Stephan Guyenet - How the Brain Controls Eating and Obesity (Ancestral Health Today Episode 007)

Stephan Guyenet on How the Brain Controls Eating and Obesity
This episode with Stephan Guyenet examines the brain processes that drive appetite and eating behavior. Stephan is a neuroscientist who has studied what drives many of us to overeat and become overweight, and why it is so hard to lose weight. He did his Ph.D. in Neurobiology at the University of Washington, and wrote the popular heath blog, Whole Health Source. In 2017 he published a highly acclaimed book about this - The Hungry Brain. It continues to garner praise and attention, and was featured last February on the New York Times' Ezra Klein podcast. Stephan has spoken at the Ancestral Health Symposium several times on topics relating to the metabolic and neurological processes that underlie eating behavior and obesity.
Our conversation with Stephan touches on how evolution shaped our brain circuits to function in a way that is mismatched to the modern food environment. Weight control is not a simple matter of willpower, but of better awareness to how our neurobiology and reward circuits respond to different foods.
Here is a guide to topics discussed in this podcast episode:
1:57 How Stephan got interested in the brain's role in obesity
3:12 Obesity as a modern phenomenon and it's rarity in pre-industrial societies like the Hazda
6:45 Theories on the cause of the obesity epidemic - macronutrients, processed foods, food abundance
11:31 Why It's not just about carbohydrates or refined carbs
14:10 And it's also not just about omega-6 seed oils
17:10 Food cravings and calorie dense highly palatable food
18:52 The evidence from rat studies
24:29 Food combinations and dopamine release in the brain
25:48 Sensory specific satiety
28:03 Is palatability inherent in food, hardwired in the brain, or learned through conditioning?
33:08 The mismatch between our brain reward circuits and modern processed foods
36:09 What is dopamine and how does it work in the brain to induce cravings?
45:07 How to extinguish food cravings by changing what we eat
46:47 How low carb and low fat diets can both work
48:11 The role of food flavor in appetite control
49:52 Recruiting non-conscious brain circuits to support your weight loss goals
50:33 Which diets Stephan thinks are best supported by the evidence
56:17 Satiety and calorie density
58:06 What Stefan is working on now

[@randallhuff4963]

I wonder if one generation’s eating habits affect the body composition of the next generation or two, even more than the current generation.

[@AznDudeIsOn]

Thanks for the timestamps! will much easier to come back and remember what glorious insight stephan has for us! Lovd the insight on calorie density, why it's not just about carbs/omega6s. Sensory specific satiety

[@spiorad8008]

I think you should read the book Eat Like the Animals and learn about the protein-leverage hypothesis, then interview the authors!