183: TikTok Nutrition: Fact or Cap?

Scot: Oatmeal lowers your testosterone. Steak is a better health food for men over 40 than fruits and vegetables. And do certain oils cause inflammation? These are some of the nutrition topics that Mitch found on TikTok, and we're going to find out if they are true or not in a segment today with Thunder Jalili we're calling "TikTok Nutrition: Fact or Cap."

Mitch: Love it.

Scot: Do you know what that means, Thunder? Fact or cap.

Thunder: No.

Scot: That is slang for an exaggeration. Cap means an exaggeration. So when you hear your students, Thunder, say, "No cap," that means, "I'm not exaggerating. This is true."

Thunder: I thought you were just mispronouncing "crap." But now I understand.

Scot: This is "Who Cares About Men's Health," with information, inspiration, and a different interpretation of men's health. I'm Scot. I bring the Gen Z slang and the BS. Also on the show, Producer Mitch.

Mitch: Hey there.

Scot: And Thunder Jalili. He's an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Integrated Physiology. And when Mitch sent him today's topics, his email reply was, and I quote, "Wow, there's some crazy [bleep] on TikTok."

Mitch: True. It is so true.

Scot: So I don't know. Is that an indication of what's to come, or is there going to be some truth in some of these? Well, we're going to find out right now. So here we go. We're going to go ahead and start with the very first one: Oatmeal lowers testosterone. Mitch, set this up for us.

Mitch: This is a pretty common genre of nutrition stuff in men's nutrition and TikTok, is that oatmeal and certain whole grains actually lower testosterone. And when I was looking at some of the different hashtags and stitches, this particular potential myth has reached around 900,000 people.

 

So here's how oatmeal could be lowering your testosterone levels. In every serving of oatmeal, there's roughly three grams of a little-known fiber known as beta-glucan. Now, pre-clinical trials of a patented beta-glucan extract have been shown to decrease cholesterol levels, which, cholesterol being the primary substrate for testosterone, it's extremely possible that a beta-glucan extract can lower testosterone levels.

Not only has it been shown to lower cholesterol levels, but it has been directly shown to decrease levels of testosterone and its more potent androgen form, known as DHT.

Now, one of the more important things to note here is that it only took 600 milligrams of this patented beta-glucan in order to lower testosterone in these pre-clinical trials. And so this is extremely easy to get even from just a third of a serving of oatmeal.

Now, I'm not saying that oatmeal is absolutely evil, but what I am saying is that if you're trying to optimize your testosterone levels, oatmeal may not be the best carb source for you.

 

Scot: All right. I mean, it sounded kind of convincing.

Mitch: Yeah, and he was the most reasonable I could find. Just giving that little bit of a caveat there.

Thunder: Wait, was he wearing a shirt?

Mitch: Yeah, this one was.

Scot: Which makes him reasonable, of course. Yeah, talking about chemical pathways and how this interacts with that, I could buy that. Thunder, help us see through it, or is this true?

Thunder: Yeah. It's cap. So to use a term I just learned.

Scot: It's not fact. It's actually cap.

Mitch: Love that.

Thunder: Yeah. Right on. Parts that are accurate. Oatmeal does have beta-glucan. Beta-glucan is the compound that actually binds with bile in the large intestine and promotes cholesterol excretion. And it can reduce plasma LDL levels, which is why you have that nice Heart Healthy designation on oatmeal.

But to go from lowering your LDL levels to depleting cholesterol to the point where it reduces testosterone intake is a really massive stretch. There isn't any literature I found on PubMed and other reputable sources that definitively shows beta-glucan can lower testosterone. So I think this guy is taking a big leap of faith saying one is connected to the other connected to the other.

So that's the short. Yes, it is cap. Eat your oatmeal. Don't worry about it, and you'll get some heart-healthy benefits out of it.

Scot: Yeah, let's talk about oatmeal. Oatmeal generally is a healthy food, right? And something that one would want to have in their diet.

Thunder: It is. And even beyond the oatmeal realm, there are various supplements out there that kind of mimic some of the things in oatmeal that people can take to reduce cholesterol. And that's fine.

But again, the connection between depleting cholesterol levels so much that testosterone would be affected, I just don't think that can happen. And I haven't seen any evidence showing that.

You've got to remember, just because you're promoting cholesterol excretion through the use of oatmeal or beta-glucan or something, yeah, you promote excretion through the feces, but your body has other ways of getting enough cholesterol it needs to make hormones. So we can get around it.

Mitch: So my understanding is that to make certain body hormones, you need cholesterol, right?

Thunder: Yes.

Mitch: And so this claim is saying, "Hey, if this particular compound lowers cholesterol, it might also lower testosterone."

Thunder: Yeah, that's basically the connection that's being made. But like I said, there's no evidence that I've been able to find that it can do it.

Now, one other thing I should add that . . . And again, I don't want to say oatmeal can do this, but there are some studies that show that statin drugs can potentially affect testosterone levels in men.

Now, what are statin drugs? We take those to lower our blood cholesterol levels. They basically interfere with cholesterol production in the liver. So they kind of reduce your hepatic cholesterol levels. And then they can reduce LDL, which is the effect that we want out of a statin drug. LDL is the bad cholesterol.

So some people who take statins can have slightly lower testosterone. But we're talking really small, like maybe 3%, 4%, 5%, 10%, something like that. It's not a lot.

Again, I don't know if that is really clinically significant at all, but there is some small . . . Maybe that's part of what goes into this TikTok argument as well. So the guy in the video didn't mention statins.

Scot: A couple things I heard that any time I hear this, as just a guy who's just generally interested my health, is a little red flag for me. And that word is "optimize." You're trying to optimize testosterone levels. Well, in that that case, maybe that 1% or 2% or 3% matters to them.

Now, at the end of the day, how much benefit do they really get from it? Who knows? But I'm glad to hear that you said that even if it could have an impact . . . And what I'm doing is I'm kind of extrapolating when you say statins reducing the cholesterol. I mean, it's a small amount. That's something that's not mentioned . . .

Thunder: Really small.

Scot: . . . in this claim, right? How much testosterone are we talking about it being lowered? And I think that's an important piece of information that should be offered in this argument if somebody is going to make it.

Thunder: Yeah, exactly. Whether you believe the old story, which you shouldn't, or whether you look at the statin data, which shows a potentially very small impact, it's still within the normal range. It's still not anywhere close to low levels that we associate with problems with low testosterone.

So yeah, there's this thing, you have statistical significance, maybe you lower it by a few percent, but you're still well in the normal range. So it doesn't have any physiological or clinical impact.

Scot: Yeah. And as we discussed on previous episodes with other providers, that range is pretty wide. A matter of 10 or 15 or 20 extra points, if you're within that range, doesn't really make any difference. Not even a noticeable difference.

Thunder: Yeah. Correct.

Scot: All right. Cool. Mitch, are you happy with this one?

Mitch: I am. It confirmed a lot of my . . . It just seems like there are so many guys on TikTok when it comes to testosterone that it's like, "We have to hold on to every little drop of testosterone we could potentially produce, or else we're going to get old and terrible." I'm going to have some oatmeal. Thanks.

Thunder: Yeah. And people don't talk about the flip side where if you have too much testosterone, that's actually bad, because that increases risk for stroke, and prostate cancer, and other things that we don't want to have.

Scot: So the benefits of oatmeal far outweigh any possible downside when it comes to testosterone, which the link is tenuous at best. As Thunder said, he didn't really find any credible evidence to support that claim.

All right. I like it. I like what we're doing here. "TikTok Nutrition: Fact or Cap." Number two, steak is a better health food than fruits and vegetables for men over 40. And I can tell you I'm hoping that this one is true. I love steak and potatoes. And if that's what I've got to eat and you didn't have to worry about the vegetables, that would be heaven for me.

So let's have Mitch go ahead and set up this one. What are they saying on TikTok?

Thunder: This trend has reached 1.2 million. It's relatively new. It's only been a couple of weeks, but it's caught on really fast, especially in that "Fit over 40: What you should be doing with your nutritionist" or "What your nutritionist doesn't want you to know," those types of accounts. And this one says, "Organic, grass-fed beef will have fundamentally more nutrients and a more dense serving than eating a crap ton of vegetables or fruits."

 

Men in your 40s, steak is actually a better health food for you than fruits and vegetables. Now let me explain. Nutrient-dense, grass-fed, grass-finished steak has so many different nutrients in it that your body needs to be healthy and healthy fats. While vegetables, although good for us and have fiber, they're not nearly as nutrient dense and not nearly as complete a food group as grass-fed, grass-finished beef.

 

Mitch: Yeah. And so that term grass-fed, grass-finished is constantly brought up to the point where there's actually a sub-tip that happens in some of these videos where they actually are telling guys, "Hey, you can't just buy the plain beef at the grocery store. You've got to go get organic. You've got to get real nice. Buy it from a butcher, if you can, because there's something magical about grass-fed, grass-finished beef that makes it better than fruits and vegetables."

Scot: Thunder, before you jump into this, let me just say I hate the tone of all of these guys on the internet. They're just so in your face and it's just so finger pointing at you. "You big idiot. This is the deal." And I realize you have to do that to get attention, but I just hate this attention economy. So anyway, that's my gripe here.

Thunder: Yeah, I do too. It's kind of like the verbal equivalent of someone smacking you on the back of the head and saying, "Hey, listen up."

Scot: "Yeah, you idiot. What are you doing? What are you doing eating fruits and vegetables? You need to eat steak. You need to eat grass-fed, grass-finished steak." If this person was in front of me in real life, I would walk away.

Thunder: Yeah. You'd put your shirt on and you'd walk away.

Scot: I think there are a couple of things to unpack here, so I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Thunder: Yeah. So this is one of those videos where, again, there are elements of accuracy in here, but it's also things kind of taken out of context and taken out of proportion.

So does steak have a lot of important nutrients that are good for you? Yeah, it does. But so do fruits and vegetables. You can't really substitute one for the other, though. In an ideal healthy eating pattern, you need to have a lot of sources of nutrients. You can have steak and you should also have fruits and vegetables.

So let me put it this way. If someone would ask, "What's more important, your arm or your leg?" you'd be like, "Well, gosh, they're both kind of important. I don't want to make a choice."

Scot: If I don't have to.

Thunder: Yeah, exactly. I look to this the same way. So there are nutrients that are in fruits and vegetables that you are not going to get from any kind of steak. And these nutrients have been shown to have health benefits. There are a lot of studies that show the more fruits and vegetables you consume, the lower your risk of virtually any chronic disease you can think of, like Type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease and cancers, etc.

Mitch: What about for guys who eat a whole bunch of steak? Are there studies that show that it also lowers mortality?

Thunder: So on the other hand, with steak, yes, you can say there are definitely important nutrients in there. There are a lot of minerals that are present in higher amounts in steak that we may not necessarily get in high amounts and fruits and vegetables. So steak, red meat, animal protein in general, yes, there are some benefits of that too.

But the question always comes up, "Well, if you tell somebody, like in this video, to eat steak, what if they're eating so much? Is there a potential danger from eating too much?" The short answer to that is probably not. There is some evidence that it could, like eating a lot of red meat or a lot of animal protein can increase the risk of certain kinds of cancers. But that evidence is not a slam dunk. So I would say it's still kind of ambiguous.

So going back to the general proposition, both food sources are important. Why do we have to choose one or the other? I'm going to eat both. If I exclude one completely from my diet, it'll be hard to get the nutrients I need. That's the bottom line.

Mitch: What about this grass-fed, grass-finished thing? Because this is not the only trend I've seen that particular . . . This "organic is best. It's going to be healthier than vegetables."

Thunder: I mean, there are differences in the fat composition of corn-fed beef versus grass-fed beef. There are differences. What we don't know is what effect they would have on long-term human health. To my knowledge, nobody has really ever studied that. So while we can acknowledge there may be differences in the fat composition, we don't know what that means for us in the long term. So I just think it's really trendy to talk about the whole grass-fed this and that.

Scot: Yeah. It sounds more compelling, right? If your food is eating more natural sources of food in a more natural way, then one would hope that it would be better for you, right? But I'm hearing that there really probably hasn't been much research to try to suss out between the two if that's the case.

Thunder: Yeah, exactly. Again, we do know there's difference in fat. If you think about it, a cow is actually meant to eat grass. That's kind of the normal healthy state for it. If you take a cow and you give it corn, like they do in feedlots, you finish them on corn or something, it really messes up the cow metabolically. They make a lot more fat. They basically get metabolic syndrome in a way. And so they have a lot more fat in their muscle, and it tastes good when we eat it, but it's not healthy for the cow.

And it's also not healthy for the environment because now we have a bunch of cows with acidified GI systems and they're packed in clothes and they're eating corn. They all need to get antibiotics. That's a whole other environmental can of worms.

Scot: Man, I wanted you to make steak sound better, and now you're turning me off of it. Stop that.

Thunder: Well, you can have it, like everything else, in moderation.

Scot: Right. So two red flags for this. Well, one red flag for sure. Any time anybody is telling you that you need to pick one thing over another, probably question that a little bit. It seems that all good things are in moderation and proper balance. So if they're asking you to choose one over the other or saying, "Well, you should give priority to this" . . . Unless that other thing is something that's really, really bad for you. So that always concerns me a little bit.

I was surprised to find out, though, that the health detriments of red meat maybe aren't as pronounced or well-documented as what I was led to believe.

Thunder: Well, I mean, not necessarily. I guess I specifically references cancer. We have over the years heard a lot about how red meat can increase cancer risk. Like I said, it's ambiguous. I mean, in some studies it's come back yes, and other studies, it's come back no. And in other types of cancers, there's just not enough data to say one way or the other.

What we do know, or what may be an issue with red meat, is we know that processed red meat can increase the risk for heart disease. So pepperoni, Slim Jims, stuff like that.

Scot: Got it.

Thunder: So that we can say is not good. And there's a dose dependency to it. The more you eat, the worse it is.

Scot: And this is another instance of, I think, a dose thing, just like our very first one about oatmeal. To what extent are any of these effects happening to you? To what extent is it healthier if I ate more steak and fewer fruits and vegetables? Probably nominal. And like you outlined, you need both. So why do one at the exclusion of the other?

Thunder: Yeah. I mean, for future reference, maybe sometimes we can have a conversation about red meat and atherosclerosis, and how it's not necessarily the fat or anything that's causing these potential cardiovascular issues. I'm saying "potential." It's other stuff. But that's probably not something we want to unpack right now.

Scot: Okay. So I can continue to have my steak?

Thunder: Yes.

Scot: In moderation.

Thunder: Make sure you have some fruits and vegetables with it.

Scot: Okay. I will.

Thunder: That can be a healthy meal.

Scot: All right. "TikTok Nutrition: Fact or Cap." Number three on our list, do certain oils cause inflammation? Now, I'm really interested in this one because I have somebody that I know, that I trust on health and wellness topics, and just recently had a conversation about how certain oils should be eliminated from your diet because they cause inflammation, and those oils can stay in your body for long periods of time causing problems.

So Mitch, set this one up for us. I look forward to hearing your answer on this one, Thunder.

Mitch: So this particular one was the largest one that I was able to find. It's been around for as long as I . . . As long as TikTok has existed, there have been talks about oil. But this particular situation is from an influencer called Bobby Parrish. And he has a potential reach of 2.1 million people on this video alone.

He's a big name in certain keto circles. Apparently, he and his wife have written a book together, etc. But there have been certain groups on the internet, different nutritionists, etc., that have claimed that he is the most dangerous nutritionist on the internet, which led to a whole really deep dive for me.

We're finding out that he has his own health food line. He kind of directs people towards it. And a lot of people swear that what he says is gospel, but he has no degrees. He has no research background, no doctorship, no nothing. So I'm curious as well, is this an actual piece of information coming from the mouth of a problematic messenger or is there something to it?

 

This is quite misleading because when you pick up a jug of vegetable oil and you see beautiful tomatoes and lettuce and red onions, the oil ain't made from that. It's always made from soybean oil. And these soybeans are not only GMO, but to turn it into oil in this jug, they have to use so much process, heat, and refinement that the oil becomes oxidized, and they have to use a deodorizer to make it edible.

This is one of the most inflammatory oils ever. If a recipe ever calls for canola oil, or soybean oil, or vegetable oil for baking or savory, swap it out with avocado oil. This is anti-inflammatory. This is about as inflammatory as they get.

 

Thunder: So this is one of those questions that I've had before, and it always seems to come up. I've even been personally curious about it, because we all have choices like what we cook with.

Now, as far as I know and the research I've looked at with this has all pretty much come to the conclusion that vegetable oils, like soybean oil and even canola oil, are actually healthy because they seem to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, and they seem to have better metabolic profiles. So I'm not sure where this is coming from.

Now, I'm sure there's stuff out there on the internet that maybe says otherwise, but has it been scientifically tested, evaluated? I'm going to guess probably not. But the latest I've seen is that, yes, if you have more vegetable oil . . . which he's correct, it is soybean oil. The guy is right about that. I'm not going to argue with him on that. But it seems to have a positive benefit.

Scot: Can you get that same positive benefit from other oils, like avocado oil? I mean, is there any downside to trading that out if you're like, "Well, I don't know if I buy that"?

Thunder: So I don't know about the positive benefit because the bulk of research has been done with canola and soybean oil. Avocado oil has not been studied to the same degree in terms of doing large-scale clinical trials, things that last years, and then aggregating results of many different studies into reviews. I mean, this has not been done with avocado oil in particular.

But if you want to use a different oil for cooking and frying, yeah, avocado oil would be great. You could even use coconut oil in certain applications. Maybe not in everything because you don't want all your stuff to taste like coconut, but those are alternatives and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Mitch: What about this idea of inflammation? Because that shows up a lot, this idea that the reason that you are sore, the reason that you have indigestion, the reason that you have this, this, this, and this is because you're putting something in your body that's been often, the claim is, over-processed and is therefore causing internal inflammation. What do you know about that stuff?

Thunder: So inflammation is definitely a big issue physiologically. There are many chronic diseases that have an inflammatory component. But I think with that being said, what's kind of lost is that inflammation is also kind of natural and normal, and we kind of need a balance of having a little inflammation but not too much.

For example, when you exercise and you're trying to get stronger or fitter, you're creating some oxidative stress and you're creating some inflammation in your cells, but you actually need that in order to adapt to the exercise and get stronger and more fit. So we need a little bit.

I think where the problem lies is when we have too much inflammation, when it's kind of present all the time in either low-level or high amounts. Then it can have some negative effects, right? So that's kind of the story on inflammation.

And some lifestyle habits can increase inflammation, like eating too much simple sugar in a diet can increase inflammatory markers. Being overweight or obese can increase low-level systemic inflammation. Smoking increases it, stuff like that. So that's kind of the inflammatory nutshell in general.

I don't know, but I don't think these oils increase inflammation because I haven't really seen any evidence that a factor. If they do, is there going to be a long-term problem?

Scot: And that leads me to wonder . . . So I try to generally avoid vegetable oils because somewhere along the line, I've come under the impression that they're bad. And not just because of inflammation, but because it's just not necessarily the healthiest oil choice. There are better oil choices. So I tend to cook a lot with olive oil.

I mean, is it okay for me to use vegetable oil in some cooking applications, or should I be using olive oil or avocado oil or something else?

Thunder: So I think it's okay to use those vegetable oils for certain cooking applications, particularly when you have a higher heat, because you can sometimes chemically change the olive oil a little bit. You can kind of make those into more unhealthy forms of oil.

And really, olive oil is meant to be kind of like a light stir fry type cooking oil and really a condiment, not necessarily something you want to fry food in. Avocado oil or coconut oil are probably better choices for that. Even vegetable is probably a better choice.

So the short of it is I guess it depends on what exactly you're cooking and how you're cooking it as to what choice you want to make with oil.

Scot: Right. And probably the issue is less about the oil and more about you're frying food, right? Fried food generally is not great for you.

Thunder: Yeah. If you're deep-frying food, for sure. That's another set of issues where deep frying produces compounds in the oil that when you ingest it are very inflammatory.

Scot: Oh. So how I would use that vegetable oil could make a difference. If I'm deep fat frying it, then you could have some very inflammatory compounds. If it's just in a skillet and I'm tossing some tofu in there trying to get a nice little crust on it, that's probably not the same thing.

Thunder: Yeah, there's a big difference between throwing a couple pieces of chicken in a gallon of oil and letting them fry up and eating it versus using that soybean oil to stir fry some zucchini or mushrooms or something. But for that application, you could also use avocado oil to stir fry your zucchini or mushrooms.

And olive oil, the more I think we can use that as a condiment, the better. You make some broccoli, maybe you steam it or something, and then you serve it and you put some salt on it and you put some olive oil on it. That's a good use of olive oil.

Scot: All right. So that one, do certain oils cause inflammation, as presented, fact or cap?

Thunder: I'm going to go with mostly cap.

Mitch: I like that.

Scot: All right. Well, that was good, Mitch. Thank you for going out into the world of TikTok and finding some of these conversations people are having about nutrition.

I'm an Instagram person myself, so I wouldn't have found these for another month or two because Instagram Reels are a little bit behind the TikTok vibe. So I'm glad that you found those.

Any takeaways, Mitch, from this conversation?

Mitch: So for me, we're back to that kind of idea where the most believable is often the ones where people are reading papers, right? All three that we looked at today are people who have claimed that, "I've read this paper. Here's what it means." But maybe that there's a bit of literacy, there's a bit of skepticism that needs to be with any of these things.

Really, after years of doing this show, it really is, "Eat more whole foods than processed, make sure your calories are all right, and make sure you're getting a good, healthy mix of things."

And so any time I see these types of things that are like, "Oh, here's how you optimize," or, "Here's how you eat this, not that," etc., there's a lot of a lot of stuff that I think should set up red flags for anyone listening.

Scot: Thunder, thoughts? Any final thoughts?

Thunder: Yeah. I keep coming back to something similar that Mitch was speaking about. Everyone is looking for a shortcut or a hack or something like that, a life hack that can get you quickly to this level of fitness or health. And the reality is there are really no gimmicks or hacks to health. It's kind of a life-long proposition where you have to do all the things that are not really rocket science, like eat whole foods, eat unprocessed foods. If it comes in a box, try to eat less of it than things that don't come in a box, for example. And exercise.

It takes time, and then you build it into your healthy lifestyle. There is no quick one-month hack, and there is no stage in life where we've got to cut out this completely and only eat that.

The only thing I would put in that category for cutting out completely is to be careful of your added sugar intake. But everything else, I think we're looking for shortcuts, and that's the wrong approach. We need to be looking at what we can live with and what we can do over a lifetime.

Scot: I concur with both of you. That was one of my takeaways as well. And I'm trying to formulate another takeaway here, which is I think I tend to go into most of this stuff you see online with a pretty healthy amount of skepticism. I think if there was one thing that made such a huge difference in our health from a nutrition standpoint, we would know about it, and we would all probably be doing it at this point.

I can get sucked into some of these things sometimes because I want to feel like, "Oh, maybe this is the secret thing." And I think that's what Thunder is talking about a little bit. Or, "Maybe this is something that science or people haven't figured out yet. I'm going to try this." And I think over a lifetime, I've come to learn that that's not necessarily the case with, I would say, 99.9% of the things that you see.

Mitch: And I'd like to think that if there was a scientific breakthrough, it would be someone in a lab coat that would come and tell me. It wouldn't be a shirtless guy in a grocery store.

Thunder: What if the guy in the lab coat wasn't wearing a shirt underneath?

Scot: Yeah. What about that? Huh, Mitch?

Mitch: Man, I don't know.

Thunder: There you go.

Mitch: I'm all over the place now.

Scot: It's a credibility conflict right there. It's hard to say.

Thunder: Can I make just one more quick comment on this? When I watched these videos when they were sent to me, there is something compelling about someone who is speaking confidently and is assertive about how things are, right? And it doesn't matter who you are, it does make you kind of listen and think, "Man, have I missed something? This sounds really like it's legit." So the delivery, I think, also has a way of influencing us when we're watching these things.

Scot: That's a good point about the messenger. If somebody is speaking confidently, it can kind of make you question the things that you know a little bit.

Thunder: Yeah, absolutely. We see that with everything in life.

Scot: All right. Well, good conversation. Thank you very much. If you have any thoughts or comments on any of the myths that we talked about today or you have one that you would like Thunder to address on "TikTok Nutrition: Fact or Cap," you can reach out to us. Email hello@thescoperadio.com.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for caring about men's health.