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Episode Summary

Coffee, cheese, chocolate, carbs.  We all love to eat, but we don’t completely understand how food affects our health and that’s what Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian wants to change.  A cardiologist by trade and a food scientist by necessity, Dr. Mozaffarian appreciates the complex relationship between food and health and the need to make choices based on individual health needs, not broad guidelines.  Put down that diet magazine and get ready to hear the real skinny on nutrition with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.  He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, whichLinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.”  He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus.  Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian

Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Dean, and Jean Mayer Professor at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical School. As one of the top nutrition institutions in the world, the Friedman School’s mission is to produce trusted science, future leaders, and real-world impact. 

Dr. Mozaffarian has authored more than 400 scientific publications on dietary priorities for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, and on evidence-based policy approaches to reduce these burdens in the US and globally. He has served in numerous advisory roles including for the US and Canadian governments, American Heart Association, World Health Organization, and United Nations. His work has been featured in a wide array of media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and Time Magazine. In 2016, Thomson Reuters named him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. Dr. Mozaffarian received a BS in biological sciences at Stanford (Phi Beta Kappa), MD at Columbia (Alpha Omega Alpha), residency training in internal medicine at Stanford, and fellowship training in cardiovascular medicine at the University of Washington. He also received an MPH from the University of Washington and a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard. Before being appointed as Dean at Tufts in 2014, Dr. Mozaffarian was at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health for a decade and clinically active in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is married, has three children, and actively trains as a Third Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo.

The Friedman School pursues cutting-edge research, education, and public impact across five Divisions, a cross-divisional Center, and multiple academic programs. Areas of focus range from cell to society, including: molecular nutrition, human metabolism and clinical trials, nutrition data science, behavior change, community and organizational interventions, communication and media, agriculture, food systems, and sustainability, hunger and food security, humanitarian crisis, and food policy and economics. Friedman School graduates are leaders in academia, US and international government, policy, advocacy, industry, public health, community service, and entrepreneurship. The School’s unique breadth, engagement with the world, and entrepreneurial spirit make it a leading institution for nutrition education, research, and public impact.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the two epiphanies that led Dariush, a cardiologist, into the science of food and health.
• Strategies used to implement dietary guidelines that changed the American diet forever.
• Difficulties transitioning from the original, single-focus food science into a more complex and broad approach to health.
• How to characterize the quality of nutrition in your food when different sources provide conflicting information.
• Differences between the acceptance of nutrition science versus the acceptance of more established sciences.
• Strategies needed to change the politics, funding, and research of food science to help the population become healthier and less prone to serious medical conditions.
• How to define a healthy carbohydrate, how they affect your glycemic index, and why that is important to your overall health.
• The reasons why fat intake was dropped from dietary guidelines in 2015 and why fat continues to be a diet focus.
• Differences between high- and low-fat dairy and how food science is evolving in that area.
• How COVID has affected the health and nutrition of millions of Americans. 

Quotes from the show:

• “Nutrition science doesn’t change or evolve any more or any less than any other science.  Every science changes and evolves pretty rapidly.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “I think that [change] is natural and normal in science.  That we have some stuttering and shifts moving toward truth.  Science is always improving and, not only is it natural, it should reassure us.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• On the accessibility of food science: “We’re in the lab of the kitchen every single day.  That’s never the case for these other fields [of science].” – Syd Finkelstein
• “Food and nutrition are the top cause of poor health in this country and on the planet.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “COVID’s really laid bare the fractured food system and unhealthy food system that we have.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “Most of the fat in your body is from eating too many calories that get converted to fat.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “The fundamental message is that foods can’t be judged based on their calories.  Every food is a complex package of physiologic information that comes into our body, and interacts with our body in complex ways.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• ”These simple solutions and labels have really brought us into a crazy place where all you look at is calories.”  – Syd Finkelstein

Resources

New York Times article Our Food is Killing Too Many of Us by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, August 26, 2019

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Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian 

Website: nutrition.tufts.edu

Twitter: @DMozaffarian

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