The Magic Pill Page #5

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When I be by myself.

-[woman] Ohh. Can you

say that in a full sentence?

-[Robert] Full sentence.

-"I feel..."

-I feel upset

because I'm a lonely...

-person by my...self.

-[Robert] Yeah.

[Ryan]

There's some common

metabolic processes in the body

that exist within every cell

in our body.

If you're taking a medicine,

you're targeting a specific

mechanism within the body.

Whereas, if you approach it more

broadly, such as through food,

we might be able to influence

a variety of organ systems

including the brain,

the pancreas, the liver,

muscle cells,

blood vessels, et cetera...

through one intervention.

And this is not a new thought.

This is an old thought.

Thousands of years old.

[chattering]

[jazz music playing]

[Michelle]

I think that eating alone

only bolsters the little

hamsters in your head

that are telling you what

you should and shouldn't do.

I mean, I rarely will sit

and eat a meal alone

without there being

some little commentary

going on in the back.

"Well, you really

should have less of this,"

or, "You really should

have done this or that."

[Natalie] There we go.

Look at that beautiful bird.

[Michelle]

Oh, that looks so good!

But when you eat

with other people,

you end up talking,

and bonding, and sharing.

I like--

I just like that better.

So you'll see that there's meat

and there's fat in here.

You don't have to eat it,

but it's really good.

[Lisa]

It's interesting

with the fat that's floating.

I've become so ingrained

over the years of,

-"Fat's no good. Fat's no good.

Don't want fat in my diet."

-[Michelle] I know.

You know what

I mean? It's hard to like--

[Michelle]

I thought about your face.

I'm like, "Lisa's gonna be like,

'I cannot eat that.'"

I thought about you!

[Lisa] Well, it all started

with Susan Powter back

in the early '90s.

[Michelle]

Yes! With the spiky hair.

[Lisa]

I'd go buy a fat-free cake,

and I'd eat the whole thing,

and I'd be like,

"I'm eating fat free!"

-[laughter]

-[Natalie] But all

of that sugar turns into fat.

It's carbs. So, they say

it's fat-free, when really--

[Michelle]

Yeah, when you're eating it

at the time, it's fat-free.

-It has no fat in it.

-But what does it turn into

once it goes into your system?

[Michelle]

Fat. More fat.

So we're going to make

the mayonnaise.

Basically, eggs and lemon

plus oil equals mayonnaise.

-[Natalie] Okay! I love it.

-[Michelle] Right?

-So let's prove it.

-[Natalie] This is olive oil.

Yeah, I'm using olive oil.

You want to use

a pure oil like this

that isn't going to be toxic

to your body.

[Lisa]

It's terrifying.

Look at all that oil.

[Michelle]

And Lisa's scared of the oil.

It's going to be okay, Lisa!

I'm like counting up

the Weight Watchers

points in my head.

I would love to be able to...

not have to count

Weight Watchers points,

and not have to...

be so scared

of eating sometimes, you know?

But I'm scared of,

"If I don't do that,

then I'll gain the weight back."

And so it's that--

It's that allowing yourself

to have the freedom

to trust your body,

to trust that when you do it,

it'll be okay, because you're

eating real food.

[Natalie]

Doing this as an act of love,

as something we're all owed.

Remember that?

[chattering]

-I'm just gonna do it to taste.

-[Michelle] Oh, my God,

I'm so excited.

To a long life

of happiness and health.

-And friendship.

-And friendship.

Absolutely. Cheers!

-That was fun.

-I love you girls.

I love you too.

[jazz music playing]

[Nina] In the 1950s,

the nation was

really in a panic about the

rising tide of heart disease

that had come from pretty much

out of nowhere

to be the nation's

leading cause of death.

In 1955,

President Eisenhower

himself has a heart attack,

and he's out

of the Oval Office for 10 days.

The nation is fixated

on this problem--

an urgent public health problem.

And nobody really knows what

causes heart disease. Right?

There's a number

of different explanations:

maybe it's a lack of vitamins,

maybe it's car exhaust.

So into this vacuum

steps Ancel Keys...

a pathologist from

the University of Minnesota,

and he says,

"It's saturated fats.

Saturated fats and cholesterol

cause heart disease."

Of 10 men,

we can expect five to get it.

[Nina]

And that was his hypothesis.

He had an unshakable faith

in his own beliefs.

He was called a bully

even by his friends.

And he was able

to get his beliefs

inserted into the American

Heart Association.

So the first ever

dietary recommendations

telling people to cut back

on saturated fat

and dietary cholesterol

to avoid heart disease

were issued

by the American

Heart Association in 1961.

That's the beginning

of the story.

It's the tiny little acorn

that grew into

the giant oak tree of advice

that we have today

and that we can't back out of.

What was the evidence

for that recommendation

by the American

Heart Association?

It amounted to one study,

coincidentally performed

by Ancel Keys.

That's the Seven

Countries Study,

where he went to seven countries

around the world,

mainly in Europe

but also the U.S. and Japan.

And he sampled

nearly 13,000 men,

and he looked at their diet,

he looked at their cholesterol,

and then he waited to see

who had a heart attack

or who died of heart disease.

I mean, he had a hypothesis

that saturated fat

caused heart disease,

and he was out to prove it.

For one, it's very clear

that he cherry-picked

his countries.

He had done a number

of pilot studies.

He knew where

people were not eating

much saturated fat

and had

low rates of heart disease,

like Yugoslavia and Italy.

And he ignored

other countries--

also low rates

of heart disease--

like Germany,

Switzerland, and France

where they ate

a lot of saturated fats.

He didn't go to those countries,

which would have disproven

his hypothesis.

His study showed that

low saturated fat intake

was associated with low rates

of heart disease. Associated.

But it doesn't mean

that reducing saturated fat

is what caused those people

to suffer less heart disease.

It was also true

that these people ate

very little sugar.

In fact, they also found

in that study

that what correlated best

with cardiovascular death

was sugar.

Then what ensued

was a tremendous amount

of science to try

to prove Ancel Keys'

hypothesis right.

Billions of dollars were spent

in large clinical trials,

the most rigorous kind

of science you can do.

And they were done

in mental hospitals

and veterans hospitals--

the kind of experiment

that you can't do anymore

because it's

considered unethical.

And at the end of billions

of dollars of research,

they could not prove

Ancel Keys' hypothesis.

We have lived a lie

for 50 years.

[Marika Sboros]

Professor Timothy Noakes is

one of the very few scientists

in the world

who have an A1 rating.

[Reporter]

Sports scientist Timothy Noakes

begins his defense

against unprofessional conduct.

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