Episode · The Ezra Klein Show · 2023-02-28
Books mentioned on Our Brains Weren’t Designed for This Kind of Food
Ezra Klein discussed The hungry brain by Stephan J. Guyenet and Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert and others. Also mentioned: Burn by Herman Pontzer, Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss, and The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The hungry brain
Discussed“and his book The Hungry brain is to me the most convincing model for why obesity is rising year after year by so many who try so hard to change their waistlines fail even after they sometimes first succeed”
Where to get it
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Under a White Sky
Discussed“and sometimes I feel like it's all the same story playing out again and again in a way that's what Elizabeth Colbert's under a white sky is about”
Where to get it
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Burn
Burn by Herman Pontzer is an insightful exploration of human metabolism, energy expenditure, and evolutionary biology that challenges common assumptions about diet and weight loss.
Recommended“so the first one I want to recommend is Herman ponce's book Burn it's a really great book on several levels”
Where to get it
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Salt Sugar Fat
Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss is an investigative look into how major food corporations intentionally engineer ultra-processed products to be addictive.
Recommended“second one I want to recommend is Michael Moss's salt sugar fat also a really entertaining book and it really details the kind of uh path that the food industry took that brought us to where we are today”
Where to get it
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The Secret of Our Success
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich explores how human cultural learning, cooperation, and cumulative knowledge have driven evolutionary success far beyond raw intelligence alone.
Recommended“and the third book I want to recommend is the secret of our success by Joe Henrik”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (4) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“and so I want to hold on this for a minute because I think it's important both to your your book and a lot of what we're going to talk about here when you say a lot affects how people act”
“but I want to talk about something that's scored your book which is the similarities and in particular the sort of evolutionary environment in which our brain's response to different kinds of food emerged which was an environment much more food scarcity”
“so you can literally reverse people's type 2 diabetes just by restricting their calorie intake and causing them to lose fat”
“so DNA thank you very much thanks Ezra”