infrastructure in gaza And it will also be crucial for our work with allies and partners After the conflict ends Now it would compound this tragedy if all that awaited israelis and palestinians At the end of this awful war Was more insecurity More rage and more despair israelis and palestinians Have both paid two bidder of price To just go back to october 6th So like every u.s. Administration since the six-day war in 1967 We believe that israelis and palestinians must find a way to share the land that they both call home And that means a path towards two states Living side by side in mutual security Now we understand all the difficulties But a two-state solution Remains the only viable way out of this tragic conflict that has ever been proposed And without a horizon of hope The israeli palestinian conflict will remain An engine of instability and insecurity and human suffering Ladies and gentlemen The united states will remain israel's closest friend in the world Our support for israel's security is non-negotiable, and it never will be Now In both israel and ukraine Democracies are fighting ruthless foes who are out to annihilate them And we will not let hamas or putin win And we will not let our enemies divide or weaken us So as we surge support into israel We remain focused on ukraine And we remain fully able to project power to uphold our commitments and direct resources to multiple theaters The united states is the most powerful country on earth And we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Now. I was just back in kiv last week And I had great discussions with president solensky And the minister of defense umerov And general zaluzny And I got to meet some of the brave ukrainian troops Who have taken back more than half Of the territory grabbed by russia since its unproved unprovoked and unjustified invasion In february of 2022 Since the united states and our allies and partners have worked to get Many key weapon systems including haimars and patriots and abrams tanks and more Into the hands of trained ukrainian operators And so 21 months into putin's failed campaign of conquest The russian military has been badly weakened above all that's because of ukraine's incredibly brave troops But ukraine's achievements Also flow from bipartisan us leadership And from the coalition of some 50 countries that we forged as president biden has said Faced with a threat to the peace and stability of the world And to democratic values That we hold dear To freedom itself We do things That we do we did what we always do The united states stepped up And i'm proud that our allies and partners have stepped up along with us But we still Need urgently need bipartisan support In congress to pass a supplemental To rush security assistance to our partners in ukraine and israel and elsewhere Meanwhile as we rally the world to defend ukraine Putin has been forced to scrounge For support from the likes of iran in north korea and you know It was chilling To see a delegation from a hamas openly visit moscow To meet with senior russian officials just weeks after the october 7th massacre And so it's no surprise that iran is fueling conflict in both gaza And ukraine by giving arms to hamas and drones to putin Now despite his isolation Putin believes that he can outlast the ukrainians But he is wrong The kremlin is waging an unjust war of imperial aggression But ukraine is fighting a disc a defensive war For national survival And you can feel that urgency on the ground And that gives ukraine A huge strategic advantage Of a just cause Now putin also thinks That he can outlast us He believes that our coalition will splinter That our willpower will fade and our democracy will just get distracted But once again Putin is wrong and we must continue to Be clear to the american people About the stakes in ukraine Ukraine matters profoundly to america and to the entire world And it matters for four key reasons First Putin's war opposes A stark and direct threat to security in europe and beyond Second Putin's aggression is a clear challenge to our nato allies third The kremlin's deliberate cruelty Is an attack on our shared values of democracy and decency And finally Putin's war Is a frontal assault On the international rules base order So the outcome of this struggle will define global security for decades to come And we don't have the option Of sitting it out So president biden has laid down a clear objective The united states seeks a freeze and sovereign ukraine That can defend itself today and deter more russian aggression in the future And so we are working together with our allies and partners to help ukraine build a future force That can ward off more russian malice in the years to come Because we don't stand up to the kremlin's naked aggression today If we don't deter other would-be aggressors we will only embolden them And we will invite more bloodshed and more chaos Russia's invasion of ukraine Offers a grim preview Of a world of tyranny and turmoil that should make us all shudder And that's important far beyond europe Our national defense strategy Describes the people's republic of china As america's most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the department of defense The prc is our only rival with the intent and increasingly The capacity to reshape the international order The prc hopes that the united states will stumble And become isolated abroad And divided at home But together we can prevent that fate And we've made extraordinary progress along with our allies and partners In meeting the china challenge And forging a more secure Indo-pacific In this decisive decade 2023 will be remembered as a decisive year For implementing us defense strategy in asia And so we're making our force posture in the endo pacific Far more distributed mobile and resilient We're helping our friends build up their own capabilities to defend themselves And we're working with allies and partners like never before before You know i've made four trips to the endo pacific This year And with each trip we've made even more progress In manila this february We announced the expansion of our enhanced defense cooperation agreement with the philippines To allow us access to four more philippine facilities In new deli this summer we unveiled a new roadmap for defense industrial cooperation with india Now that strategy is already driving our work together on key defense platforms We also rolled out a major deal to build aircraft engines in india And when i was back in india last month We announced our intent to co-produce armored vehicles with india Our first time with any foreign partner In may i visited tokyo To further modernize our alliance with japan as japan doubles its defense budget In july i became the first secretary of defense to visit papa new guinea And we made even more history by agreeing to a defense cooperation agreement between our two countries When i visited seoul a couple of weeks ago We chartered a bold future for our alliance with the republic of korea by signing a new tailored deterrence strategy And along with our partners in tokyo and seoul we made strides In trilateral cooperation with with our two great allies in northeast asia I also flew to brisman in july for the us australia ministerial ministerial consultations Which showed that our unbreakable alliance It's even stronger than ever And finally We're deepening our historic august partnership with two of our closest allies australia and the united kingdom And so yesterday I hosted secretary shops of the uk And deputy prime minister morales of australia here in california For our second august defense ministers meeting And through august our three democracies Are helping australia acquire a conventionally armed nuclear powered submarine And we're forging deeper partnerships Among our indus defense industrial bases and our innovation ecosystems Now all of this builds on a blunt military reality And that reality is that allies and partners Help us project power And share the burden of our common security But don't just take it from me Take it from president reagan Who said that our security Ultimately rests on the confidence and cohesion Of our alliance system Yet Our strength abroad Is rooted in our strength at home And in our ability to stay ahead of coming challenges And that's why we push so hard To invest in innovation And in our defense industrial base And above all in our people You know I had a great visit yesterday At our defense innovation unit in silicon valley Diu focuses on fielding and scaling commercial technology across the military It is directly plugged in the silicon valley Working with venture capital firms and tech innovators who are often doing business with do d for the first time And it will help us deliver thousands of game changing capabilities at speed and at scale When we sharpen our tech edge We expand our military edge And that's why we're making such major investments in innovation And we're giving the american taxpayer Extraordinary value Even while our spending on national defense As a percentage of GDP Remains about half of what it was during the last decade of the coal war The department's budget request includes $145 billion for r&d And $170 billion for procurement Now those are the largest such investments in us history We're also making major investment investments and combine all-domain command Combine joint all-domain command and control And those investments will make us even better at joint operations and combat integration To remain nimble We've also created the office of strategic capital Which will help attract and scale Private capital in our in our critical technologies We're also making unprecedented use of the multi-year procurement authorities Provided by congress To deliver critical munitions at affordable cost This includes the naval strike missile The maritime strike sm6 missile And the long-range anti-ship missile Now ukraine's high burn rate for artillery Has hammered home the need to invest even more in munitions So compared to the defense budget from just five years ago We're putting nearly 50 percent more money Into munitions And during this administration America's production of artillery shells won't just increase It won't just double It will quadruple Meanwhile, we've launched what the army calls the most ambitious Modernization effort in nearly 40 years for our defense industrial base And so some 50 billion dollars of our supplemental budget request Would flow through our defense industrial base And that will create or support Tens of thousands of good american jobs In more than 30 states That includes making missiles in arizona In vehicles in wisconsin In our in indiana In artillery shells in pennsylvania, ohio and texas And that all means Greater prosperity at home and greater security Around the globe And that brings me to One final strategic advantage that no competitor can match And that is nearly 3.4 million american patriots who protect our country Every day either by serving in uniform or as civilians Of the department our people rise to every challenge And i am determined to do right by them and their families So this year we secured a 4.6 pay raise for our troops And civilian workers Which was the largest in two decades We increased our basic allowance for housing this year by an average 12 12.1 The largest percentage increase in 15 years We're working to provide universal pre-k at our dod schools Offering flexible savings accounts to make child care more affordable And giving 12 weeks of paid parental leave to service members We're making it easier for our outstanding military spouses to flourish in their own careers including New benefits and new ways to help agencies and companies retain military spouses When their families are ordered to move abroad We are one team And we don't have one single teammate to spare And so we will not tolerate sexual assault or sexual harassment in the u.s military And by the end of this month independent military prosecutors will tackle cases of sexual assault domestic violence and other serious crimes And we're driving hard to reduce the tragedy of suicide in our ranks By improving the delivery of mental health care And ending the old stigmas Of seeking help And we do all of this for one simple reason Our people Are the greatest strategic asset that we have The u.s military is the most lethal fighting force in human history And we're going to keep it that way Ladies and gentlemen, we are the united states of america And it's not enough just to pursue our natural national interests We must also live our national values As president reagan said Our foreign policy should be to show by example the greatness of our system And the strength of american ideals And we must ensure As president biden has said That america remains a beacon to the world And we will not let that beacon flicker or fade And so In this uncertain hour At this time of testing The world looks to america again And we must not give our friends Our rivals or our foes Any reason to doubt america's result You know In times like these Extraordinary people can show extraordinary courage Ordinary people can show extraordinary courage And that's exactly what i saw in keith I saw a proud bustling city in the heart of mainland europe And it is in the gun sites Because of one man's hubris And fury But the ukrainian people have met putin's assault with defiance resilience wit And yes Even grace You can see it in the eyes of the troops fighting to drive out the russian invaders You can see it in the determination of the citizens of kiv ukraine reminds the world of the moral power Of our free people fighting to defend Their sovereign territory their democracy and their future And as americans We must do no less So let us come together To make our union more perfect In our country more secure in our world more just Let us come together to rally the nations of goodwill To the cause of human freedom And let us come together To meet this moment Thank you and may god continue to bless the united states of america


Hello and welcome to exchangefamiliar.com. My guest today is a CMO who has not just an exceedingly well in India, but has also featured in many global lists of best CMOs, a man who needs no introduction, Group CMO of HDFC Bank Ravi Santanam.


Hi everyone, welcome or welcome back to my channel. And today a Halloween TBR. So I wouldn't say that I am the biggest seasonal reader ever. My reading tastes do tend to alter vaguely at different times of the year. So in autumn, when it starts to get colder and it starts to get darker earlier and I can feel justified in being in my pajamas and having the candles lit at six PM. I tend to like to read more chunky novels that I can really spend time with, more historical novels and fantasy novels like many, many, many other readers. But I'm not really one for going in for holiday specific reads. That being said, this year I kind of fancy a dabble. I'm kind of feeling the Halloweeny vibes. I'm fancying some darker reads, some more magical reads, some more plot-driven reads. One could say more exciting reads than I typically go for. And to be honest, I just own some really cool sounding books that kind of fit this theme. So let's do a TBR. Needless to say, these a few books are ones that I am very excited for at the moment and ones that I may get to over the next couple of weeks. They won't all happen, I am sure. But these are the books that I will be prioritizing and picking from. So the first book on my Halloween TBR is The Harpy by Megan Hunter. This is a new book. I was sent this proof copy by the publisher. It is one I have been highly anticipating. It follows a married couple, Lucy and Jake, when one day a man turns up at their house and tells Lucy that her husband has been having an affair. Lucy and Jake then agree upon an arrangement to even the score of their marriage. Lucy gets to hurt Jake three times. So this is described as a dark fairy tale that is at once mythical and otherworldly at the same time as being fiercely contemporary. Basically my perfect Halloween read. I believe it explores love and revenge and metamorphosis. I'm expecting magical vibes and uncanny vibes. I think this might be quite unsettling. And I also believe that the prose in here is supposed to be very lyrical and very beautiful, which is something I really, really enjoy. I did very much enjoy Megan Harper's prose in her climate change dystopian novel, The End We Start From, which I would highly recommend by the way. So I'm very excited about this one. I think it sounds super dark and delicious and intriguing. And I'm very excited to get swept away. Next up is The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi. This is another proof copy that I was sent by the publisher. This one actually came out in summer, I believe, but I've been waiting until autumn to pick it up. I think it sounds really good. This is a historical novel set in the 16th century that follows a 14 year old orphan girl when she becomes a sin eater. Someone who hears the final confessions of the dying and eats their sins, taking them on for them so that they can pass onto heaven. This idea of a sin eater is fascinating to me.  I believe the protagonist in here ends up hearing the confessions of some of the queen's courtiers and gets swept up into this world of royal treachery and secrets and revenge. Dark historical novels are my favorite thing to read at this time of year. Bonus points if it has a female protagonist, which this one does. I'm hoping for drama and intrigue and plots. I think it's going to be a very good time. Next up is Perfume by Patrick Suskind. This is a modern classic for if I'm feeling a bit more that way inclined. Written in the 1980s and set in 18th century France, this novel tells the story of a man who has an extraordinary sense of smell. I believe he collects smells and one day it sets out to make the perfect perfume when he meets a beautiful young virgin. So this is a book that's been on my shelves for a couple of years now. I think it sounds super intriguing. I am pretty sure I'm going to really enjoy it based off of friends' reviews. I just haven't done the actual picking up and reading of the book yet. You all know what I'm talking about. I did actually mention this book in my Classics to Read in 2020 video as well. So this really needs to happen. I've heard that this book is as brilliant as it is weird and it is weird. It's supposed to be very dark and sensual. The reading experience is supposed to be completely immersive. I just need to try this one for myself and see what it is all about. And the final book on my Halloween TBR is Take It Back by Keir Abdullah. So this isn't a typical Halloween read. I don't think it is particularly spooky at all, but it is a crime thriller. So this kind of just feels right to me. The text on the front of this book says, one victim fore-accused who is telling the truth. Need, I say more. I believe this is a courtroom thriller that follows the victim, a 16 year old female girl who has facial deformities and an alcoholic mother and the defendants for handsome teenage boys from hardworking immigrant families. Anyone who's been watching my channel for a little while will know that I don't tend to read crime thrillers all that often, but every now and again, you just want the plot and the drama and the excitement that they provide. I'm excited to give this one a go. I'm hoping it's going to be a fast paced and addictive. It sounds like a good time. So there we have it. Those are a few books that I hope to get to this Halloween. I would love to know if you guys are seasonal readers. Do you tend to pick different types of books around Halloween? Please let me know down below. And also let me know your favorite Halloween read. That would be fun. Thank you very much everyone who's watched this video. I really, really appreciate you. I hope you're all having really nice weeks and I hope you have a lovely Halloween and I will see you soon with another video. Bye.


So I was really excited that we got a chance to interview doctor, you know, just a brilliant woman. And I think she's got an incredible message that and she's working against what the food industry wants, right? So she's definitely got an uphill battle. She's been doing this for over 15 years. And a lot of the great information that she gives related to nutrition, we've kind of talked about over the last 500 plus episodes that we've done on mine pump. So something that we did for a lot of people that are just now coming on board, we realized like, okay, not everybody's gonna be able to go back, listen to 500 episodes and on that much time. So how would we curate all of this great information that we've provided over the last few years into a 30 day put it all into bullet points and make it simple straightforward. Yes. So each day, you guys get an email sent to you with a topic, a single topic with bullet points, like Justin said, and then underneath that has any episode timestamped to right to the minute of where we discuss that specific topic that you want to you want to learn more about. In addition to that any studies supporting the topics that we're talking about. So this is our 30 days of coaching, it's absolutely free for people. And really what this is designed to do is to help you on your journey with food on training on mobility. I mean, you name it, we cover all the main topics that we would go over with any of our clients that we are training one on one, you guys go to our mind pump media.com.  If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Man, we just had a great interview with Dr. Nicola Vina.  Author of Why Diets Fail. In this episode, we talk about the addictive, yes, addictive properties of certain information in particular sugar. Now this is, this is what she studies. This is what she does. Now addiction has in medical terms, there are, there is a certain criteria that you have to meet in order for something to be considered addictive. Well, sugar and other types of foods, sugar in particular falls in this category from a physiological standpoint and from of course the psychological standpoint. So I know we've gotten into debates with other, fitness personalities and professionals and one of our friends that we love and hate, Lane Norton talks about how sugar is not addictive and this and that and the other. She would completely disagree and her science completely supports her and it's very, very compelling stuff. So it's a really good episode. If you want to figure out why you have such a tough time with certain foods or why it's hard to eat whole natural foods or why mind pump always gives a recommendation of avoiding heavily processed foods. Yes. This episode is for you. Now you can find more information on Dr. Nicole Avina on her website that's drdrnicholavinaavena.com and her book is Why Diets Fail. She's got several good books. She's got like the hedonic eating one. She's several books. Yeah. Yeah. Now she got several books. She's a neuroscientist and just brilliant woman. Brilliant woman. Awesome conversation. She's doing some research now on artificial sweeteners. She talks about that a little bit as well. It's pretty cool. So here we are talking to Dr. Nicole Avina.  It's like, it's almost a huge controversy in nutrition because, you know, in fact, I'm actually holding up a study right now that was just, it was just completed or just published, I believe this year. And the title of it was Eating Dependence and Weight Gain, No Human Evidence for a Sugar Addiction Model of Overweight. Now, in our experiences, trainers, we've worked with lots of clients and I also have two eyes and a brain. And I know, I can pretty much tell people that with 100% certainty that there's some foods that I will overeat and others that I won't. And sugar definitely is in that category. Let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about food addiction and sugar addiction and your research involving that. Yeah. So we've been doing research on food addiction for, boy, a while now, I don't want to date myself, but it's been about 15 years.  They're concoctions of ingredients that were created in a laboratory in some food industry building somewhere. And they're designed to, you know, have lots of sugar, fat, salt and all these other ingredients to make them just taste delicious. And that's part of the reason why people like them. And so I've started years ago thinking about this in the terms of, well, maybe something about these foods, these new designer foods that we have is leading people to overeat them because it's an addiction, because it's affecting the brain in a way that suggests it's addictive. And so we started doing research on this in, first in laboratory rats, and then we moved on to doing studies in humans. And essentially, we found, and lots of other labs have found that if you look at the criteria for addiction but have the addictive substance be a sugar or a highly palatable junk food, you see the same effects that you would see if you were looking at addiction to things like alcohol or morphine. We see binging, we see withdrawal, craving. We also see changes in the brain. So if you do brain scans or do studies where we can measure the release of neurotransmitters in the brain, you see that the same types of neurochemical, biological changes that you'd see in response to a drug of abuse could also happen in response to overeating lots of these junk foods and sugar in particular. Now, can we maybe describe what that criteria, the specific criteria, maybe the physiological and physical effects of addiction? Like how do you define addiction from a, maybe from a physiological standpoint? What has to happen in the brain for people to say, okay, this has classical... Right. This is part of the reason why I kind of think it's funny that there's a controversy because in medicine and in science, we have very clear cut criteria that needs to be met in order for someone to be diagnosed as being addicted to something. So there's specific criteria that are in a book called The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And this is essentially a book that psychologists, psychiatrists, medical professionals use to diagnose all the different types of mental disorders that are out there. And among those disorders is addiction. And so there's specific criteria that are laid out that need to be identified in a person in order for them to be identified as being an addict or having a substance use problem. And so what we've done is to basically use those criteria but apply them to food. And so we're looking for things like binging, over-consuming, or the development of tolerance. In some cases, signs of withdrawal. There's also some social factors that can occur. So like for instance, some of these things are a little bit more difficult to understand from the concept of food because our social construct around food is different than it is around drugs. So people don't necessarily go to jail for bringing donuts to the office. But if you showed up at your office with a plate of cocaine, you're probably going to get in trouble. So a lot of these criteria, some of them are very strictly biological that we can measure. But some of them are socially constructed and have to do with, for instance, one of the criteria that is associated with addiction can be if you're having an ability to fulfill role obligations at work or with your family. And if you think about somebody who might be an alcoholic or somebody who might have a drug problem, yeah, you can kind of see how that could certainly be an issue. But because we're allowed to eat all the time wherever we want, that's not an issue of someone's a food addict or someone has a problem with obesity. Now, Doc, on the lines of addiction like that, do you think maybe why some people are so hard headed about this to say that, you know, oh, you can't be addicted to food or sugar? Because just like, okay, you know, you have some some families that tend to gravitate to certain things that they're addicted to and others they're not, for example, like, you know, my my fiance's family alcoholism runs in the family. It seems like there's several people in there, but they don't have any deal with the other other hard drugs or pills or things like that. Then I look at my family and my family doesn't have anything. They're no one's addicted to alcohol or anything like that. But then the pills run in the families. Do you think that there's a lot of discrepancy between each person individually or what do you think that is? Yeah, that's a great question. So there's actually been some research that's gone on to try to identify, like you say, why is it that some people, you know, sort of cluster into these different types of addictions? And so there's been studies that have looked at the genetics of people to try to understand, you know, why are some of these things hereditary? And I think that, you know, when you look at these different genetic studies, there are some genes that kind of pop out associated, you know, with alcohol, some that are associated with other types of drug use. But I think overall, we're also starting to see that there's studies that will also identify those same genetic variants, particularly variants of the dopamine gene can be associated with addiction to food or overeating food. And so I think that, you know, there could be a genetic propensity for some people to just become addicted. And what they become addicted to is sometimes a construct of their environment. And so if they happen to be an environment where, you know, alcohol is available or the issue, that might be it. But if they have that same genetic variant, and they happen to be in an obesogenic environment, then maybe they're going to end up becoming overweight or obese. So I think it really is a blend of what happens with the genetic predisposition and what potentially could be happening in their environment. Interesting. Now, you know, two thoughts come to mind for me when people argue the, you know, sugar or food is an addictive argument is when you have an entire generation, I mean, we are definitely going through a massive epidemic of health and obesity, which has the ability to potentially bankrupt this country, the richest country in the world. This is a true fact. The way diabetes is growing, Alzheimer's and obesity and the cost associated, can bankrupt us. And when you look at people and you see someone, and you know, I've been in fitness for a long time and I remember thinking this as a young trainer, you know, I'm a 19 year old personal trainer and I see someone who's 300 pounds and they're eating horribly and it's just like, just stop. Like, can't you see how you look in the mirror? Can't you see how you feel?   But I could take that same argument and apply towards alcoholics I've known or drug addicts like, hey, your liver is failing. Why can't you just stop drinking? It's that simple. But there's obviously something else going on. And you talked about dopamine. And from my understanding with dopamine is anything that's enjoyable will cause a release of dopamine. And with food, do we find that certain foods or certain types of foods, or even getting more basic like sugars, for example, or, you know, cause either a larger dopamine effect or have the ability to maintain a high dopamine release with subsequent exposures. In other words, you know, if I do something that's great, and I get a dopamine release from my understanding, if I do it again, it typically you get that dopamine release from something that's novel or new. But then my body doesn't necessarily get that same dopamine release all the time. But I know certain things tend to always release dopamine like cocaine, for example, or, you know, or alcohol or sex for some people is that true for certain types of foods as well? And is that what makes certain types of foods more addictive? Yeah, you really know your stuff. Yeah, this is this is exactly what we've been finding in the research. And so you're right. Dopamine is associated with reward and pleasure in many cases, but it's also associated with novelty. So when we think about the differences that typically exist between drugs and food, one of the biggest differences is that every drug of abuse releases dopamine every time you take ahead of it. That's really the hallmark of a drug of abuse, morphine, nicotine, cocaine, even caffeine. Every time you take it, it releases dopamine. Now, food also can release dopamine, but the dopamine release that you typically see with food is more associated with the novelty of the food. So this has protective value. If you think about it, you know, as we evolved, we wanted to make sure that the food we ate was safe, right?  So we developed this sort of ability to detect whether or not something was safe. And once our brain coated the food as being safe, then that dopamine release tended to sort of attenuate. So if you think about it in terms of maybe the first time you travel to a foreign country and have a particular cuisine, your dopamine release is going to be going off because it's a new food, a new taste, you never had it. But as long as you don't get sick from it, your dopamine release is then going to attenuate. So one of the sort of critical experiments that we did in our lab was to say, well, hey, what happens if we give junk food or sugar to our rats? Will they release dopamine as if it's a drug? Whereas they'll release it every time we give it to them? Or will they show that typical food-like release where they release dopamine maybe the first time they get it, but then it attenuates after they get repeated exposures. And what we found was that when you give rats sugar, they release dopamine as if you were giving them a drug. It looks like what you'd see if you were giving that rat morphine. So every time they take a drink of sugar, it's releasing this bolus of dopamine in the reward areas of the brain. And we don't see that when a rat eats their healthy food. And then clinical studies have been done that have essentially shown the same thing in humans. So if you give humans chocolate milkshakes or these delicious tasting drinks when they're in a brain scanner, and then you look at the brain images via fMRI, so you can see areas of the brain that are active lighting up, we see that it's only in response to that milkshake or that beverage that you see these drug-like responses in the brain. Interesting. Now, is this why you'll eat?  Do you think that's part of it where that dopamine release kind of starts to blend down while other foods you can just seem to overeat them forever? Yeah. And so if you look at, for instance, people talk about food addiction. And when we talk about food addiction, it's really the junk foods, right? Because it's not broccoli. People don't overeat broccoli or things like that or vegetables, even though those are foods. And that's again, because the dopamine release in response to broccoli is likely much less intense and most likely attenuates with time for everybody. Whereas if we talk about chocolate chip cookies or ice cream, that's a different story. That's why it's very easy to down a whole pint of ice cream, but eating a whole head of broccoli is not quite as easy. Now, do we also see down regulation of dopamine receptors from this repeated exposure to dopamine through eating these foods? Yes. And we've seen that in our studies in rats. And again, it's very similar to what you would see, the same type of down regulation of those receptors that occurs in response to drug use. So we see lots of parallels between drugs and and what we're seeing in response to junk foods. We see that not only is it changes in the release of the neurochemicals like dopamine and the opioids, but also changes in the receptor expression and availability that down regulation of receptors. And there's also changes in the gene expression for those receptors. So there's a lot going on. It's not just sort of like one simple change that occurs in response to maybe a one time release. It's really a systemic issue that is what I believe affects behavior and causes us to sort of contribute to this spiral of distress that can emerge when one is addicted to something. Now, is it safe to say that the down regulation of receptors that happens and these gene expressions are shaping the brain to become more and more addicted to whatever substance is causing this? In other words, you'll find yourself having more cravings for them and perhaps perceiving the flavors of other foods to be more bland. For example, from personal experience, I know when I have a lot of processed sugar in my diet, natural sugars just don't seem like I'll eat fruit and it just doesn't taste very sweet at all.  Does that explain that? Well, it's in part, I think that that taste component is in part more due to the fact that our sweet taste receptors become desensitized over time. So when you're constantly eating sugar, you are essentially causing those receptors to be desensitized. And so when you do taste something that's sort of naturally sweet, but not quite as sweet as like a candy bar, it doesn't really taste as sweet. But the opposite happens if you allow those receptors to go a period of time where you're not constantly bombarding them with these highly processed high concentration of sweetness, then you can start to actually taste the naturally occurring sweetness and things like fruits and even some vegetables. It's funny because I've had, I work with a lot of people who are interested in figuring out ways to sort of look at this through the addiction lens and change their diet and sort of eat differently. And it's funny, a lot of people who initially start to talk to me will tell me that they never realized that a carrot could actually taste sweet. And when they stop eating so much sugar and they reduce it from their diet, then they actually can taste like a baby carrot actually has a little bit of a sweetness to it. And so a lot of that I think has to do with the taste receptors and the taste that we perceive. In your experience, Doc, is that something, how long does that typically typically take for somebody? I remember when I was competing for my first show and I was on a diet, a strict diet for 10 to 12 weeks. And then I reintroduced these foods. It was the sugar was just overwhelming. And like Sal was saying, I remember biting into a strawberry and just it would just never tasted so sweet in my life. I don't remember how long it took for that to kind of reset those receptors. Is there a typical amount of time that somebody would fast from those processed foods or how long that needs to be out of the diet or is it depend on each person and how long you've been kind of flooding them for? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it is really dependent on the individual, but I've seen people go a week where they've really cut back on the processed sugars and been pretty strict about it and then be able to start to change, detect changes in the way that other foods taste.  Sometimes people report that it's aversive, meaning that it's like too sweet and tastes awful. This is what's happened to me from competing. For about a year and a half, almost two years, I was competing and shows off and I had to stay on a very strict diet. And before that, I was all over the place. I could eat just about anything as long as I trained hard and stayed in a caloric deficit for most of the time and stay in great shape and never really had to watch what I was eating or even cared to. And when I reintroduced those foods, now I'm almost repulsed by a lot of them. It's too much. It's overpowering. I can't finish it before I could power that down. And I also noticed my intake of vegetables and fruits are extremely high in comparison of what they were before because those are really fulfilling now.  And if we could just clean that out for a while, you'd be surprised on how fulfilling a lot of these foods are. Now, in your experiments, have you also gone through moderation as far as introducing like a well-balanced kind of an approach but also having the sugar and the processed food in the mix but at a lower amount and then experiment to see the preference of the rats or the control, whatever you have set up? Yeah, that's a good question. So I've been really thinking about this a lot over the past couple of years because when I first started doing this research, thinking about sugar as an addictive substance, most of us think about if you're addicted to something, you have to quit it. You just can't ever have coke again or whatever the drug of abuse is. But I think it's different with food. And I've become more interested in more of a harm reduction approach and a harm reduction approach to addiction looks at addiction through the lens of, hey, this is something that you're addicted to in the sense that you can't consume it in a way everyone else can. You need to be extra cautious about your behavior and how much of it you're consuming. But you can get to a point where you can slowly reintroduce it into your life. So you don't have to completely abstain. And for things like alcohol, for instance, it's actually a therapy that can work pretty well for some individuals who have a problem with alcohol. And so I think that a harm reduction model is really the way to go with food because I think it's pretty much impossible to quit sugar. We're not going to be able to do it. It's in so many foods. It's in so many of the things that we eat. And I think our modern society is just built around the fact that even if you love to cook and you have all the time in the world, at some point you're going to be reliant on some sort of processed food. You can't make it all yourself. And so I think for the everyday person, I mean, I think it's just more realistic to have a situation where you can get off of overeating sugar, meaning you can cut out a lot of the processed foods, gain control over your behaviors around them so that if they are available, you can have some in moderation and enjoy it. And I think it kind of goes back and forth in terms of how to get to that point. I think for some people they need to quit cold turkey and get rid of a lot of these foods for a while and then be able to maybe slowly introduce some back where you can have them in moderation. But again, I think it's a lot dependent on the individual and dependent on people's personalities. I mean, some people just are all or nothing, whereas some people can be more in the middle. And so I think a lot of that needs to factor into this. This kind of reminds, are you familiar with Dr. Andrew Hill? No, I'm not. You should look him up. I think you would enjoy some of his work. What's the name of his institute? I can't remember, but he's Peak Brain Institute. Yeah, Peak Brain Institute. That's what it is. And there's several of them, and they're dealing with addiction. And what they're doing is really unique in comparison to what these facilities would do in the past as far as handling addiction, where we would just lock somebody up in a room for 30 days and take it take whatever substance it is. Instead of that process, they actually allow all this flexibility for those that are abusing, whether it be drugs, food, whatever it may be, and they are trying to work on the relationship and the connection that these people have to these foods or this alcohol or the substance and walk them through that piece and connect that level of awareness for them versus restricting, because that we've shown that just taking it away from somebody is later on going to lead to them reintroducing and in fact, probably binging on it or falling back into. You get a symptom eruption. There's some studies now. If we look at food as a potential addictive substance, and we look at some of the newer studies on addiction, what we find is when they take my, because the old model was you put a mouse in a cage, you give them water and then you give them water with like cocaine or something like that. And this mouse will take the cocaine and will not eat food and will eventually almost die from their repeated use. And then they said, okay, that's the substance. The substance is addictive. But then what they did more recently is they've taken these mice and they said, okay, let's put them in mouse heaven. Let's give them lots of room. Let's give them food and sex and toys and just a wonderful environment. And then let's see if they still display these same addictive behaviors. And what they find is if they drop dramatically. So I think it's important to know the physiological effects of these substances, whether we're talking about drugs or sugar or anything else that can be addictive. But it's also important to understand the environment that the individual may be in and the psychological and behavioral connections to those things. Because like you're saying, they're going to be around. Food is everywhere. And I think teaching people or working with those things helps them learn how to moderate. Because when we look at food in particular, food on a very basic scale represents nutrients and calories and macronutrients and all that stuff. But it's way more complex than that. I mean, culture is completely revolves around food. I mean, there's breakfast foods and we have meetings at lunch and there's birthday foods and Christmas foods and foods that your grandmother made you when you were sick. And the ways you celebrate and alcohol has got, there's definitely, you know, uses for alcohol with bonding and reducing social anxieties and all these different things. And I think it's important people understand all that because if we just look at things as black and white, then we may experience like what we've been experiencing with the obesity epidemic, where we tell people don't eat it and move more. And that just doesn't work. Rather than saying, Hey, you're celebrating a birthday, you're not feeding your body great nutrients, but you are feeding your soul with the celebration of the birthday and the birthday cake that you made with your kids and all that different, you know, all that kind of stuff. And through working with my clients in that manner, I found a lot more success with that approach versus, you know, you know, just the don't eat it, you know, type of approach. I mean, in the, in the bodybuilding world or the competing world that Adam talks about, I tell you what, Nicole, I have never seen eating disorders like I've seen when I go into that world. I mean, we're talking about competitors will gain 30 pounds in two weeks. I'm not exaggerating from the binging that they do after a show.  Now, I agree. I think, you know, it's a really important point and we don't, you know, we focus a lot on, you know, the food and, you know, what it's doing, but it's important to remember, there's an underlying cause for the behavior. So there's a reason why people are turning to the food. And so, well, the foods to blame, you know, I think it's also important to address the reasons why they're using the food. And so I agree. I think that's, you know, a really important piece of this as well. Now between the three macro nutrients, proteins, fats and carbohydrates, and then if you break it down even more types of fats, types of proteins and types of carbohydrates, our sugars do sugars display the most addictive properties. And the reason why I'm asking this is because highly palatable foods don't just contain sugar. Fats also have an ability to make foods very palatable. Salt is another one that we, you know, we tend to talk about and there's certain spices and all that kind of stuff. What, you know, which one of those, would you say has the highest addictive properties from a physiological standpoint? I think, you know, if I had to pick just one, I would say carbohydrates, the sugars. But I think it's important, like you said, we don't typically eat carbohydrates by themselves. So, I mean, most of the processed foods that we consume are combinations of, you know, sweets and fats with these spices and other flavors added in and salt and things like that. And so, it gets a little bit difficult to sort of pin down, you know, the specific nutrient that's responsible for the addictive behavior. I'm not actually sure that there is a specific nutrient. We actually published a study last year that looked at which foods were most addictive. And the reason why we wanted to look at actual foods as opposed to trying to figure out the ingredients was because people don't eat ingredients, people eat foods, right? They eat the foods that are put together. And what we found was that it wasn't actually the ingredients that stood out as being the important factor in determining whether or not something was addictive. It was actually the level of processing. So, the foods that were more highly processed were the ones that were found to be most addictive. And so, I think that kind of speaks to the fact that, you know, sugar gets called out a lot because a lot of foods contain sugar. A lot of foods contain added sugars. But I think that there's a little bit more to it. I'm not sure that it's sugar in and of itself is to blame. I think it has to do with the fact that, you know, the concentration of sugar that we end up eating is so great in combination with the fact that, you know, the foods that have a lot of added sugar are also very highly processed. That's a really good point. Well, I think it's important to note that sugar is highly processed. You can't really find highly concentrated sources of sugar in nature. It's actually quite rare. And when you do find it, like let's say you found honey, you'd have to get through some bees to get it. And it wasn't very common. So, from an evolutionary standpoint, why do you think we have certain triggers? Is it because at some point through human evolution, they represented certain nutrients that we needed or that were maybe more rare? Well, so in nature, things that are sweet are typically safe.  The apples that have fallen on the ground and are rotten are the ones that potentially could, you know, kill you because they could be, you know, toxic at that point. They're going to taste bitter. And so that's actually part of the reason why it's hard to get little kids especially to like cruciferous vegetables like broccoli because they have this somewhat bitter taste. And we actually have this innate aversion to them, which, you know, goes away as we mature and as our taste buds change and as, you know, our tastes mature. But that's really the biological basis for it is that sweet has universally been coated with being safe. And also, if you think about breast milk, that's really, you know, for most babies, that's the first thing that they consume. And it's also very sweet. And so it's really just safety is associated with sweetness, whereas bitterness is associated with toxicity. Wow, that is very, very interesting. Very fascinating. Yeah. And if you think about it, you know, obviously children are far more adverse to bitter or strong tastes, probably because they're more likely to not survive eating a potential poison. So they were just evolved to be super adverse as children. And as you get older, you can kind of, I can eat a little bit of something that might be not be good for me and I'll survive. And this may even extend to pregnant women who, you know, you know, when I had my kids, I remember at the time, my wife, her taste buds seem to become way more sensitive to those types of things. So it all kind of makes sense. Very, very interesting. Doc, we talk a lot on our show about, I guess we've been in fitness for so long, we've had the opportunity to have our paradigm shattered so many times. And we like to share that with our audience. Now, you've obviously been in the field for quite some time studying this. What have been some, some moments during your career that have just been like either aha or total paradigm shattering moments for you and through all your research that you've done? Well, you know, it's funny when I first started doing this, it was not popular, meaning that other scientists kind of thought it was a dumb idea. It was, I remember going to conferences and presenting some of our, you know, preliminary research before we had it published. And this was back in like 2000, 2001.   And I thought, oh man, am I making a bad decision here? Is this not a good thing to study? But it just wasn't really on anyone's radar. And I found that there were so many people out there in the general public who were struggling and were talking about the fact that they, you know, had this addiction to sugar and they felt compelled to eat sugar, but there just wasn't any research on it. So our lab was really the first one to start to look at this from a scientific standpoint and to start doing these studies. And it's just amazing to me now, like flash forward 15 years and things are so different. There's so many other laboratories that have been looking at this and thinking about it. We now actually have nutrition guidelines that have come out and that are going to be put into place by the end of next summer that say how much added sugar you're supposed to eat as an American, which is something I never thought we would see on the nutrition facts label. So a lot has really changed in 15 years. 15 years is like a blink of the eye in science. That goes by really fast. And so I'm really happy to see that we have had a lot of advances. There's been a lot of studies and we've seen some motion in terms of, you know, starting to really think about the foods that we eat and what they could be doing to us, not only from a medical standpoint, but just from an overall wellness standpoint. Where have you been getting most of the pushback? I would imagine the food industry probably doesn't want to hear this. Yeah, food industry, you know, again, there's pushback from multiple places, but I think the most of it has come from the food industry because, you know, not to be sympathetic to them, but I can see their points in some cases where, you know, their job is to make foods that taste good so people will buy them. And so that's their job, right? I mean, they're making the food to taste good. And I think it just really comes down to now starting to look at, okay, well, at what point does it taste good, but it's harming us? And then it becomes the ethical question. And it's interesting because it's very similar to what happened with smoking. So if you look back at the literature and, you know, what happened politically in terms of finding out about the dangers of smoking back in the 1960s and the 50s, you know, it's very, very similar in terms of, you know, how things are changing. Initially, a lot of the Philip Morris and the big smoking companies responded that, oh, you know, smoking is not bad for you. I teach a class. I'm actually doing a semester teaching at Princeton University. That's where we are right now actually. And, you know, one of the videos I show in my health psychology class is these, this old testimony of these smoking executives from Philip Morris testifying in front of Congress that smoking is not bad for you.  Smoking does not cause lung cancer. And so these are all things that, you know, I hear a lot of similar stories coming out of people from the food industry now. Sugar isn't addictive. Sugar is not bad for you. Processed food isn't bad for you. You just need to exercise more. So it's interesting to see the back and forth that is similar between what's happened with smoking and what I think is happening now with food. Now, have you compared different types of sugars to see if there's any difference in effect?  Have you looked at the differences between the types of sugar? We have done a couple studies that, you know, have compared sucrose to high fructose corn syrup. We've also done some earlier studies looking at glucose. And, you know, the bottom line seems to be it's not really the type of sweetness, but it's the fact that it's sweet. We've even done studies with artificial sweeteners and see the same effect on dopamine. So if you give an artificial sweetener, yeah, which is, I think, important because people tend to turn toward artificial sweeteners as their savior because, you know, they don't have to worry about the calories, but they can still get the enjoyment out of the artificial sweetness. But that's not the case in terms of addiction. If we're looking at this in terms of what it's doing to your brain and doing to the perpetuation of overeating, artificial sweeteners are contributing to it just as equally as caloric sweeteners are. Very interesting. Yeah, you kind of blew me away with the statement about how sweet means safe because it makes complete sense considering for most of human evolution, we evolved in states of, you know, where we were always on the brink of starvation. There was always, you know, finding food was always a priority.  And who knows as a safe source of calories. But in today's modern world, there is, you know, in Western societies in particular, there is no problem getting calories at all. I can get calories whenever I want. People don't starve to death really anymore. We have way more people that die from eating from too much food than too little food. And so now we've, we're in this position where we have this prehistoric kind of, you know, caveman brain that is now in a situation of ridiculous and incredible abundance and hyper palatable foods. And it makes complete sense that we would find ourselves in this obesity epidemic as a result.  Because I know you wrote a book, Why Diets Fail? And this was part of, you know, this is a big part of that book. What do you, what, what are some strategies that you may think may help people knowing all this? Well, I think, I mean, a few things. First, I think knowing about all this, knowing about the research is so important because I think, you know, a lot of times these studies sort of get brushed under the rug or people don't hear about them until, you know, great guys like you come out and, you know, get that information out to the public so people can learn about this stuff and apply it to their life. So I think learning about the research that's going on is important. I also think, you know, you mentioned earlier about we sort of were programmed to live in this, you know, we have this caveman brain, if you will, that is in this other type of environment now. And it's got me thinking lately a lot about the fact that I really think we need to stop looking at processed food as food. I mean, when we use the word food, it can mean anything from a whole baby carrot to pop tarts. And they're completely different things. I mean, pop tarts have like 60 different ingredients, most of which I can't even pronounce and I certainly don't know what they mean or do. Yet they're all considered under the rubric of a food. And so I think it's important that we remember our brains were evolved to be able to figure out how to responsively eat actual food, meaning like stuff that's alive or stuff that is growing in the ground that we, you know, are able to process in that way. Whereas a lot of these foods that are out there now, these processed foods and things that we buy in the grocery store, our brains aren't going to be able to help us in the sense of figuring out what's right or wrong or healthy or unhealthy or safe or not. And so I think that's something to think about moving forward. How outnumbered doc, do you think you are in your message? Do you feel, is there, you know, for every one of you, is there 10 other doctors that are trying to prove the opposite? So the food industry could you like you compare it to cigarettes, which it does remind me of that. And how hard that was is, are you dealing with the same thing? Do you feel like you've got all kinds of antagonists to what you are trying to do? And do you have those people?    So do you see that a little bit? I think I like to think it's probably like that in every field that people are in. But yeah, there is a bit of that going on if with respect to food. And again, there's always going to be someone that's going to come out and critique and, you know, have issues with it. And that's all fine. I think this is all stuff that we need to discuss. But at the end of the day, it boils down to the science and it boils down to the experiments that are done. And, you know, the studies that we've been doing have been replicated and expanded on by multiple different labs. And so you can argue all you want with the concept and, you know, whether this is a good idea or not. But at the end of the day, you cannot argue with the data. And the data suggests that sugar is addictive. Excellent. Yeah, I'm just thinking like, how often do you think, do you guys think humans, for most of the time we've been on earth, ate more than one ingredient? I mean, think about that. Like, how often do you think we ate meat? And that's what we had. There wasn't even any seasoning. It just seems like processed foods is just the evolution of humans figuring out how to make the brains scored out more and more dopamine and even cooking food and seasoning it is, of course, you know, that's a million steps before, you know, the pop tart. But even that is our, you know, our attempt at making, at kind of hijacking these systems of the brain and just it's kind of blowing me away right now to really think about it. When you say it like that, it sounds like sugar is the is like Instagram is to social media, like the this inundating of likes and this dopamine rushes from feeling that all the time. Like we figured that out. You know, Rob, Rob Wolf in his book, Wired to Eat talks about compares food to porn addiction and how, you know, being, you know, these flashes of pornography are things that we would have never experienced before. And it trains the brain to only really respond to that. And so food is really no different. And it's no reason why it's so hard for someone to go from eating a highly processed food based diet to one that is entirely based on whole foods.  Right. Well, and I think, yeah, going the opposite was probably easier. So if I think about like my grandparents generation, they grew up like it was like meat and potatoes for dinner.  And now, you know, the people who were born in this generation, you know, they're not really going to experience that because they're born into this processed food world.  Like you said, because their brains are now basically programmed to expect to get constant pleasure from the food that they're eating, which you're not going to get when you have like, you know, just a little piece of meat on the grill, it's going to expect to be stimulated more by lots of these other, you know, tastants and ingredients and all these other things that we typically see in the foods that people often eat these days. Now, I'm going to make a speculation and maybe you can help me out here. But, you know, as children and as we grow into adults, there's a tremendous amount of neuroplasticity that happens. And there are certain structures and things in the brain that become neuroplasticity we have until the day we die, but really don't, we never have the ability that we had when we were children. And I'll give you guys an example, like, you know, you could take a seven year old and you could teach them all kinds of different languages and they'll, they won't have an accent. Now you teach an adult another language. They can learn that language, but they'll always have an accent and because that's because the brain's ability to mold and change becomes much more limited as we get older. As a child, it's like incredible what the brain can do. Now, knowing that, is it safe to say or safe to assume that introducing children to foods that are high in sugar and highly processed, you're going to cause some permanent changes to the brain and in other words, as adults, even if they change their diets, it's still going to have some of those permanent changes to where it's much more difficult for them to eat a diet that's based in whole foods. Yeah, it's great to say that because it's actually something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I've been working on a book that's going to be coming out next year. It's a follow up to a book that I published last year, or those published at random house called What to Eat When You're Pregnant. The premise of that book was essentially what you just said. We have this generation of babies that are essentially born craving sugar. They're like sugar babies, if you will. They're not crack babies, but because they were exposed to such excessive amounts of sugar and processed food in utero, they're born with brains that expect to get that once they're on the outside. I'm working on a follow up to that book called What to Feed Your Baby, which is essentially a guide for new parents that will allow them to learn about the research on what happens to your little child's brain when you start off feeding them and the foods that they're consuming are much like what we see in our highly processed world. The dangers of consuming too much sugar as a youngster can really affect you later on in life. Not only does it lead to increased risk for being overweight and obese and developing diabetes, but like you said, it also really sets the stage to make it just more difficult for them to even like healthy food. I think that there is definitely a fact of plasticity that occurs at that young age that we need to capitalize on and we need to make sure that instead of exposing our kids to fruit juice and to all these other types of snack foods, we want to be realizing that we have this very small window in which we can essentially try to train them to like the delicious healthy foods and we really need to recognize that and not dismiss it. I think a lot of people with little kids, they think, oh, they're kids, my kids not fat, I don't have to worry about it, but you know what, when you look at your kids' blood work, you're going to see that your kid actually could be fat.  And so learning about this and helping parents to understand why it's important to feed kids healthy foods and how that can, you know, affect later things in life, I think, is something that we need to be focusing on.  Because the amount of money that goes into advertising towards children with these types of foods is, in fact, I would, I would bet, and I don't know what the numbers are, but I would bet it probably surpasses how much money goes into advertising towards adults. I mean, I have two young children. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I have two young kids, they watch, you know, cartoons and stuff like that on TV. And I'm not exaggerating when I say 80% of the commercials, like the vast majority of them are for highly processed foods. And then the other 20% are some toys or something like that. Yeah. And you know what's interesting about that? Who buys the food, right? Of course.  So why they advertise into the kids? Because then your kids are going to be the ones that nag you to buy it when you're in the grocery store. Well, even dirty, dirty. But even if we look at food for its addictive properties or sugar or processed foods for their addictive properties, like think about it this way. How appalled would parents be if there were commercials on TV for cigarettes for kids or for alcohol for kids? Oh, yeah. Any other addictive substance? Yeah, sure.  And so when you look at it from that viewpoint, when you look at it from that lens, and I'm, look, I'm a big personal responsibility person. I firmly believe people are individuals and we should have the freedom to make all the choices we want, including all the bad choices we want. But I think that starts when we're adults. I don't believe that for children. Like I don't think kids should have the freedom to go, you know, just buy drugs or something at the store. I think that should be illegal. I think an adult should be able to do that because you're an adult, but I don't think kids should be able to do that. So looking at it through that lens, it's, I feel like this may be an interesting battle coming up in the future because as your science continues to grow and get published, and I'm sure more scientists are going to study and look at what you're looking at because you're kind of opening up this, this, this, this Pandora's box of information, I can see a battle coming up where we may regulate food like we do drugs for children. Because again, when I watch these commercials coming from the fitness industry, to me it's almost as appalling as if they were saying, hey kid, have a beer.    No, but again, if, you know, you go back to the old smoking tapes, right? I mean, there used to be, the advertising for smoking was so vastly different than it is now. I mean, now you hardly see, you can't really advertise for smoking. But, you know, back in the, the 50s and the 60s, I mean, just the types of advertisements, it's funny, you know, there were advertisements that actually had doctors in them, where the doctors would be smoking in the office and saying how, you know, sophisticated it was to be a doctor and an authority figure smoking. And, you know, so that all changed once the science came about and said, hey, guess what? Smoking's killing everybody. So we need to stop promoting it so much. And so I think it's just going to be a matter of time. And especially now, you know, if we look at the obesity numbers among little kids, and you know, it's pretty sad when you have to look at the obesity rates among kids age two to five. I mean, you don't typically even think that that's a possibility, but it is a real possibility now. We're seeing that those numbers are just going up and up, and it's not something that's going to be easy to rectify. So I think it's really just a matter of time before we're going to have to see, you know, some social pushback in terms of people demanding that there be some changes, because you're right. I mean, when you're advertising to children who really don't have volitional control yet over making good decisions, then it becomes a problem. And, you know, I've seen studies where they show the livers of children who consume lots of sugar and who are overweight, and it's, and they have livers that look like the livers of like alcoholics, in particular, when they over consume fructose because the liver has a limited ability to process. I, when I first got certified as a personal trainer over 20 years ago, they had just changed the name of adult onset diabetes to type two diabetes. It used to be called adult onset diabetes. So if you went to the doctor, there were two types of diabetes, type one and then adult onset. And the reason why they called adult onset was because if you were really unhealthy, you developed it as an adult and no kids got it. It was, it didn't happen to children, but they changed the name because kids get it now. It's absolutely, if that's not enough.   Yeah. All parents talk about it. I see it's clear as day and I can see my kids overeating the hell out of sugar far more than anything else. I rarely ever see my kids overeat a steak or vegetables or anything else.  They'll eat more candy than you can even, that's, it's mind blowing how much candy they can eat. And it's because it's, it's got addictive properties, bottom line.  They really don't, that's all I care about, right? How I look. And so they don't take all any of these things into account.  It's pretty obvious to me. And a lot of the studies that you'll come out with even, I'll read the studies and I'll be like, duh, but they have to be done because we've got so much pushback, you know what I mean? Yeah. So moving forward, what does, what are you going to be studying moving forward? What are you guys looking at now? You talked about artificial sweeteners, which fascinates me because obviously there's no calories in artificial sweeteners and we wouldn't expect them to have, you know, similar effects on the, on the body or the brain or whatever. And of course now we have studies showing that artificial sweeteners are tied to diabetes and, and to obesity as well. Are you, are you going to be studying that more or what else are you looking at now moving forward? Yeah. So I think definitely interested in artificial sweeteners. I'm interested in, you know, it's funny when you speak of artificial sweeteners, people really cling to some of these ideas. And so I hear a lot about, I overheard a couple people the other day just in passing talking about how they cut all sugar out, but, you know, they replaced it with stevia and that, you know, everything's great now because they're consuming stevia. But the problem is that stevia is just as processed as real sugar in terms of, you know, it's, it's interesting that because it's marketed so well as being natural and, you know, coming from nature that people just sort of believe that, yeah, well, this is actually better for me, but the studies are suggesting that artificial sweeteners and things like stevia actually aren't. And so I'm interested in that. I've also taken a strong interest in looking at nutrition from more of a developmental lifespan. And so a lot of our initial work on addiction was done, you know, I guess sort of in the characteristic of thinking about what might be happening among adults, but I've become more interested in the genesis of this because we know that, you know, adults who potentially are addicted to food got that way somehow, right? And so I've been interested in looking at the effects of in utero exposures to different foods and early exposure to different foods. So looking at little kids and, you know, how the types of diets that they're consuming can affect not only their behavior, but also what happens later in life in terms of their food preferences. Excellent. Well, Godspeed. I wish you all the best. I think you're doing excellent work. And these are things that we need to look at because a lot of, you know, this country in general in particular has their kind of their head in the sand.  And it's, you know, this is good. This is very revealing. It's opening up conversations. And I appreciate the work you're doing and, you know, keep doing it. Okay, thank you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at minepumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance, and Maths Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at minepumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.