I'm gonna get real today. You probably love listening to nutrition podcasts like this one. And if you've ever listened to a podcast like that and you thought, hey, this person sounds really confident, they sound like they know what they're talking about, but what they're saying doesn't match what I heard on a different podcast last week or today. That is not your imagination. There is a study from just a couple years ago in 2023, the Brookings Institution, that looked at 36,000 episodes from 79 prominent podcast hosts. It found that more than 70% had pushed at least one unsubstantiated or false health claim. This is the world we're living in today. A BBC investigation of one of the top podcasts on Spotify counted 14 harmful health claims across 15 health episodes. And this is not uncommon. So today I want to talk about why most nutrition podcasts will probably be a waste of your time. Not because the hosts are dumb, not because they're lying on purpose, but because there is this incentive structure that rewards a very specific kind of content. And I'm only talking about this today because I have unfollowed many podcasts recently and really tried to clean up my feed. And I'm sure you're thinking of doing the same. And I want to help you do that. How to filter out your feed. I'm not gonna tell you what to listen to, just talk principles here. Quick reminder: I am Philip Pape. This is Wits and Weights. This is a nutrition and strength training podcast. And today we're putting the genre of nutrition podcasts itself under the microscope, this one included. So here is the problem with most nutrition podcasts. They sell you specifics when the truth, that's capital T truth, is in the principles. Okay, this is the thesis of most nutrition podcasts. I'm gonna explain in a second here. Specifics. Specifics are foods, protocols, supplements, villains. They're very tangible. They get clicks, they make great titles, they can be argued about in comments, especially on YouTube. Ugh, I hate YouTube as much as I use it just loosely. And that that's what I mean by specifics. They're easy to create boogeyman from. And I get that because sometimes I will call them out as the premise of a show for the purpose of dispelling a myth, knowing that it's probably gonna get some attention as well. I'm human, of course I do that. Now, principles look different than specifics. Principles are okay, we need to eat enough protein for your body weight, right? I'm not telling you exactly how much, I'm not telling you what kind, but there's a principle behind it supported by science. Be in the right calorie range for your goal. Lift weights, progressively overload them. And that gives you a lot of ranges of options for how to do it. Uh sleep enough, manage your stress, be consistent, boring, boring, boring, right? Nobody fights about principles in the YouTube comments, but principles are what change your body. Specifics are far downstream of that. Specifics are gonna change in infinite ways, not only across people, but even for yourself across the days, weeks, months, and years of your life. And most podcasts have flipped that around because of the incentive structure of podcast attention. So I'm gonna give you three places where you're gonna notice this when listening to nutrition podcasts. And I want you to evaluate this show as well as others you listen to in this context. Okay, so the pattern, pattern number one is the single villain podcast, where everything wrong with your body comes back to one thing. It's carbs, if it's a low-carb show, or carnivore or keto, something like that, seed oils, cortisol, if it's a stress show show, or they're trying to sell you hormone supplements, or your thyroid, or your gut if it's functional medicine, right? Hormones in general, if it's perimenopause, toxins if it's if it's detox. Does this sound familiar? And the tell is that the villain is always the thing the host can sell you something to protect against, right? Functional medicine podcasters are probably the bane of this. There, there's a small amount of them that I like, but many of them, the there's there's this villain, you know, your gut is the villain. And here's a$400 gut test and a supplement protocol and a hair test and a blood test and lab work. And by the way, we have coaching, et cetera. Every time the villain is a perfect match for the product they're offering. Okay, and I'm not saying that carbs don't matter or that gut health is a fake thing, fake news, or hormones are irrelevant when it comes to perimenopause. What I'm saying is that real physiology never comes down to one thing. The body's a system, systems have constraints. You have to figure out which constraint is binding for you today in your specific situation. And of course, if there's a podcast that appeals to you and seems evidence-based and you trust the host, and it is about one of those topics, that's perfectly okay. Just look for the villain product connection. Okay, pattern number two is the supplement as a fix podcast. So I recently started saying no to just about every pitch for someone who owns or promotes supplements. Even though there are plenty of great supplements, that's not the issue. In the women's health space, especially, especially perimenopause, menopause, which by the way, I love that space. I love that's most of you in my audience, that's many of you in my audience, the format goes like this the host or the guest spends a half hour explaining how complex your hormones are, how dysregulated your cortisol is, how your adrenals are exhausted, which by the way is not a real thing, how your gut is leaky, it's permeated, you know, your liver is not working right. And this picture they paint is this cascading dysfunction across every single system you have. You are just a complete mess, you're totally broken. That is why you can't X lose weight. That's why, why you can't have enough energy, whatever. And then after those 30 minutes, boom, you get the answer, like manna from heaven. And it's conveniently the supplement that they're selling or the program they're selling or the test they're selling. Right. And again, I'm not saying, look, I'm a capitalist. I have coaching programs, I promote and sell things, I have sponsors as well, things that I believe in. Okay. So again, you have to put this into context. If if there's a one-to-one connection with something that makes sense, fine. But to lay it all out as if everything is just a huge mess for you, and this is the the source of all your problems, and then we have the one fix, that's the red flag. So, what are the odds that a single supplement is going to fix your quote-unquote hormones if they are complex, as they just described for the first half of the episode? I want you to think about that a lot. Okay. Now, some supplements, as I mentioned, have plenty of evidence behind them: creatine, caffeine, vitamin D, fish oil. If you're deficient and you need things, absolutely take supplements if you're not able to solve it through, for example, real or whole foods. But the functional medicine medicine podcast space is often selling, you know, adaptogenic blends where they've privately labeled some combination or stack. That's that's kind of the concern that I have, is that the podcast is purely a marketing funnel for supplements. And the quote unquote science isn't really science, it's really just all the supplement. Okay. Pattern number three is the foods and protocols over principles. So I alluded to this already, you know, when we before we got into these patterns. Most nutrition podcasts spend a lot of the time on specific foods and specific protocols. Should you eat eggs? Should you fast? Are oats bad now? Or maybe they focus on organic versus not, whatever. And by the way, there's some great podcasts on the other side of this that handle it, the nuance so well, okay, so well. And that's what I look for. So the listener of these podcasts is getting stuck in like a tactical loop. Every new episode is a new specific idea, and you never resolve it, right? There's a new idea, a new idea, a new idea. You binge the show, you get all this information flooded into your brain. I think that's where a lot of the confusion from comes from. The problem is there's not a universal answer. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing that there's not a universal answer because otherwise, you're constantly chasing the universal answer instead of the principle of, hey, do you tolerate certain foods? Are you including the things that you need for your goals? Are you getting enough energy? Are you lifting weights? Like the principles, and then the food is like a vehicle for the principle for you specifically. So if you put this in the context, an analogy of like building a house, would you spend most of the time arguing about what types of nails to use, or whether the foundation is square, whether the load on the house is balanced, the walls are plum. Now you may be like, yeah, I don't even know what you're talking about because I'm gonna hire, I'm gonna buy a house or hire a contractor. But nonetheless, I think you get the idea that principles are like the structural questions about the foundation. And then the specifics are like the nails of the house. And I would say most nutrition, most podcasts are episode after episode after episode about the nails, about the nails. That is why most of you I talk to, you find my show, and you're like, I've been listening to podcasts for years and I still don't know what to do or even what to eat. And now, if you come to me saying, What do I eat? you'll get an answer like, I'm not gonna tell you what to eat. I'm gonna help you figure that out for yourself based on the principles. So the only other thing I'm gonna throw in, and this is more of a personal preference for you in terms of like what you enjoy. A lot of podcasts I've noticed spend a lot of their runtime on banter, joking around, telling stories about their week, their training, hyping each other up. Nothing wrong with any of that. If that is what you're looking for, like a form of entertainment. We've done surveys most years for this show, and one of the things people say they do like is the lack of banter. Now I'm by myself, of course, but sometimes people take a lot of time talking about things that are not relevant. And I know I like to get to the point, and you do too. So to get the depth we need on principles, I'm usually 30 minutes almost exclusively talking about the principles, understanding the mechanism, saying what I don't know versus what I think I know based on the evidence, and then teach you what you're trying to walk away with. Hopefully there's a little bit of entertainment there, of course, but you're also trying to learn and then apply that information. So, how do you tell which nutrition podcasts are worth your time? Just to wrap this in a bow. Three things to listen for. Number one, does the host ever say, we don't know yet, or I'm not sure, or the evidence is mixed? If so, that's awesome. That's what you want to hear. This phrase of we don't know everything is a marker of credibility because real science has always has unresolved questions. Hosts who never say that, who just act 100% confident all the time, are selling you certainty that doesn't exist. This is why I reference studies all the time, as well as my opinion, my anecdote, uh, my clients. I kind of pull it all together to let you know that we never have a perfect set of information, but we're doing our best to move in that direction. Number two is do they teach principles or just hand you protocols? Now I know you want to learn what to do, but be careful that the the what they're telling you isn't so narrow in scope that it's not for you, that it's not a model you can apply across other situations. It's just this one specific thing, and then you get caught in a trap that sends you in the wrong direction. Number three, do their incentives line up with your needs and progress? Or are they just always trying to sell something very specific, like a supplement? Right. And again, this is hard to tease apart because there's a lot of great podcasters who have coaching that they sell. And the coaching is fantastic and it lines up with their principles and helping you make progress, but many others do not. All right, so that is the bonus for today, kind of short, but maybe longer than I wanted. If this resonated, just hit the follow button. That's all I ask you. Hit it. Um, as a bonus, share this with another listener of podcast episodes just to say, hey, you know, I'm curious what your feed looks like. Like, who do you listen to? Maybe get some ideas going there. And that's all I ask. Just hit follow, share the show. This was just a quick bonus for the weekend. I'm Philip Ape. This is Wits and Weights, and I'll talk to you next time.