Episode 100
FORK U #100 — The Hall of Fame and Shame
🎙 Celebrating 100 Episodes of Science, Sanity, and a Little Sarcasm
This is it — our 100th episode of FORK U.
Over the last hundred episodes, we’ve gone from goat-gland hucksters to the microbiome, from Kellogg’s enemas to cholesterol chemistry, and from Blue Zones to bird flu.
Today, we look back — not just to celebrate the great scientists who shaped modern medicine, but to expose the modern influencers who sell that same science back to you in a bottle.
Welcome to The FORK U Hall of Fame and Shame.
🧠 The Hall of Fame
🩺 Dr. Ancel Keys — The Misunderstood Scientist
Dr. Ancel Keys didn’t make guesses — he made measurements.
He and his team built one of the most detailed long-term studies in the history of medicine.
They went village by village across seven countries.
They collected what people ate, sent food samples back to labs, recorded EKGs, drew blood, and reviewed medical charts — not for a few months, but for decades.
That’s what science looks like: patient, precise, persistent.
Critics like Gary Taubes claim Keys “left out countries.”
That’s false — and it only proves they never read his work.
Keys studied cohorts of men within small villages, followed them carefully over the years to learn how diet and disease connected.
Without today’s molecular tools, he still discovered the pattern that modern science later confirmed:
ApoB — the protein attached to LDL cholesterol — is transported into the arterial wall, starting the process of atherosclerosis.
Keys didn’t chase fame. He chased truth.
His data became the foundation of preventive cardiology.
If you want to honor him, drizzle olive oil instead of conspiracy.
And a personal note — my thanks to Dr. Harry Blackburn, who worked with Keys and has kindly shared insights from those pioneering days.
💉 Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best — The Children Who Woke Up
In 1922, Banting and Best discovered insulin.
Before that, children with diabetes slipped into comas and died.
After the first injections, they woke up.
Their parents fed them well, but diet alone couldn’t save them.
Good science did.
It was one of medicine’s greatest moments — and still saves lives every day.
🧬 Dr. Kanehiro Takaki — The First Vitamin
Before anyone even knew the word vitamin, Japanese surgeon Dr. Kanehiro Takaki saw sailors dying from beriberi.
Using early ideas of epidemiology, he realized the problem wasn’t infection but nutrition.
He changed their diet — adding barley and vegetables — and the disease vanished.
Takaki brought Japan into modern medicine.
Even Dr. Charles Mayo admired him.
Had he lived longer, he would likely have shared a Nobel Prize.
🧫 Dr. Leonard Hayflick — The Original Longevity Doctor
In 1961, Dr. Leonard Hayflick discovered something remarkable:
Human cells divide about fifty times, then stop — the Hayflick Limit.
He proved aging isn’t mystical. It’s biological.
Every division shortens a cell’s life clock until it retires.
His research wasn’t about nutrition, but it changed everything about how we understand aging and regeneration.
He was the first true longevity doctor — without supplements, slogans, or selfies.
❤️ The DASH and Portfolio Diet Teams
The DASH Diet — Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension — came from a dream team of researchers.
- Dr. Lawrence Appel at Johns Hopkins led the NIH trial.
- Drs. George Bray, Donna Ryan, and Catherine Champagne built the menu at Pennington Biomedical.
- Dr. Frank Sacks at Harvard analyzed the data.
They showed that a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy could lower blood pressure without weight loss.
Then came the Portfolio Diet, developed by Dr. David Jenkins and his team at the University of Toronto.
They combined soy, nuts, soluble fiber, and plant sterols — lowering LDL cholesterol by up to 17 percent.
That’s culinary medicine — research that feeds both the lab and the kitchen.
And yet some influencers still say we need “more salt.”
The DASH team proved the opposite — unless, of course, you’re selling $39 mango-flavored electrolytes on TikTok.
🩻 Edinburgh — Where Surgery Became Science
If you ever visit Edinburgh, skip the castle and go straight to the Surgeons’ Hall Museum.
Inside are the breakthroughs that transformed surgery:
Lister’s antisepsis, Syme’s anatomy, and James Young Simpson’s chloroform.
It was here that Arthur Conan Doyle, as a medical student, learned from Dr. Joseph Bell, the sharp observer who inspired Sherlock Holmes.
From those halls, medicine shifted from superstition to study — from anecdote to anatomy.
It’s where modern diagnosis began.
And this month on TikTok, we’ll walk those halls together.
🚫 The Hall of Shame
🧬 Gary Brecka — The Biohacking Hypeman
Every generation gets its snake-oil salesman; ours just live-streams.
Gary Brecka calls himself a biologist who can predict your date of death — and change it for a price.
He has no medical degree, just a bachelor’s in biology and a borrowed pair of scrubs.
He never finished chiropractic school.
He sells hydrogen-water bottles, claiming there are 1,400 studies — there aren’t.
He says cold plunges melt fat — they don’t.
If they did, every Alaskan fisherman would look like Thor.
Brecka’s not a scientist. He’s a salesman with a ring light.
🧑⚕️ Barbara O’Neill — The Preacher, Not the Professor
Barbara O’Neill preaches more than she practices science.
She claims cayenne pepper stops heart attacks and cholesterol is a Big Pharma hoax.
She charges thousands for seminars, dismisses evidence, and wraps it all in Seventh-Day Adventist fervor.
Meanwhile, my Crestor costs $2.36 for three months.
You do the math.
🧴 The Supplement Influencers
Now for the shirtless side of pseudoscience.
Compare the scientists who built the Mediterranean, DASH, and Portfolio diets to today’s supplement influencers.
The difference? The scientists do science. The influencers do sales.
There’s Paul Saladino — the carnivore who rediscovered fruit when steak stopped trending.
The salt bros selling electrolyte powder at $39 a bag.
Dr. Gundry, the ex-surgeon who says beans are dangerous — unless you buy his Bean Guard for $60 a month.
And the Liver King — whose biggest muscle came from a syringe, not a steak.
They don’t test ideas — they test lighting.
They make millions selling powders, not progress.
Science doesn’t need an affiliate link.
🩺 The Real Heroes
While the supplement crowd surfed and sold, real heroes — doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and dietitians — showed up every day during the pandemic.
Before there was a vaccine.
Before there was safety.
They went anyway.
Those are the people who save lives — not the ones selling shortcuts.
🔬 Building the Bridge
After 100 episodes, one truth stands out:
Science doesn’t need to be sexy to save lives.
My job — our job — is to build the bridge between real scientists and the public.
My background is in medicine, but my mission is communication.
To bring you work done in labs and clinics — not under ring lights.
The people I feature here aren’t influencers.
They’re the scientists whose glory comes from a colleague’s handshake, not a sales link.
Because behind every breakthrough is someone who’ll never trend on TikTok — but they’re the ones who truly change the world.
That’s what FORK U stands for — separating noise from nutrition, hype from health, and always choosing evidence over ego.
Transcript
>> Dr. Terry Simpson: This is it, episode 100 of 4Q. Over the past 99
Speaker:episodes, we have gone from the blue zones to the
Speaker:bird flu, from Kellogg's enemas to cholesterol
Speaker:chemistry, and from goat gland hucksters to the
Speaker:microbiome. Today, we are celebrating the best and
Speaker:the worst. The scientists who changed medicine and
Speaker:the scammers who tried to sell it back to us in a
Speaker:bottle. Welcome to Fork, you Hall of Fame and
Speaker:shame. I am your Chief Medical Explanationist, Dr.
Speaker:Terry Simpson, and this is Fork U Fork University,
Speaker:where we bust myths, make sense of the madness,
Speaker:and teach you a little bit about food and
Speaker:medicine. I'm going to start with Ancel Keys, the
Speaker:most misunderstood scientist of today, but not of
Speaker:his time. Ancel Keys gave us the Mediterranean
Speaker:diet long before influencers turned olive oil into
Speaker:content. Ancel Keys didn't guess. He measured. He
Speaker:didn't speculate. He studied. Keys built one of
Speaker:the most careful and longest running cohort
Speaker:studies in all of medical history. He and his team
Speaker:went village by village across seven countries,
Speaker:collecting everything people ate, sending those
Speaker:foods back to laboratories for precise nutrient
Speaker:analysis. Every year, they perform blood work,
Speaker:EKGs, physical examinations. They comb through the
Speaker:hospital charts of the patients, death
Speaker:certificates and medical records, not for months,
Speaker:but for decades. That is science the hard way.
Speaker:Observation, precision, patience. For critics like
Speaker:Gary Taubes, who claim Keys left out countries,
Speaker:that accusation only proves he never read Keyes
Speaker:actual papers. Keyes didn't study nations. He
Speaker:studied cohorts of men in villages within those
Speaker:nations, following them year after year to see how
Speaker:the diet and diseases progressed. Keyes wasn't
Speaker:chasing fame. He was following evidence. Even
Speaker:without today's molecular tools, his data pointed
Speaker:straight to what modern lipid science later
Speaker:confirmed. Apolipoprotein B, the protein that
Speaker:escorts LDL cholesterol, is actively transported
Speaker:into arterial walls and starts atherosclerosis,
Speaker:the root of heart disease. So when modern
Speaker:influencers dismiss Keys with a tweet or a podcast
Speaker:rant, remember, they've got microphones, Keys has
Speaker:data, they have followers. Keys left us with the
Speaker:foundation of, ah, preventive cardiology. And if
Speaker:you want to honor him, drizzle olive oil instead
Speaker:of conspiracy. And I owe a Special thanks to Dr.
Speaker:Harry Blackburn, who worked with Keys at Minnesota
Speaker:and still shares stories from those early days of
Speaker:the seven country study, a labor of love that
Speaker:defined modern nutritional science. I'm going to
Speaker:go back in time now to Dr. Frederick Banting and
Speaker:Charles Brest and the children who woke up. I want
Speaker:you to picture this. 1922, the University of
Speaker:Toronto, Dr. Banting and a medical student named
Speaker:Charles best discovered how to collect insulin out
Speaker:of pancreases of lots of animals. They purified
Speaker:that insulin. And then Dr. Frederick Banting, in
Speaker:one of the most amazing moments in modern
Speaker:medicine, went to a children's hospital. Here,
Speaker:children had slipped into a coma, and families
Speaker:were simply waiting for them to die from what we
Speaker:now know as type 1 diabetes. Instead, he went by
Speaker:those children one at a time and injected insulin.
Speaker:And the children woke up, and the children were
Speaker:able to live normal lives because of this
Speaker:remarkable discovery of insulin. Their parents
Speaker:were able to hug them again, talk to them again.
Speaker:And many of these children lived in their 70s and
Speaker:80s, when they were expected to die as teenagers.
Speaker:I want you to think back to the 1920s, when people
Speaker:said, oh, they could feed, and their, uh, food was
Speaker:much better then, and those parents fed them. But
Speaker:diet alone didn't stop death. Good science did,
Speaker:and it still does a century later. Banting sold
Speaker:that patent for a dollar because he thought it
Speaker:should belong to everybody. Too bad modern
Speaker:pharmaceuticals don't do the same.
Speaker:In one of my favorite episodes about Dr. Kinehara
Speaker:Takaki and the first vitamin. So decades before
Speaker:anybody knew the word vitamin, There was a
Speaker:Japanese surgeon, Dr. Kinohara, and he had noticed
Speaker:that sailors were dying of what we now know as
Speaker:beriberi on long voyages. Dr. Kinohara was a very
Speaker:careful surgeon. He had been initially trained in
Speaker:eastern surgery, but he became retrained in
Speaker:western surgery, actually going to london and
Speaker:learning at St Mark's Hospital. He even studied
Speaker:with people like Charles mayo, who was actually a
Speaker:fellow student of his. When he went back, he used
Speaker:epidemiology, and he learned epidemiology from
Speaker:John snow himself, the guy who discovered that the
Speaker:broad street water pump Was the source of cholera
Speaker:in london. Those principles of epidemiology
Speaker:brought kitahara back, and he noticed that the
Speaker:sailors who had a more vigorous diet, balanced
Speaker:diet, didn't suffer from symptoms of beriberi, and
Speaker:he attributed to what became later known as
Speaker:thiamine. Had Dr. Kinohara lived longer, he would
Speaker:have shared the nobel prize for the discovery of
Speaker:thiamine. But unfortunately, he died. But his
Speaker:careful discovery, his careful research, his
Speaker:careful epidemiology saved more people in the
Speaker:japanese navy than anything else, because more
Speaker:people died in the Japanese imperial navy from
Speaker:beriberi than any died from bullets. And he's also
Speaker:known for bringing Japan into modern medicine.
Speaker:Next, I want to come back to someone who's a
Speaker:contemporary of mine, Dr. Leonard Hayflick. He
Speaker:unfortunately died a few years ago, but he was the
Speaker:original longevity doctor. In 1961, Leonard
Speaker:Hayflick, a PhD, wasn't studying nutrition. He was
Speaker:studying life itself. He was looking at cell
Speaker:cultures. And he discovered that human cell
Speaker:cultures divided about 50 times, stopped, went
Speaker:into senescence and then ultimately died. That
Speaker:became the Hayflick limit. And that simple
Speaker:observation has rewritten biology. It proved that
Speaker:aging isn't mystical or mental. It occurs at a
Speaker:cellular level. Each division of a cell uses a bit
Speaker:of our genetic clock until the cell retires from
Speaker:service. He wasn't finding out about food or
Speaker:supplements. It was truth. It became the
Speaker:foundation of regenerative medicine and cell
Speaker:biology, showing us why cells repair slow and
Speaker:rest. Learning the first bit about telomeres, if
Speaker:there was ever a real longevity doctor. That whole
Speaker:science started with Leonard Hainfla. No ring
Speaker:light, no powders, just a microscope and the
Speaker:courage to question dogma.
Speaker:Speaking of modern nutrition, two decades after
Speaker:Keys came the DASH diet and the Portfolio Diet
Speaker:teams. Um, DASH stands for the Dietary Approach to
Speaker:Stop Hypertension. And that came from a dream team
Speaker:of scientists. At Johns Hopkins, it was Dr. Lauren
Speaker:Sepel who led the NIH. At Pennington Biomedical,
Speaker:Dr. George Bray, Donna Ryan, Catherine Champagne
Speaker:built the menus. And at Harvard, Dr. Frank Sachs
Speaker:crunched the numbers. Their 1997 study proved that
Speaker:a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains,
Speaker:low fat dairy and low salt could lower blood
Speaker:pressure without weight loss. Then there was the
Speaker:portfolio diet. Dr. David Jenkins and his team
Speaker:from the University of Toronto, again, like Dr.
Speaker:Banting and Best, they discovered about fiber and
Speaker:how it was the first drug tools used against high
Speaker:cholesterol. Their combination of soy nut soluble
Speaker:fiber and plant sterols cut LDL by up to 17%.
Speaker:Culinary medicine at its finest. And yet some will
Speaker:say, we need more salt. The DASH team proved
Speaker:otherwise. Unless, of course, you're selling a
Speaker:mango flavored electrolytes on TikTok.
Speaker:And now let's talk about a place where surgery
Speaker:became science. If you ever find yourself in
Speaker:Edinburgh, skip the kilt shops and go to the
Speaker:Surgeons Hall Museum. There you will find where
Speaker:Lister showed how antisepsis improved surgical
Speaker:outcomes. There you will find where Sime, who was
Speaker:actually not only Lister's chairman, but father in
Speaker:law, careful anatomy left dissections on
Speaker:operations that we still use and I have used to
Speaker:this day. There you will find where James Young
Speaker:Simpson discovered how chloroform couldn't be used
Speaker:as an anesthetic in surgery. And you will find a
Speaker:Young medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle
Speaker:studied under Dr. Jose, that sharp eyed
Speaker:diagnostician who inspired Sherlock Holmes. That's
Speaker:where medicine learned to observe, deduce and
Speaker:prove. And from those halls the art of observation
Speaker:became the science of evidence. It was the
Speaker:birthplace of modern diagnosis and the foundation
Speaker:of modern American education. We'll be touring
Speaker:that museum on my TikTok channel this November
Speaker:because understanding where science began and
Speaker:where medicine and surgery begin as it's important
Speaker:to know where it's going. But hall of Fame we also
Speaker:have the hall of Shame.
Speaker:We're going to start with Gary Brecke, the
Speaker:biohacking Hypebend Every generation has a snake
Speaker:oil salesman. Ours just streams in high
Speaker:definition. Gary Brecke calls himself a biologist
Speaker:who can predict your date of death and move it for
Speaker:a fee. No medical degree, no doctorate. He has a
Speaker:bachelor's degree and some borrowed scrubs. He
Speaker:went to chiropractic school but apparently never
Speaker:finished. He sells hydrogen water bottles,
Speaker:claiming that There are over 1400 studies proving
Speaker:it's the best in the world. There aren't that many
Speaker:studies. He says that cold plunges melt flat. They
Speaker:don't. And if they did, every Alaskan fisherman
Speaker:would look like Thor. He and his buddies yuck it
Speaker:up online on his podcast, calling it science, but
Speaker:it's show business with a pulse oximeter. Then
Speaker:there's Dr. No, she's not a doctor. It's actually
Speaker:just Barbara O', Neill, the preacher, not the
Speaker:professor. She's more Seventh Day Adventist than
Speaker:scientists. She claims that cayenne pepper can
Speaker:stop a heart attack and cholesterol is a
Speaker:pharmaceutical plot. She charges thousands of
Speaker:dollars for her seminars while ignoring decades of
Speaker:research. The Crestro that I use costs $0.70 a
Speaker:month. I'm pretty sure she's the only one making
Speaker:money off of that.
Speaker:Now to the shirtless salesman of supplements and
Speaker:scams. Compare the scientists between the
Speaker:Mediterranean dash and portfolio diets to today's
Speaker:influencers and you'll see two different species.
Speaker:The researchers spent decades on data. The
Speaker:salesmen spend minutes on marketing. There's Paul
Speaker:Saladino, the carnivore who discovered fruit when
Speaker:steak stopped selling. The salt slingers hawking
Speaker:electrolyte powder for $39.99 a bag. And Dr. Uh,
Speaker:Gundry, the never shirtless but always pedantic ex
Speaker:surgeon selling bean guard for 60 bucks a month.
Speaker:And of course, who can forget the liver king whose
Speaker:muscles came from a needle, not cow liver.
Speaker:Scientists understand the chemistry and biology
Speaker:and scammers understand lightning and marketing.
Speaker:And so keys with the Hitchens of his day and able
Speaker:to slay nonsense with a sentence. But most
Speaker:scientists aren't showmen. They're too busy doing
Speaker:their work. The scammers pretend their wealth came
Speaker:from helping people, but it comes from powders and
Speaker:placebos. So next time someone with a six pack on
Speaker:a Shopify account say they reinvented nutrition,
Speaker:remember, science doesn't need an affiliate link.
Speaker:And that brings us to the Rio Heroes. The heroes
Speaker:that you may know in your community today. They
Speaker:were the doctors, the nurse, the therapists, the
Speaker:healthcare workers who showed up every day during
Speaker:the pandemic before we had a vaccine. While the
Speaker:supplement salesmen surfed and sold powders, these
Speaker:people suited up and saved lives. Give your fellow
Speaker:nurse and doctor who were present at that time a
Speaker:handshake at the end of 100 episodes. Here's what
Speaker:I Science doesn't need to be sexy to save lives.
Speaker:Our job, our mission, is to build the bridge
Speaker:between real scientists and you, the public. My
Speaker:background's in science and medicine, but my
Speaker:mission is to bring you the quiet truth from labs
Speaker:and hospitals, but not under a ring light. And
Speaker:it's my joy to share the work of people whose idea
Speaker:of glory is a pat on the back from a colleague,
Speaker:not a link on Amazon. Because around every life
Speaker:saving discovery is a scientist who will Never
Speaker:trend on TikTok, but they're the ones who actually
Speaker:change the world. That's what Forku has always
Speaker:been about. Separating noise from nutrition, hype
Speaker:from health, and reminding you that evidence
Speaker:always outlasts the algorithm. This has been Fork
Speaker:U Fork University, researched and written by me,
Speaker:Dr. Terry Simpson, all things Audios and
Speaker:production by Simpler media and the pod God
Speaker:himself, Mr. Eboterra. For references and more
Speaker:episodes, visit forku.com and
Speaker:yourdoctorsorders.com and remember this. I am a
Speaker:board certified physician, but I am not your
Speaker:physician. This podcast is for education, not
Speaker:personal medical advice. After a hundred episodes,
Speaker:thank you for listening, for thinking and being a
Speaker:part of this journey. Here's to the next hundred
Speaker:and to science over salesmanship. Hey Evo, you've
Speaker:been here for all 100 episodes of Fork you and a
Speaker:few of the episodes and our trials before that.
Speaker:Who are the heroes and quacks in this enterprise?
Speaker:And thanks for making me sound better than I am.
Speaker:It has been truly my pleasure, my friend. Oh, and
Speaker:if I'm the hero, can I wear a cape? It.
