Ep. #103: James Krieger on the truth about eating grains

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Mike Matthews from musclefullife. com back with another episode of my podcast And in this episode, I interview James Krieger from weightology. net. Now, in case you haven’t heard of him, James is a published scientist. He’s an author and his speaker and someone whose work has really helped me better understand the fundamentals of losing fat, building muscle and staying healthy.

I came across his work early on in my travels in this space. And I think the first article of his that I ever read was on how. Insulin works in the body and how it relates to fat storage and fat burning. And that really crystallized for me why insulin isn’t the enemy and carbs are not the enemy and why overeating really is the fundamental mechanism underlying weight gain.

So thank you, James, for writing that article. [00:04:00] He’s written hundreds of other articles as well over the years, and he has a knack for breaking down complex ideas and systems into. Easily digested morsels, which is really what I strive to do in my work as well. So I really appreciated the effort that he put into all the articles that he has posted online.

So in this interview, I pick James’s brain on the hot issue of eating more. Grains, because we’re hearing more and more these days that grains, they just make us fatter and sicker and dumber, you have to wonder how true are these claims. Is it true that wheat is slowly killing us? Should we avoid gluten?

Are some grains safer or better to eat than others? What about GMO crops? Should we worry about them? Should we not worry about them? And in this interview, James answers all of those questions and more. So if you’ve been wondering or worrying about your grain intake, then you should definitely listen to what he has to say, because I think [00:05:00] you’re going to find it interesting.

So with that, let’s get to the interview. Hey, James, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So I’m excited to talk to you because this is a subject grains, eating grains that I get asked about frequently. I’ve written a little bit about it. I’ve spoken a little bit about it, but I haven’t really done a, whatever, 30, 45 minute discussion on it.

And for people listening, if you haven’t heard about this, The grain controversy, then you probably are not paying much attention to the health and fitness space. Cause with books like, wheat belly has sold a bajillion copies and grain brain has sold a bajillion copies. And I think they have followup books and, paleo is huge and a lot of it is about just demonizing grains, of course.

And then wheat in general and promising great things. If you just stop eating, wheat or grains. And what’s I’m going to pass the mic to you here, James. So what are your thoughts on the state of grains and, should we be worried about it? Should we not be worried about it?

James Krieger: Unless you are the [00:06:00] very small percentage of the population who has a gluten intolerance or something like that, which is a very small percentage. There’s no need to be concerned about grains and I get frustrated with the whole grain thing And you got guys Perlmutter, you know with his grain brain book and stuff These guys that are doing this stuff.

They’re just looking to sell books through fear mongering. I mean Let’s face it in the nutrition industry and health industry fear mongering sells I mean if you want to make a lot of money Then all you got to do is make people afraid of something and, have it, and if you can just make it remotely sound scientific, then you can make a ton of money and people will buy your books and buy your 

Mike Matthews: nutrition courses and come to your lectures.

Yeah. 

James Krieger: And 

Mike Matthews: I think there’s also something to be said for the marketing of it that it’s like you can just isolate this one thing and here’s the boogeyman. And if you just get rid of this, then you know, a whole new life is going to open up to you. 

James Krieger: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, I think [00:07:00] these people are taking advantage of human nature.

It’s human nature to want to find some single thing to blame, and I think from a marketing perspective these people that are selling these books and doing these things are just taking advantage of that. Yeah. And you combine that with the fear mongering and yeah, you become a New York Times bestseller like Gary Taubes, making telling people first you should be afraid of carbs and now he’s gone away from that now he’s on sugar but yeah, it’s 

Mike Matthews: Don’t cares about calories.

That’s old thinking, energy. It’s nonsense. 

James Krieger: And so it was so funny because actually, I did a lecture in Australia just this past summer, and I was there with Alan Aragon and Brett Contreras and Brad Schoenfeld, and on my flight, I didn’t even know this. I was on the airplane and I looked back and actually Brett was on my airplane.

I didn’t even realize that. And so I sat down and we were talking. And we were talking about the same thing. We were like, if we really wanted to make a lot of money, we could just totally make up some bogus thing and just [00:08:00] make it remotely sound scientific and just sell tons of money and totally take advantage of people.

Of course, we’re not like that. We would never do that, but it’s the nature of the industry. And I think the whole grain thing. is a typical example of that. You can take these certain isolated studies where, there’s a few papers here and there that, that would show that grains may, stimulate some certain types of inflammatory responses in the intestine or something like that.

You’ll find a few isolated studies like that. And so people will take that and say, Oh, you got to avoid the grains, and You have to look at you got to look at the whole picture You got to look at what is the weight of the evidence, Alan has talked a lot about this I talk about this all the time You can’t take some isolated study, especially a study that looks at something like an immune cell reaction to something I mean that doesn’t tell you what’s going on in the whole body and what’s gonna happen over time, 

Mike Matthews: right?

James Krieger: You got to look at I mean your gold standard are gonna be [00:09:00] your randomized controlled trials on humans You And then, that’s and meta analysis and things like that. That’s the best evidence and then below that, you’ll have like observational data, epidemiological data, things like that 

Mike Matthews: case 

James Krieger: studies when you look at.

Yeah, so when you look at the randomized control trials on grains. When you look at the observational data on grains, it’s almost unanimous that there’s either a health benefit or at least a neutral effect. There’s no evidence that there’s some negative effects. And so anyone trying to sell this idea that Grains are somehow harmful.

It’s, it is not based on best evidence. And it’s simply not, it’s just not based on the best evidence that exists 

Mike Matthews: And where. Some of the things that people hear for example, wheat is particularly demonized. These days as this is the real yeah, you should eliminate these, the other grains, but if you eat wheat, then it’s really a problem.

Where, for example, I, some of the things you just hear is that today’s weed is very different. Then, it was a 100 years ago [00:10:00] because of genetic modification and stuff like that. 

James Krieger: Oh, that gets into the whole GMO thing. Again, there’s no evidence for it. There’s no, it’s yeah, I get so frustrated when I hear people say these things.

It’s it’s not based on any solid scientific evidence at all. It’s just people, it’s either people that are just fear mongering. Or they’ll take some small thing they saw in a study totally out of context and just run with that, and it’s, I, yeah, there’s so many things you have to consider.

Let’s just hypothetically, let’s say you see a study that shows some ingredient or some component of wheat. stimulate some inflammatory reaction in a particular type of cell, for example, let’s say, so you get these fear mongering people take that study, you’ll say, look, wheat causes inflammation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, that was under very specific conditions and you’re not, you have to consider what’s the dose, that’s one thing that a lot of people forget about is [00:11:00] is, what is the dose? Cause sometimes with a lot of, I can take almost any substance. And show some type of problem with it.

If I use a high enough dose, perfect example is, 

Mike Matthews: go drink five gallons of water and see how you feel. 

James Krieger: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a condition called hyponatremia, which can actually kill you if you drink way too much water. So there’s a, you have to consider the dose in the context of whatever you’re talking about.

And when people start talking about wheat and things like that, again, they’ll take some of these isolated studies. When you look at the amounts that people consume, and what are the overall impacts to health, again, the impacts are either neutral or positive. And that’s the thing, you can’t Separate out the positive benefits either.

I’m going to use beans as an example. For example, certain types of beans. There’s a actually no, I won’t use beans. Let me use peanut butter as an example. Peanut butter contains something called aflatoxin. It’s actually toxic. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, the Bulletproof guy is all [00:12:00] about this, right?

Because his coffee is I know it’s a story, but yeah, that’s where a lot of people probably have heard of this. 

James Krieger: Yeah. So aflatoxin is found in peanut. It’s found in all peanut butter, but, and it’s a toxic substance. It’s a toxic substance, but here’s the deal. The amounts are so small.

That there are no physiological consequence to your body. Again, it’s a dose thing. Another example is methanol. So and I bring this, aspartame for example. So aspartame, NutraSweet, aspartame when it’s broken down in your body, it’s broken down into its component amino acids, phenylalanine.

Aspartic acid and then also methanol. Methanol is wood alcohol. It’s actually a toxic substance. But here’s the deal. You will get more methanol drinking orange juice or eating fruit than you would ever get from aspartame. And again, it’s because our body can handle certain amounts of methanol, no problem.

It’s, if you consume, if you consume huge amounts of methanol, that’s where it’s a problem. So you have to consider the dose and the context [00:13:00] and you also have to weigh the, also the positive benefits of something. So for example, we talk about wheat most foods with wheat also have a have a high fiber content, for example, things like that, which you can actually have benefits.

Okay. And so you can’t and if it’s not highly 

Mike Matthews: processed, it’ll have nutrition, nutritious value as well. Yeah, maybe wonder bread is not the best thing to eat. You could make a better choice, but 

James Krieger: yeah, you can make a better choice. But, but even wonder bread. Yeah, it might not be the best choice because it’s refined, but you know what?

You can still. If you have a few slices a day, it’s not going to do anything, 

Mike Matthews: right? 

James Krieger: You can fit it into an overall plan. 

Mike Matthews: If you looked at the person, the average person on the average, the standard American type of diet and this is something even with the low carb, craze that I’ve said many times myself is that, okay, if you’re an average person, you are overweight, you’re sedentary.

You drink alcohol semi regularly, you probably smoke as well. So you have a lot of things that are are working against your overall health. And what I’ve seen [00:14:00] just with people reaching out to me is that you have people in that. They go from that situation to maybe they read grain brain or wheat belly and their normal diet is like carbs, and it’s just refined crap and they eat the wonder bread and then they eat pasta and then they maybe have croissants and donuts and shit and whatever.

And they, so they go from that to then they go, Oh, okay, so I’m going to, I’m going to stop eating that stuff. And they go, what am I going to replace those calories with? And then they happen to make some better choices. And then feel better. Maybe they lose a little bit of weight and, they misattribute what they don’t understand what actually just happened there.

They thought it was, they cut out the wheat and all of a sudden they lost, over the next X number of weeks, they lost 10 pounds and they feel better. It’s yeah, but that’s not because the wheat was holding you down. It was that your diet as a whole sucked and you were eating too many calories.

James Krieger: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: You know what I mean? 

James Krieger: Yeah, and 

Mike Matthews: that’s, 

James Krieger: That, that gets in line too with, yeah, people that switch to low carb diets or anything like that. Especially, you had mentioned pastries and those types of foods, some of these foods [00:15:00] like cake, things like that, they’re very energy dense, right?

And yeah, of course, if I eliminate foods like cake and cookies and things like that, Oh, what happens to my energy intake? It’s going to go down because I’m not, I’m no longer eating these energy dense foods. And also these foods are typically very palatable, they’re highly palatable. They taste good.

They actually encourage us to overeat or override our natural appetite signaling mechanisms. So yeah, so if you reduce those foods, those types of foods yeah, then of course you’re going to start to lose weight and you’re going to start to feel better, but it had, yeah, like you said, it had nothing to do with the wheat or the grain or some specific ingredient.

You, you reduce the energy density of your diet. And you possibly reduce the palatability to a point where you weren’t feeling there’s always, there’s a reason why people always feel like they have room for dessert. and it’s got nothing to do with, it’s got nothing to do with some hormonal effect of sugar or something like that.

It has everything to do with palatability and dessert tastes great [00:16:00] and it stimulates the reward mechanisms in our brain and so yeah, so we’re gonna eat it even if we’re not hungry. And the whole palatability thing is a, that’s a totally separate issue, that’s a. Excuse me. It’s a major, it’s a major driver of obesity.

All the, a lot of the foods we eat nowadays, the processed foods, things like that, eating out. These are, we would almost call it hyper palatable foods. Yeah, they are basically engineered 

Mike Matthews: sugar, high fat. Yeah. Delicious. 

James Krieger: Yeah. They’re engineered to just encourage us to eat more.

Even when we’re not hungry, 

Mike Matthews: And I would say that probably then when we’re looking at grains type of grains, at least, a lot of the people that again are more in that standard American diet subsection, the type of. Grains they’re eating are going to be more of these highly refined, highly palatable foods.

It’s, I don’t think these are the average person in that crowd. They’re not like, eating Ezekiel bread or something for breakfast. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, yeah, the, they go to get their coffee and they’re eating three pastries with it as well.

So I [00:17:00] think that’s another just a good point to make that. We have to look at the overall picture here and say, okay, so what types of grains are they eating and how are they living? But if I think if you took those people to your point, you’re saying, yeah, okay, if you ate a couple slices of wonder bread a day, it doesn’t really matter.

I would say to the person if your diet on the whole makes sense, you’re not like starved for nutrients and you take care of your body. Would you agree? 

James Krieger: Oh yeah, I totally agree. I’m a person I favor a flexible dieting approach, similar that, you know, if it fits your macros, but at the same time people tend to misrepresent that as saying, Oh, are you just saying people can just eat whatever they want?

As long as it fits their macros, you could just live off candy and protein powder all day. Thanks. And it’s no, I’m not saying that because it would be very hard to stick with something like that simply because you probably feel hungry all the time, 

Theoretically, yeah, you could get lean and ripped on as long as your protein intake is up on, it probably doesn’t matter but it’s more of the adherence factor.

You’re not going to be able to adhere to something like that simply because, some of these foods are just not [00:18:00] satiating. So especially if you’re in an energy deficit, you’re still going to want to have most of your diet coming from whole foods, things like that. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah.

I wrote an article recently about clean eating and basically saying that. Even as someone that, I also recommend flexible dieting as I think it’s the best overall approach. I think for most people I have come across people that have problems regulating their, they, they really do need to cut out sugar for a bit because, they just once they start eating it, they feel like they can’t stop and so forth. Yeah. And 

James Krieger: there’s people like that, it’s you have to have an individual approach, but like you said, for most people it’s going to work fine. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. But how that. The Intelligent Flexible Dieter, though, looks, I think, more like a clean eater.

Then, your average IFYM Instagram bro that, posts, nothing about, every other meal is like candy or ice cream or some bullshit. Because when you really look at it, if you’re going to get the majority of your calories from nutritious foods, then then your meal plan starts to look, it looks pretty clean in a sense because you’re eating a lot of stuff that, you’re gonna have fruits and [00:19:00] vegetables and whole grains and so forth.

So on, on the point of grains, then what type of grains then would you say are the best ones to choose from? And which ones are of. I would say lower nutritive value or that you should not necessarily limit your intake on, but okay, so here, these are the grains that you’re doing yourself a favor.

You eat these grains. These are the grains that are neutral. If you ate, if 80 percent of your carbs were coming from these, probably not a good idea. 

James Krieger: Yeah. I’d say really, it just comes down. I think whole versus refined grains. If you really want to simplify it big thing is usually if I’m at the grocery store and I’m shopping and I’m looking at grain foods The thing that I really look for is actually I’m not as concerned or whether it’s whole or refined grain typically I’m actually looking at the fiber content So because you can have some whole grain foods that are actually pretty low or almost non existent with fiber for example you can have some more refined grain things that still have a decent amount of fiber in it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. If you want to jump in real quick and [00:20:00] explain why that is, that’s a good point. Something fiber is, a lot of people as they start to get educated in this space, they learn about calories, they learn about macros, but fiber is something that’s not talked about much. And why does it, why is that important?

Why do you pay attention to your fiber intake? 

James Krieger: So the reason I pay attention to fiber intake is number one is there’s some evidence I will say it’s not totally. Consistent, it depends on what research you look at, but obviously there’s some evidence that fiber helps with satiety, so it’s going to help you feel fuller and then there’s possible other health benefits.

We know that There’s some data, observational data, now again there’s limitations to this data that suggests that, higher fiber intakes are associated with a lower risk of colon cancer and lower risk of heart disease and things like that. If you’re someone who has problems with blood glucose regulation, so either you have type 2 diabetes or let’s say you’re insulin, maybe you don’t have type 2 diabetes but you’re insulin resistant, which means you’re on your way to type 2 diabetes.

There’s a number of benefits to fiber and typically when I talk, when I think of whole grains, usually whole grain foods [00:21:00] are usually higher in fiber than refined grains. And that’s not always the case. But it’s usually the case and that’s, so usually I’m more looking at the fiber content of a grain food.

So for example, when I buy pasta for myself, I usually, I use, I look at I usually just buy the Barilla brand and I’m, no, I’m not paid by Barilla here. But but they have different types of pasta, although they, and they have a whole wheat pasta. If you look at the fiber content, it’s actually got a pretty reasonable amount of fiber.

It’s something like five or six grams per. Per serving. So compared to the more, compared to the regular white pasta, which I want to say is probably two grams or something like that. So I go for the whole grain pasta or the high fiber pasta based on those reasons because of the superior fiber content.

So 

Mike Matthews: Makes sense. And then what about like rice, for example, I, this also have you written about this, white rice versus brown rice and then you have a variety of 

James Krieger: interesting one, because, brown rice, conventional wisdom would say that brown rice is definitely better.

It’s better than white rice [00:22:00] because because the shell hasn’t been removed from the rice and but if you actually compare brown and white rice. from a nutritional standpoint, they’re not that much different. I think brown rice has a little bit more fiber. But it’s not a whole it’s, we’re talking like usually one gram per serving or something like that.

So it’s not a, it’s not a huge difference. So I think in terms of rice, whether you do brown or white, it’s probably not as big of a deal. You also have to consider it in the context of an overall meal 

Mike Matthews: and an overall diet, right? Unless what are you eating two pounds of rice a day.

Then, yeah then we, it probably is relevant, but then there’s a bigger problem here. 

James Krieger: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the thing. I like, yeah. Again, let’s talk a bit again about like blood glucose control, things like that. There’s a lot of things that affect, how fast glucose enters your bloodstream from whatever meal you eat and if you’re eating a mixed meal with protein and Vegetables and everything like that like the type of rice you’re eating probably really isn’t going to make any difference because You’ve got some other things, you’ve got the vegetables you’re eating.

So you’re providing fiber from the vegetables, things like that. You’ve got your [00:23:00] protein intake. All those things are gonna also impact. So it’s like you said, if I’m just eating pure rice all the time, then yeah whole brown rice is probably gonna be better than white. But if I’m eating mixed meals, do I need to be eating brown rice versus white rice?

It’s probably not gonna matter. Yeah 

Mike Matthews: go with whichever one you like the most. 

James Krieger: Yeah. And that comes down to adherence, you have to think about the adherence factor with any type of dietary strategy. Again, it’s why I typically favor flexible dieting because 

Mike Matthews: the best diet is the one you can stick to, right?

James Krieger: Yeah. Whether it’s low carb, paleo, I don’t care what it is, adherence is by far is the biggest predictor of fat loss success. By far, I mean by far and so it’s what you can stick to, you look at these randomized controlled trials comparing low carb to high carb and stuff like that.

And a lot of studies sometimes may show small differences in the average weight loss and stuff and then you get, people in the low carb camp, the point of this one state and they’ll say, Oh, look at that. See low carb is [00:24:00] the best or whatever. And it’s, and and it’s something like a two pound difference over a year.

Some ridiculously small number 

Mike Matthews: and in a lot of cases, protein isn’t controlled for in those. So like the protein intake is different. You can’t, you’re not comparing apples to apples here. Yeah. You’re comparing a high protein, low carb to a low protein, high carb. That’s not, that’s useless.

Yeah. 

James Krieger: That’s exactly. That’s what happens when people switch the low carb is usually their protein intake automatically goes up. And in fact, there’s research showing that most of the satiety benefit from low carb dieting actually comes from the high protein part and not the low carb part.

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: I’ve written about that extensively and, I, and also there, I think it’s ironic that a low carb diet has become popular in the fitness space in particular, because there’s no question that a high carb diet is better for gaining muscle and strength that I don’t know how there’s plenty of evidence for that, both published and then just anecdotally.

Yeah. Go follow a strength training program for a year on a low or try out, six months on a low carb diet and then start eating carbs and see how you [00:25:00] feel and see how your training goes. Yeah. You don’t even need to any scientific research. You can just go do it. 

James Krieger: Yeah. Yeah. Unless you’re training like all super low volume.

When you’re not really tapping into your glycogen stores but if you’re training with any decent amount of volume, yeah, it’s, you’re not going to be able to do it on a low carb diet for an extended period of time. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So on the grains, what do you like other, so we have oatmeal obviously is a good choice.

Oh yeah. Oatmeal is great. Yeah. I like oatmeal a lot. Quinoa are there any other kind of. Grains that you like to eat that are again stuff that you’re generally going to be, you’re going to be preparing yourself in terms of breads and stuff. Do you say, it doesn’t really matter.

Pick whichever one you like. 

James Krieger: Yeah, usually with breads. I just look at the fiber content again. Usually, I’m most of the time it’s going to be some type of whole wheat bread, but a lot of times, when I get bread, I’ll either just go to Costco and get the. The Kirkland multigrain bread or whatever, which has something like five grams per slice, my wife likes to get [00:26:00] these sandwich thins These or wheat sandwich thins, but they have a pretty decent amount of fiber per slice as well I can’t remember exactly but again, usually that’s the one thing I’m looking at every time I pick out some bread From the thing, the first thing I’m looking at is the fiber content.

Yeah, it makes sense. 

Mike Matthews: And, I think it’s also worth adding that it also coming back to what you said in the beginning of the interview with gluten intolerance, and that’s obviously a whole nother discussion. That’s a whole thing right now. And from the, I was doing some reading on it even recently that it looks like there, it is a thing.

It’s just not as prevalent as, many people would have us believe. You have celiac, of course, but then you also can have people that they just don’t do well with gluten. And I get asked about this a lot. And I’m sure people listening are wondering, even in, even, in the context of grains, how do you know?

And what I’ve told people, and I’d be curious as your take on it is, okay, so if you’re eating gluten. If you go eat a bowl of pasta and it hurts and you don’t feel good and you’re stuck, you have, you get a stomach ache or you’re [00:27:00] getting gassy or bloated and you find that, that tends to happen when you eat a certain types of grains or gluten containing foods.

Then just don’t eat them. Yeah. And across the board, like if there’s any food that you’re eating some people I’ve come across people that have a food map sensitivity, they didn’t know it and it was confusing to them. And they would find out like, Oh, when they eat beans, they don’t feel good.

Like they’re, they get bloated, their stomach is just off. And so that’s like an easy way to know if you do well with wheat, then do you eat it? And you feel totally fine. You probably do well with wheat. 

James Krieger: Yeah, I would totally agree. I don’t know of any other way beyond getting scientifically tested somehow yeah, you just go by how you feel.

Yeah, if certain, again, there’s no rule that you have to eat grains or that you have to eat, this type of food, you have to eat that type of food, again, if most of your foods are coming from whole foods, then, it doesn’t really matter. But at the same time, you don’t need to avoid grains either.

Yes. It’s if you feel, yeah, if you feel crappy eating grains, then, or certain [00:28:00] types of grains, then don’t eat them. You don’t, there’s no requirement, you’re not going to miss out on some magical health benefit or something like that if you don’t eat certain grains. But at the same time, don’t be afraid of it.

They’re not also going to harm you. There’s not some evil component in these cranes that you know If you aren’t sensitive in some way, there’s not some component in there That’s going to somehow cause you long term health problems, or what is it pearl mutter? He made some quote just ridiculous quote one time.

It was some Something like that. Grains were like this generation’s tobacco. It was just like, are you kidding me? It was just some stupid comment. Yeah. So yeah, it’s not this generation’s tobacco. It was just ridiculous. 

Mike Matthews: That just, that makes for a good headline. All right, so now let me pose this to you.

So this is all something that, people ask me about. So you have you’re talking about misinterpreting research or misrepresenting it, or just taking stuff out of context or whatever. And so something that, Anti grain people have come to me with is the idea that basically the [00:29:00] science is stunted in this area.

And that because of the amount of money and the, essentially the politics of science, which, that’s, again, that’s a different discussion. And I think that there are legitimate points to be made, not necessarily with grains, but just in general of, the game of getting published and what it really takes and so forth.

But I know that there definitely are people out there that, that are, have at least heard that the reason why somebody like you would say this is not because you’re in the pocket of big grain or whatever, but it’s just that big grain has a stranglehold on the science and has manipulated things.

And, I hear this from people that think dairy is also the going to kill you and, And I’ll sometimes send over research on things like this. And then they’ll be like, Oh they just don’t try to say it’s invalid research. Especially if the funding came from anything having to do with like sugar, I run across this all the time as well.

People think that sugar is just, it’s a straight toxin and you should never have any. And and there’s good research out there that there was [00:30:00] one study, I think it was a UK. Bureau of sugar. It was it was a review on the whole subject. And it’s a good read. If you actually read it, it’s good research.

It’s a good paper, but some people will reject that stuff out of hand because of where the funding comes from, or just out of almost like it’s a conspiracy theory of some kind. You know what I mean? 

James Krieger: So when it comes to funding the people that say this do not understand research and they don’t understand how it works.

They just totally clueless. And. And I say that because number one, there are literally thousands of scientists across the world studying grains. Now, there’s no way that all those scientists are somehow in the pocket of big grain. No way. There’s thousands of them, different countries, different, Universities and so this idea of some massive conspiracy is ridiculous, because here’s the deal just the math of people need to think about the math of conspiracies.

So I’ve talked about this before the math of conspiracies. If you want to pull off a successful [00:31:00] conspiracy, you cannot have a lot of people involved. Because the more people that are involved, the less likely your conspiracy is going to be successful. Because at some point, someone is going to blow the whistle or totally screw everything up.

You can’t, that’s why I laugh at people who think that JFK was assassinated by some massive government conspiracy. It’s there’s no way, it’s impossible, anyone who actually knows the history of Lee Harvey Oswald and how he got the job at the book depository and all that stuff, There would have literally had to be hundreds and hundreds of people involved in somehow setting this thing up.

And then they would have had to stay quiet for decades after that. I’m sorry, it doesn’t, that’s not how conspiracies work, okay? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I’m pretty sure actually that is going to, the government documents are going to be declassified in our lifetime. I think it’s sooner rather than later. I honestly don’t know enough about it, I haven’t read enough about it.

I’m a skeptical person and a cynical person. So I look for talking [00:32:00] government, I look in the history of government and one for one, the worst people inevitably rise to the top and fuck everything up and break it for everybody, basically. I would say. I don’t know anything about that.

But if people in government could somehow for their own selfish reasons, their own self gain, do something like that. I would not put it beyond humans to want to do that. But yeah, I totally understand what you’re saying. If you’re talking about how you’re going to get hundreds of people to all stay silent and all do what they need to do.

And, 

James Krieger: yeah that’s the thing. It’s just so in the realm of science, Which is even would even be worse. Because again you’ve got people multiple people in thousands of people, thousands of scientists across different countries all studying the same thing coming to similar conclusions and not all this research is funded by Big Grain.

Yeah. So you can’t sit there and say you know some of you know it’s Big Grain, they’re in the pockets of Big Grain because A lot of them are not. The second thing I want to say to that is, even if a big grain company funds a study, what people need to understand is that does not [00:33:00] mean that they were actually involved in the data collection, in whether or not the results were published, things like that.

And the reason I say that is I’m going to use myself as an example. My first study that I ever published was a study on glutamine supplementation. EAS, the supplement company, funded my study. But that was the only involvement they had. We wrote a grant. We submitted it to them. They agreed to fund the study.

They gave us some money and that’s all they did. There was no pressure from that. None of their people were involved in the study. There was no pressure from them to try to somehow produce positive results. They agreed that if we had positive or negative results that we would still publish and you know these people who and we published our results and our results were actually mixed You know We saw some positive results and we saw some negative results and we published both Now someone who reads my study if they just looked at the funding source, they’re like, oh, [00:34:00] no, we can’t listen this study Yes funded it But without 

Mike Matthews: actually analyzing the research and 

James Krieger: yeah, they weren’t actually doing all the work.

They were not involved in any step. The only thing they gave us was the money to allow us to do the work. And that was it. Now, I would understand that. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And I’d say, because, you have integrity, obviously, that you did it the way you did it. I would say, though, that theoretically, you probably had a financial incentive to.

If you would have published results that made them very happy, then there’s maybe it would be more likely that they would come back to you, for more work. I think it should be said, because I’m going to say that there are like, there’s an HMB study in particular. That’s a fucking joke that has been used to sell HMB as if it’s better than steroids where I’m essentially, I know about that kind of stuff is out there and it gets, I know, and 

James Krieger: that stuff doesn’t exist.

I’m not saying that you should not pay any attention to funding source. But what I am saying is that you can’t use funding source as an automatic reason to write off a study. 

You have to look at the overall body of work. That’s [00:35:00] out there. You got to look at the methodology, things like that.

Like the HMB study that you talked about. The thing is even ignoring any funding source. If you look at the study, the results are so like, that’s 

Mike Matthews: ridiculous. Absolutely. That’s where it already starts right there that in 10 weeks, they gained how much muscle and loss. 

James Krieger: The results are already just so unbelievably ridiculous.

That right there, I don’t even need to know who funded the study. That doesn’t matter. Just looking at the study itself, that’s all I need to know that, hey. And so 

Mike Matthews: People don’t know that, though, especially people that are, and, 

James Krieger: And I do, I do understand that.

But again if we have a, especially a large body of evidence like we do with grains, not all of it is funded by industry. A lot of it, there’s a lot of studies out there that are not funded by industry that have similar findings. So So when you look at the weight of the evidence, and if I’ve got, yeah some studies funded by industry showing one way, but then the non funded, non industry funded studies are showing the same thing, then you know what, then it’s not the industry, it’s not industry enforcing results.

[00:36:00] It’s just the truth, you got to look at the body of evidence and, Yeah, I’m not sure what else to say on that. Yeah, sure. No, 

Mike Matthews: it’s just I thought that was a point worth bringing up because I It’s something I do come across that people it’s also then you have the some of the anti grain people will say things like that to further bolster their position and yeah further legitimize their argument basically 

James Krieger: Yeah, so hold on.

I gotta go check the mail. I gotta check I gotta go get my check from Big Rain right now, and then I’ll be right back.

I’m forgiving that plug I just gave. 

Mike Matthews: That’s what it is, I was The wire just hit your account. 

James Krieger: Yeah, I know, I was, I actually laugh at some people There was one guy just recently, I got an email from some guy, it was about a presentation I gave on Sugar. And he like accused me of working for Monsanto and everything like that.

And I’m just like, I’m like, what do these people think that we’re just getting these massive checks from these companies? I [00:37:00] just I don’t know. I just thought it was, I wish it was true, man. I must be missing out. I must be doing something wrong because I’m not getting anything. You’re 

Mike Matthews: not a part of the Illuminati, man.

Just kidding. Okay, great. So yeah, I think that is a good kind of just overview of the entire subject. I think we’ve touched on all the major things or anything else that you come across or that you think should be mentioned on it before wrapping up. 

James Krieger: I can’t really think of anything else.

I think we touched on all the major stuff. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Oh, one thing actually that is, I think another thing that, get, that gets brought up is this idea of genetically modified grains and that, cause that also gets targeted as okay, if you have the special ancient Egyptian iron, corn, whatever, grain, then you’re fine.

But if you’re having the genetically modified grain, that’s bad. Yeah. 

James Krieger: So that gives, that’s really almost a whole discussion on GMOs in general. We don’t 

Mike Matthews: have to go down that whole, road. 

James Krieger: Again, what people need to [00:38:00] realize is everything we eat is a genetically modified or organism or, everything is genetically modified.

We ourselves are genetically modified organ. Just the process of evolution is a process of genetic modification. It’s just how it’s done. And there are mental, there are a lot of ways that we can genetically modify things, whether it’s through crossbreeding. Which some people would say be the natural way or through inserting genes directly, into things, it’s all genetic modification.

And so this idea that somehow a genetically modified thing is somehow worse than something that, that, that is quote unquote natural. It goes into the whole artificial versus natural fallacy, which in and of itself is a whole argument. And 

Mike Matthews: As far as I know, on this point with wheat in particular, really what we’re looking at, we’re looking at, the wheat that has been naturally cross bred and selectively bred and changed.

I don’t. The majority of the wheat from, again from what I’ve read is it’s not even like it’s coming out of a lab. These are, this is [00:39:00] it’s generations of wheat farmers that have continued to, genetically modify their wheat, but done through done actually in a natural fashion.

James Krieger: Yeah. And my, I guess my stance, anyone who’s going to tell me that the GMO, that anything that’s GMO is somehow unsafe. I would say the burden of the proof on, is on them. Okay. You prove to me that’s unsafe. Show me the evidence that it somehow causes some type of harm because, the evidence on the safety of GMOs is just continues to grow day by day.

I would say the burden of proof is on anyone who’s going to tell me that it’s unsafe in some way, because really it’s just more, I would say it’s just more emotional fear mongering more than anything else. It’s not. It’s not based on any solid data or evidence, so yeah, 

Mike Matthews: That’s a, that’s an area that I’ve done a bit of reading on and a bit of research on, and I’ve tried to look at both sides of the argument and, I don’t know it’s tough to, because you have people that you have are very pedigreed on [00:40:00] both sides of it, actually, and I see the, I guess some of the more sober, I wouldn’t say they’re anti GMO arguments I’ve seen have been more along the lines of, In specific, certain types of modifications and in certain types of crossbreeding of different species of animals, like these super Franken Salmon and stuff, not that or salmon, but it’s not that it’s necessarily going to it’s bad for us.

But and again, this is not an area I would consider myself an expert on at all, but that basically some of the smaller arguments I have made sense to me is that. We may 30 years from now look back on some of this stuff that we were doing and say that was probably not a good idea. We should have gone about that differently.

Not that there shouldn’t be any sort of, genetic modification at all. But again, that’s a, that’s something that I just personally don’t know enough about to have a strong position on. 

James Krieger: Yeah, you could do a whole podcast know, it would actually be interesting 

Mike Matthews: to do it. It’s something I’ve intentionally avoided personally because I don’t want to represent myself as, understanding more about something than I really do.

And, I’ve been in [00:41:00] the middle on that one where it’s I can see both sides. It’s hard for me. I feel like I don’t have enough, a deep enough understanding to conclusively say, this is where I stand on it, 

James Krieger: yeah. A good guy to who’s really knowledgeable about GMOs is, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Kevin Fulter.

I’ll check I’m gonna make a note. Yeah, so he’s he’s a very knowledgeable Individual on GMOs and the science of it and things like that. Cool. 

Mike Matthews: Maybe you could introduce me actually if you wouldn’t mind 

James Krieger: I don’t know him personally. I just know I follow him on Facebook and things and he’s Unfortunately, I feel bad for the guy because he’s been the target of some anti GMO organizations, and he’s just doing his work.

He’s just doing his work, his science and stuff. It’s but yeah, Kevin M. Folta, I think is, I know his name is Kevin Folta, but if you just search for Kevin Folta GMOs or whatever, you’d you’ll come, you’ll find him. So he was at the, Kevin Folta. He was at the University of Florida, I think, but I don’t know if he’s still there.

I’m not sure if he’s still there or [00:42:00] not. 

Mike Matthews: Okay, great. Thanks. I’ll reach out to him. That’d be an interesting discussion. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. I think that, that is a kind of wraps up the whole grains discussion. So let everybody know where can they find you if you have any specific projects that you’re working on that you want to let 

James Krieger: everybody know about.

Yeah. You can find my website at weightology. net. And there I have a I have a lot of free articles on a lot of different topics, body composition testing, insulin. I have a very popular series on insulin . That I’ve written in the past. And then I also have a members only area where people pay a really cheap monthly fee of 11 or 12 bucks per month.

And I basically do research reviews on all kinds of topics related to mu building muscle or losing fat. And then I also do like video presentations and a lot of other I have an ask James section where people can ask me questions. So that’s another thing people might want to check out.

And then I have, all the different podcasts I’ve been on, including this one, I’ll post it up there, once this one’s ready [00:43:00] and and yeah, so people can find out more about me there. I’ve also got a list of all my scientific publications on there. More projects on the way.

I’m collaborating with Brad Schoenfeld on more stuff. We got more stuff, I was actually running some stats last night on a research study for him. And I’ve got two more, two more things in the works that working with them. And I’m also going to be setting up a coaching business on my website too here probably in the next two, two to three weeks, hopefully it’ll be up and running.

So yeah, so I’ve got a lot of stuff going on and I’m giving some talks this year. I’m giving a talk in Spokane Inland Empire fitness conference in Spokane, Washington. And then later in the year I’ll be talking at the AFPT conference in Norway. And then other guys will be there.

Alan Aragon will be there. Brett Contreras will be there. A lot of other notable figures in the industry will be there as well. Awesome. That’s great. 

Mike Matthews: Okay, cool. Yeah, I recommend everybody go and check out James’s work. I’ve been reading your stuff. I was reading your stuff before you had it.

Paid when it was yeah. So following yourself for a while, that’s [00:44:00] fine. Glad to get you on the podcast and be able to talk. Oh yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All thanks again for taking the time. It was a great discussion. I think people, it’s going to answer a lot of people’s questions about grain.

So it’s going to be, it’s going to be something nice that I can shuttle people over to now and say, Whenever they ask about grains here, come check this out. Yeah. So I think this will take care of you. Yeah. Thanks. Yep. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe.

I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www. muscleforlife. com. Where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I released four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscle for life. com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.