imagine a world where you’re not
obsessively counting calories imagine a
world where you’re not caught between
binging on the couch and spending hours
at the gym imagine a world where you’re
not jumping from shame to punishment
with food I can show you how that’s the
promise of nutrigenomics which is
basically the way that your innermost
self your DNA talks to your food it’s
also a way to move beyond a love/hate
relationship with food twenty years ago
I had a love-hate relationship with food
so I lived a little south of here I was
at the University of California San
Francisco I was an intern 27 years young
after a 36-hour shift I’d come home open
the freezer and get a pint of ice cream
out of the freezer can anyone relate to
this so that pint of ice cream sometimes
it would be haagen-dazs coffee flavored
other times it would be Ben and Jerry’s
super fudge chunk and I would sit in
front of the television pint and one
hand spoon in the other I taste a few
bites and then I’d space out watching TV
and find myself scraping the bottom of
the pint there was a lot of calories
let’s just say that wasn’t the best
nutrigenomics so our food is meant to
have a positive effect on the activity
of our DNA it’s meant to
create a shield for health but that’s
not what I was doing because I often had
food that was more like a bad boyfriend
and even though I felt lousy about it I
kept going back to those foods that were
not good for me now if you don’t know
what to eat I get it it can be super
confusing one day eggs are good the next
day they’re the worst thing same thing
with coffee now we’re putting butter and
coffee you know when I was growing up
calories were the most important thing
now it’s what those calories do to your
hormones especially insulin so if you’re
confused about nutrition I totally get
it I mean not only does the media sort
of change the messaging with nutrition
we also have bad science big food and
even our own government’s bad advice
about food so what I want to do is take
three powerful ways that big food has
taught us about our relationship with
food and share those with you tonight so
we’re going to talk about the genome
we’re going to talk about how food talks
to the genome and I want to start with
this idea that one person’s superfood is
another person’s poison coffee it’s
delicious it’s also used by millions of
people as a morning ritual and it’s
highly addictive here’s the deal with
coffee there’s one gene in particular
that determines whether you’re a fast
metabolizer or a slow metabolizer of
caffeine so if you look to the person
next to you chances are one of you is a
fast metabolizer and the other is a slow
metabolizer so let me explain fast
metabolizers are the ones who drink a
cup of coffee and they feel like a rock
star
they have more mental acuity they’re on
task they have a lower risk of heart
disease they even have a lower risk of
Alzheimer’s disease they get all of the
benefits and none of the risks so if you
follow the literature on coffee you may
have noticed that about half of the
studies say it’s good for you and half
say it’s not good for you and that’s
because they haven’t separated those
studies into those who have the fast
gene vs. the slow gene so those are the
fast metabolizers then there’s the rest
of us the other half of the population
slow metabolizers of caffeine that’s the
category I’m in so I drink a cup of
coffee and I’m a nightmare I just heard
my husband laugh so it takes my cortisol
from a pretty normal level to sky high
I’m the type of person who has a much
higher rate of sudden cardiac death when
I drink a cup of coffee
so my liver metabolizes caffeine three
times slower than a fast metabolizer so
we get all of the risks and none of the
benefits how do you know well you could
do trial and error right that’s what a
lot of people do but what I’ve found is
that if you do trial and error instead
of testing yourself you have a lot of
sleepless nights until you get to the
truth what I prefer it’s to test so
there’s two things to test there’s your
genotype for instance do you have the
faster the slow gene when it comes to
caffeine and then there’s the phenotype
phenotype is your set of characteristics
it’s what makes me Sarah and it’s my
genotype interacting with my environment
like coffee so the second way that food
interacts with DNA and big data informs
this this concept that genes load the
gun but food pulls the trigger
I realize that a gun is not the best
metaphor or taste but this is a really
telling analogy that was first coined by
Francis Collins he was the director of
the Human Genome Project which completed
the first mapping of the human genome in
2003 he’s also now the head of the
Institutes of Health in Bethesda so the
idea here is that if you know you’re
genomics you also really need to
consider your environment let me give
you an example I have a patient in my
practice named Julie she’s 46 her mother
developed Alzheimer’s disease early
onset and so she was concerned that she
might have the Alzheimer’s gene so she
came to me to test for the gene there
was a good news bad news situation here
so the good news was that she did not
have the gene she was negative for a
bowi for one of the the key genes that
predicts your risk of Alzheimer’s
disease but what we found was that she
had an elevated fasting blood sugar one
of the ways of looking at blood sugar
over time is to look at your hemoglobin
a1c and this is something that’s
performed pretty routinely and we found
that she had pre-diabetes so even though
she didn’t have the gene for Alzheimer’s
she was increasing her risk of dementia
and Alzheimer’s because of the way she
was eating and how that was raising
blood sugar so she happened to have a
fondness for donuts so we had to change
the way that she was eating we had to
find the foods that stabilized her blood
sugar what are those foods well it’s
basically the way that our DNA evolved
millions of years ago so that we’re
eating the foods that grow in the ground
and also that roam the planet so things
like plants nuts seeds vegetables fruits
as well as anti-inflammatory wild meat
and seafood so that’s what she started
eating she corrected her blood sugar
problem and when you fix your blood
sugar that actually reduces 60% of your
risk of cognitive decline over your
lifetime that’s pretty dramatic the
third concept is that it’s not just your
genes and the environment that matters
it’s the context in which you eat so our
brains evolved over time to scan the
environment looking for situations that
could be potentially dangerous where you
have a greater risk of physical injury
and there’s three situations that make
your brain set off an alarm those three
situations are social conflict social
rejection and social isolation
now as I started to look at this area
which is called social genomics I got
really interested because one of the
problems is that when you have your
brain perceive one of these dangerous
situations where physical injury is
likely to occur it actually triggers
inflammation inflammation is like a bad
frat party in your body it’s a good
thing for a couple of days like three
days but after that if it doesn’t turn
off if it’s like a fire that keeps
burning it can cause all kinds of
problems it can lead to chronic disease
things like breast cancer Alzheimer’s
disease diabetes so what we want to do
is we want to avoid these situations
that trigger the immune system to make
you inflamed now one of the worst
I was shocked to learn that 80% of
Americans eat in the car
20% regularly eat meals at high speed on
the freeway 20% this is not good
you have social isolation you’re alone
in a car you have distracted driving
your chance of physical injury is
actually quite high and it’s basically
telling your immune system attack attack
attack it’s not good we need a much more
calm environment so what I want is for
you to leave here with a prescription
for how to eat your next meal so let’s
do that together let’s wrap up these
three big ideas
the first is want to consider your
genotype and that’s something you can
test pretty easily I use 23andme I use
pathway there’s lots of different labs
out there that are affordable you also
want to look at the environment and how
that’s interacting with your DNA you can
do that with biomarker testing we talked
about checking your fasting blood sugar
for instance also hemoglobin a1c and
then finally you want to consider the
context you want to make sure that your
immune system is not getting triggered
by your brain to cause inflammation in
your body so that’s how you craft your
next meal thank you for your attention
and Bon Appetit [Applause]
obsessively counting calories imagine a
world where you’re not caught between
binging on the couch and spending hours
at the gym imagine a world where you’re
not jumping from shame to punishment
with food I can show you how that’s the
promise of nutrigenomics which is
basically the way that your innermost
self your DNA talks to your food it’s
also a way to move beyond a love/hate
relationship with food twenty years ago
I had a love-hate relationship with food
so I lived a little south of here I was
at the University of California San
Francisco I was an intern 27 years young
after a 36-hour shift I’d come home open
the freezer and get a pint of ice cream
out of the freezer can anyone relate to
this so that pint of ice cream sometimes
it would be haagen-dazs coffee flavored
other times it would be Ben and Jerry’s
super fudge chunk and I would sit in
front of the television pint and one
hand spoon in the other I taste a few
bites and then I’d space out watching TV
and find myself scraping the bottom of
the pint there was a lot of calories
let’s just say that wasn’t the best
nutrigenomics so our food is meant to
have a positive effect on the activity
of our DNA it’s meant to
create a shield for health but that’s
not what I was doing because I often had
food that was more like a bad boyfriend
and even though I felt lousy about it I
kept going back to those foods that were
not good for me now if you don’t know
what to eat I get it it can be super
confusing one day eggs are good the next
day they’re the worst thing same thing
with coffee now we’re putting butter and
coffee you know when I was growing up
calories were the most important thing
now it’s what those calories do to your
hormones especially insulin so if you’re
confused about nutrition I totally get
it I mean not only does the media sort
of change the messaging with nutrition
we also have bad science big food and
even our own government’s bad advice
about food so what I want to do is take
three powerful ways that big food has
taught us about our relationship with
food and share those with you tonight so
we’re going to talk about the genome
we’re going to talk about how food talks
to the genome and I want to start with
this idea that one person’s superfood is
another person’s poison coffee it’s
delicious it’s also used by millions of
people as a morning ritual and it’s
highly addictive here’s the deal with
coffee there’s one gene in particular
that determines whether you’re a fast
metabolizer or a slow metabolizer of
caffeine so if you look to the person
next to you chances are one of you is a
fast metabolizer and the other is a slow
metabolizer so let me explain fast
metabolizers are the ones who drink a
cup of coffee and they feel like a rock
star
they have more mental acuity they’re on
task they have a lower risk of heart
disease they even have a lower risk of
Alzheimer’s disease they get all of the
benefits and none of the risks so if you
follow the literature on coffee you may
have noticed that about half of the
studies say it’s good for you and half
say it’s not good for you and that’s
because they haven’t separated those
studies into those who have the fast
gene vs. the slow gene so those are the
fast metabolizers then there’s the rest
of us the other half of the population
slow metabolizers of caffeine that’s the
category I’m in so I drink a cup of
coffee and I’m a nightmare I just heard
my husband laugh so it takes my cortisol
from a pretty normal level to sky high
I’m the type of person who has a much
higher rate of sudden cardiac death when
I drink a cup of coffee
so my liver metabolizes caffeine three
times slower than a fast metabolizer so
we get all of the risks and none of the
benefits how do you know well you could
do trial and error right that’s what a
lot of people do but what I’ve found is
that if you do trial and error instead
of testing yourself you have a lot of
sleepless nights until you get to the
truth what I prefer it’s to test so
there’s two things to test there’s your
genotype for instance do you have the
faster the slow gene when it comes to
caffeine and then there’s the phenotype
phenotype is your set of characteristics
it’s what makes me Sarah and it’s my
genotype interacting with my environment
like coffee so the second way that food
interacts with DNA and big data informs
this this concept that genes load the
gun but food pulls the trigger
I realize that a gun is not the best
metaphor or taste but this is a really
telling analogy that was first coined by
Francis Collins he was the director of
the Human Genome Project which completed
the first mapping of the human genome in
2003 he’s also now the head of the
Institutes of Health in Bethesda so the
idea here is that if you know you’re
genomics you also really need to
consider your environment let me give
you an example I have a patient in my
practice named Julie she’s 46 her mother
developed Alzheimer’s disease early
onset and so she was concerned that she
might have the Alzheimer’s gene so she
came to me to test for the gene there
was a good news bad news situation here
so the good news was that she did not
have the gene she was negative for a
bowi for one of the the key genes that
predicts your risk of Alzheimer’s
disease but what we found was that she
had an elevated fasting blood sugar one
of the ways of looking at blood sugar
over time is to look at your hemoglobin
a1c and this is something that’s
performed pretty routinely and we found
that she had pre-diabetes so even though
she didn’t have the gene for Alzheimer’s
she was increasing her risk of dementia
and Alzheimer’s because of the way she
was eating and how that was raising
blood sugar so she happened to have a
fondness for donuts so we had to change
the way that she was eating we had to
find the foods that stabilized her blood
sugar what are those foods well it’s
basically the way that our DNA evolved
millions of years ago so that we’re
eating the foods that grow in the ground
and also that roam the planet so things
like plants nuts seeds vegetables fruits
as well as anti-inflammatory wild meat
and seafood so that’s what she started
eating she corrected her blood sugar
problem and when you fix your blood
sugar that actually reduces 60% of your
risk of cognitive decline over your
lifetime that’s pretty dramatic the
third concept is that it’s not just your
genes and the environment that matters
it’s the context in which you eat so our
brains evolved over time to scan the
environment looking for situations that
could be potentially dangerous where you
have a greater risk of physical injury
and there’s three situations that make
your brain set off an alarm those three
situations are social conflict social
rejection and social isolation
now as I started to look at this area
which is called social genomics I got
really interested because one of the
problems is that when you have your
brain perceive one of these dangerous
situations where physical injury is
likely to occur it actually triggers
inflammation inflammation is like a bad
frat party in your body it’s a good
thing for a couple of days like three
days but after that if it doesn’t turn
off if it’s like a fire that keeps
burning it can cause all kinds of
problems it can lead to chronic disease
things like breast cancer Alzheimer’s
disease diabetes so what we want to do
is we want to avoid these situations
that trigger the immune system to make
you inflamed now one of the worst
I was shocked to learn that 80% of
Americans eat in the car
20% regularly eat meals at high speed on
the freeway 20% this is not good
you have social isolation you’re alone
in a car you have distracted driving
your chance of physical injury is
actually quite high and it’s basically
telling your immune system attack attack
attack it’s not good we need a much more
calm environment so what I want is for
you to leave here with a prescription
for how to eat your next meal so let’s
do that together let’s wrap up these
three big ideas
the first is want to consider your
genotype and that’s something you can
test pretty easily I use 23andme I use
pathway there’s lots of different labs
out there that are affordable you also
want to look at the environment and how
that’s interacting with your DNA you can
do that with biomarker testing we talked
about checking your fasting blood sugar
for instance also hemoglobin a1c and
then finally you want to consider the
context you want to make sure that your
immune system is not getting triggered
by your brain to cause inflammation in
your body so that’s how you craft your
next meal thank you for your attention
and Bon Appetit [Applause]
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