Foods to Boost Metabolism & Lose Weight | Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Kefir & Cholesterol Studies

00:00Let's talk about food and nutrients. You've done a substantial amount of work here in this area and I have a bunch of questions, but first I want to talk about kefir. Yeah. I love Bulgarian full fat plain yogurt, but it's right next to the kefir.

00:14Uhhuh. And I'm always like, do I get the kefir? Well, I don't know. I love the Bulgarian full fat plain yogurt. So, I haven't tried the kefir yet. What's special about kefir and why why did you study kefir? Kefir we we studied because it was a fermented dairy product.

00:26uh probiotics. We figured, you know, maybe it will improve uh cholesterol synthesis based on its impact on short- chain fatty acids. So, that was at the the subject of my master's thesis. And for that study, uh that was when I was at McGill.

00:43We recruited men that had mildly elevated cholesterol levels. We gave them two cups per day versus just regular milk for a month. So two cups like two mugs like this. Two cups like the measuring cup. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um like 500 mls. Okay.

01:03And uh and we measured their the amount of cholesterol they they produced at baseline endpoint in both phases and there was no effect. It was a null study was one of those. It was hard to get published. Kept at it and and we got it published but yeah.

01:23So these fermented yogurts and things they don't do anything for for cholesterol levels at least in our study in this population at this level with this comparison didn't have any effect. What's your general thought about uh low sugar fermented foods?

01:38I don't know if kefir uh qualifies as low sugar, but based on Justin Sonnenberg's work at Stanford and others, I've been I've been really bullish on this idea of sauerkraut, kimchi, uh full fat Bulgarian yogurt. Fermented foods are are interesting.

01:55Yeah. Are you a proponent in general? I'm a proponent. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important to feed your gut. I think that uh the gut microbiome is uh getting a lot of attention for all sorts of, you know, uh health benefits. So I think that that's something that's uh that's is important.

02:11So also it's important to also consider that you know for that study right our main outcome was cholesterol synthesis but there's so many other things we could have looked at that we didn't look at right then maybe it didn't have any impact for cholesterol synthesis but maybe glycemic control might be better or for gut inflammation it would be better but you know You you pick your outcomes, right?

02:42You study something and this is the challenge of doing controlled science. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of the opposite end of the like X what used to be called Twitter science where like people just like report anecdotes but actually anecdotes of that sort of become very powerful now in the public health space for better or worse like people you know because I we can look at any study and say well that's a very artificial circumstance.

03:06You say, "Well, intentionally, because we're trying to isolate variables, people get frustrated." Oh, that's an observational study. Well, I'm going to continue to eat low sugar fermented foods every day. I I I do think in a study like the one you described, occasionally there's just there's, let me state this differently.

03:23Historically

Coffee & Weight Loss

03:26in science, there's been a lot of interesting discoveries that have come from researchers designing a study to look at one thing and then kind of noticing, oh, like all the subjects feel better or sleep better, their skin, they they're reporting things that then lead to another another line line of inquiry.

03:41But you moved on from Kefir. Tell me about this um this paper. I was intrigued by this when I looked over your CV. A uh a weight loss diet that includes a coffee beverage enriched in let me try this menolosaccharides. Yeah. Okay. Long word leads to a greater loss of atapose fat tissue than placebo beverage in overweight men.

04:05Y tell me about this study and what these men oligosaccharides are and if somebody wants to lose weight should they be including this in their coffee? So this was industry sponsored research that I did. um they wanted to replicate a study that had been done in a different country because they wanted to replicate the findings.

04:23So we did this study uh it was basically a placeboc controlled study. We got we were provided um coffee manualsaccharides. So these are extracted from spent coffee grounds. So it was basically satchets right? So a white packet one had the cap coffee manualsaccharides the other one didn't.

04:44We gave it to our study participants. We measured their body composition. We found an effect on body composition in men, not in women. And so that was the end of that product. Really? They wouldn't market it just because it only had an effect in men.

04:59Yeah. Yeah. I assure you there are many men who would love to drink a coffee drink and lose more weight as a consequence. It's not going to be our market, you know. But do we know what the ingredients were? It was manualsaccharides. Extracted.

05:10Yeah. Uh so it was just uh basically uh a product that was tasted like coffee, strong coffee, but it didn't have the caffeine or anything like that. It just had this this manosaccharide that was extracted from coffee. So this substance comes from coffee ordinarily.

05:29But coffee is very low low calorie on its own, but it's from the spent ground. So you no one really consumes this really because you know when you brew your coffee you're you're not getting it. No. Can you buy it? Can people get it? I don't think so.

05:46So what what do you First of all, how much weight did they lose relative to the It was statistically significant. Yeah. Okay. I was intrigued by it because I thought there there's something that I mean you studied it's interesting you studied kefir menolosaccharides from coffee.

06:01Yeah. And now I'm going to ask you about ginger. Well, when I was a graduate student, I was interested in functional foods

Defining Functional Health Claims

06:08and I was interested in those foods that provide health benefits beyond their nutritional value. Right? So, keir is a fermented dairy product. It would we were studying it for its a functional benefit on cholesterol synthesis. That's not a uh that's not a function of dairy, right?

06:30Dairy is you consume it for bone health, right? So it's basically when we talk about different claims that foods have, you know, there's those structure function claims like consuming dairy contains calcium that's good for your bones and then there's um functional claims, those functional claims or health claims we call them that say okay well health claim there's a health claim for oats for example, right?

06:53So consuming fiber from oats uh reduces cholesterol levels. That's been demonstrated. Yes. So that's that's a health claim. That's an approved health claim. That's why you see the hearts on some boxes of cereal. But that's different than fiber is good for maintaining regularity.

07:15Right? So anyways, I was interested in in functional foods for health benefits beyond their their nutritional content. And so uh we we studied kefir for I studied kefir for my master's degree and then for my PhD studied uh mediumchain triglycerides um and then um ginger that was uh that was something that I that I uh offered to a grad student at Colombia.

07:39It was interesting because uh the McCormick company had an advertisement in uh one of the nutrition journals and they were going to donate um spices for research. I was like,

Ginger & Energy Expenditure

07:54"Okay." They had a list of different herbs and spices that they were going to donate for research. And I had a grad student and I said, "Take a look at this list. Come back to me, say if there's something in there that we should test in the lab based on the things that I do.

08:10Don't come to me with something that's, you know, that I don't study." But, and then he did some research and he came back. He said, "I think we should study ginger." I'm like, "Okay." And to do what? like I think you know for energy expenditure looking at thermic effect of food like okay so so we did this study I had some some funds that I could use for him to do that and uh what did the study look like a study where we looked at the thermic effect of food like so people ate ginger root spicing their food we dissolved ginger powder in warm water and so that was one beverage and then uh

08:47in the crossover again crossover design so next time when they came it just hot water. And how many times a day are they drinking it? This was a one time one time uh consumption period. And we looked at the thermic effect of food over a six-hour period.

09:01So again, they're they're under this um we call it a metabolic hood, right? So a little bubble and we measure their uh oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide production for I think it was four or five hours and it's significantly elevated. Mhm.

09:16With ginger. With ginger. Yeah. Wow. So we think through the capsain receptor there's an increase in the thermic effect of food. So yeah, so I was interested to see are there little things that we could do, little changes we can make to our diet to boost energy expenditure relative to intake, you know, just to tip the scale because many adults over the course of their life lifetime gain weight.

09:40And it's not a big imbalance in calories on a daily basis that leads to 10 lbs of weight gain over 10, 15 years, right?